Tolkien Geeks--A few questions about "The Hobbit"

Cafe Society
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Ok, Tolkien revised The Hobbit to more closely tie it into LotR (like rewriting the “Riddles In The Dark” chapter, for one). I’m reading the revised version. But I’ve got some questions about it.

  1. Elrond’s not an Elf in The Hobbit. Point blank says so in the text. “He was noble, wise and fair in the face as any elf-lord”. Um. Ok, granted it’s possible to twist that sentence another way, but by making the statement that Elrond is as fair as an Elf-lord implies he’s not one (or what’s the point?). Obviously things changed between The Hobbit and LotR. Anyone know what was Tolkien’s intent was back then?

1a) I’m also having troubles reconcilling the elves in
The Hobbit with the same elves in LotR. Can you picture Glorfindel sitting in a tree singing “Tra-lil-lil-lil-lolly”? :wink:

  1. What was Beorn? A human? A Were-bear? Something like what Tom Bombadil was? Something else entirely? Isn’t there a line in LotR about Bjorn’s kids (Beornlings?) doing something?

  2. How does “dark” “come first, then follow after” in the riddle? That clue seems to make no sense.

  3. So…what was Thrain doing in the dungeons of the necromancer, anyway?

5a) And the necromancer=Sauron, right?

5b) And Gandalf managed to sneak into Mordor, into the tower of Barad-dur? And escape with a deranged dwarf? Security was lax then.

5c) And what was Sauron up to at the time?

  1. (More of a general LotR question/comment) What was up with the Eagles-Ex-Machina device Tolkien kept using? The Eagles show up whenever it’s convienient for the plot. Trapped in the burning trees with goblins and wargs surrounding you? Eagles show up. Losing a big battle? Eagles show up. Trapped on top of Isengard? Eagles show up. Need to be reunited with your buddies after fighting a Balrog? Eagles show up. Need to rescue your buddies from the top of a volcano? Eagles show up.

But…your buddies need to cross a mountain range and…what? 1500 miles(?) of hostile territory to get to the volcano? No eagles to be had.

What was up with that? If the eagles are so willing to be used as a taxi service, why not have 'em carry the Fellowship over the Misty Mountains and…hell, right up to Mount Doom for that matter. It’s not like Saron can do anything about it. He’s limited to sending his armies and the Nazgul out, right? It’s not like he has comic-book wizard powers (yet). Put Frodo on the back of an eagle. Have the eagle fly to Mordor (put other Hobbits on other eagles if you want a distraction). Have eagle strafe the Crack of Doom. Frodo drops ring in (the ring wouldn’t have had months to work on him, so presumably he could. And if he couldn’t, well…it’s pretty easy to < cough > accidentally get dropped off the back of an eagle, right? < /cough > I find the (over) use of Eagles-ex-machina a major flaw in Tolkien’s otherwise fantastic work.

  1. They had guns, why didn’t they use them at any point? Remember the conceit of The Hobbit is that we’re actually reading Bilbo’s memoirs and Bilbo references guns on several occasions. I mean, fine, Nazgul are probably bullet-immune but I doubt that the hordes of orcs are.

Fenris

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Elrond’s not an Elf anyway. To be technically correct, he’s a peredhel, a half-elf, and as far as I can remember, Tolkien never directly refers to the Peredhil as elves. But it is confusing, because he makes the distinction much clearer in the Hobbit, and kind of downplays it in LOTR.

I don’t think they did. There are a few odd anachronistic moments in the Hobbit (isn’t there a reference to a train somewhere?), but they’re all in the narration, not in dialogue, and can be taken as editorial changes by Tolkien.

3

“He was noble, wise and fair in the face as any elf-lord”

It says ‘any’ not ‘an’. It can imply that Elrond himself is elvish. (whereas ‘an’ elf-lord would not)

In Tolkiens style ‘as any elf-lord’ sort of means ‘as the other elf-lords’ i.e. ‘he is as wise as the other elf-lords’
Just my guess. I am not a LotR geek.

4

Oops

  1. Yeah. Um. I get the point, J.R.R.: Bombur is fat, stoopid and incompetent. And I understand at the time you were writing, the “fat, incompetent bumbler” was an accepted stereotype. But ferchristsake at least do it right. IF you’re going to use the “fat, incompentent bumbler”, you need to add the remaining adjective: funny. Was the point supposed to be “Bombur is why dwarves shouldn’t inbreed to closely?”
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Just some hit or miss responses here from memory:

  1. I believe Elrond was clearly identifed as “half-elven” in the Hobbit, just as he was in LOTR.
  2. He’d been tottering around in the wild with his Dwarf ring when he was taken by Sauron. Sauron took the ring from him then broke his mind and kept him around for general “dark lord” purposes. Yes, Sauron is the necromancer. He was firming up his plans, shielding them from the eyes of the White Counsel, and secretly weakening Gondor while building alliances in Harad and Umbar and Rhun. He was also beginning to rebuild the Bard-dur back in Moria. Gandalf slipped into Sauron’s lesser stronghold of Dol Gulder in Mirkwood, [i[not* into Barad-Dur in Mordor.
  3. The eagles are the eagles of Manwë, remember. And answerable only to the King of Arda (and probably his wife Varda too, truth to tell). Gandalf was serving Manwë’s purposes over there in Middle-earth so got helped out by his boss on occasion. But the eagles only helped out when the others couldn’t help themselves. JRRT emphatically stated that they were “not a taxi service”.
  4. As for guns, I don’t recall this reference. But keep in mind that crossbows were once referred to as guns also.
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First, Lobsang’s right. It does say “any”, not “an”. My argument withers away completely. :wink:

C_carol-In addition to a couple of comments that the narrator (Bilbo) makes, they’ve also got gunpowder (fireworks), Gandalf’s staff apparently conceals a shotgun (in the Goblin cave when there’s a flash, a bang and a bunch of goblins fall down dead. And one wonders why Gandalf didn’t do the same thing during Helm’s Deep or any of the other battles he was in. A semi-automatic repeating staff of 30-06 buckshot would have been a useful addition! :wink:

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Oh. And what, exactly, are they celebrating at “Yule-Tide” with Beorn? Per my dictionary, it means “The season of Christmas” or the period between Dec 24 and Jan 6 (Boxing Day, right?)

Um. This is clearly a pre-Christian world. And as good a wordsmith as Tolkien was, if he’d meant “solstice” he would have said it.

(I had the same problem in Narnia: what did the everyone think they were missing out on when it was “Always winter but never Christmas”? There was no “Christ” as such here and Aslan was never born so he had no birthday (They could certainly celebrate Easter after the first book, of course). )

8

One last one. I promise. At the very end of The Hobbit, there’s an off-handed mention that Gandalf and the other white wizards (presumably Saruman, Radagast and the two who’s names I don’t know) got together in a big gathering and drove the Necromancer from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood. Um…Mordor is south of Mirkwood and the only other thing I can see down that way is something called “Dol Guldur”.

Since it makes no sense if Sauron was driven from Mordor, I assume he was hanging out in Dol Guldur, but why? What was he up to? (no good, of course, but…)

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There is a significant difference between Men and Elves aside from lifestyle, and they complement each other in having different tendencies. Elrond and his kids are nearly the sole survivors of Elf-Man intermarriages (Aragorn is descended at long remove from Elrond’s brother; Imrahil of Dol Amroth, who is supporting cast in the ROTK book, is a descendant of another (legendary) cross.

Elrond is, quite explicitly in the books but not so much so in the movies, neither fish nor fowl – he’s the bearer of the “good” traits of both Elves and Men, living as an Elf-lord among Elves by his own choice, but with his Edain ancestry never forgotten.

The Elves who play major parts in the Silmarillion and LOTR are faced with literally cosmic danger and respond in the best heroic tradition. But other Elves are not interested in “getting involved” and just want to chill out and have a good time. The Silvan Elves of Mirkwood (not Thranduil or Legolas, who are their king and his heir apparent respectively, but the “Elf-proletariat”) are very much of a mind to enjoy life and not seek out confrontation with trouble.

The Beornings were the followers of Beorn and presumably including his descendants (-ing is a standard Old Scandinavian ending that can mean either). It’s strongly implied but never stated that he’s a human with werebear abilities.

That this was Dol Guldur, his tower in southern Mirkwood, not Barad Dur, was explained by someone else already. IIRC, Sauron did not consider himself strong enough to formally reclaim Mordor and fortify it until some time after The Hobbit takes place (remember there’s a 60-year gap between the stories)

It was literally a deus-ex-machina (or perhaps Vala-ex-machina ;)) device, and Tolkien used it very sparingly – you should see his scathing remarks about the moviemakers with whom he first negotiated, who wanted to use it at every opportunity.

But in point of fact Gwaihir, Landroval, and Thorondor are the Messengers of Manwë, and have been since early in the Second Age. They’re supposed to intervene in time of disaster. They’re an element of the subcreated world of Tolkien’s imagination. To complain about them is like saying that it’s sure convenient that Lothlorien is available for recuperation arter the disasters in Moria. But Tolkien was aware that they furnish an awfully convenient deus-ex-machina device, and used them sparingly. Notice too that it’s Gandalf, who is an emissary of Manwë himself, who makes use of them; it’s not like you can use your palantir to call 1-800-EagleRide, and one of them’ll drop by to save you from the Evil-Menace-du-Jour.

But…your buddies need to cross a mountain range and…what? 1500 miles(?) of hostile territory to get to the volcano? No eagles to be had.

Well, whether or not an eagle is capable of a Rivendell-Barad Dur flight bearing a hobbit (debatable; I think so), it’s not the story Tolkien wanted to tell, which involves the effect of the chronic lust for power on even the most inherently noble of persons. And it may well be that Gandalf knew something we don’t about what the Fellowship might accomplish in making its journey. (Given the fact that Elves and Dwarves have, with one exception, been in a Cold War for slightly over 7,000 years, having the heir to one of the leading Dwarf lordships and the heir to the Elf-Kingdom of Mirkwood get into a Spock-McCoy-type friendship has got to be a significant element of his plans.)

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Shades of The Guns of the South! :eek: If you think the bitching about “Elves at Helm’s Deep” was bad, imagine “And the Rohirrim were quipped with machine guns!”

Question: How long did the Chinese have black powder (used in fireworks) before they invented gunnery? Might this be simply a fail-to-see-the-possibility gimmick?

As for Gandalf’s staff (Other than having a knob on the end), I suspect it could do precisely what Gandalf wanted it to – and he himself was limited by his instructions before taking on the wizard role and sailing east to Middle Earth.

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I believe “yule” is an old Pagan term for the Winter Solstice.

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Fenris writes:

> I had the same problem in Narnia: what did the everyone think
> they were missing out on when it was “Always winter but
> never Christmas”?

Narnia is a less self-contained, self-consistent world than Middle Earth. There are things that can’t be made to fit perfectly into a completely coherent world. Tolkien recognized this. Remember, Lewis and Tolkien read their works to each other at Inklings meetings. Lewis always praised Tolkien’s works. Tolkien was certainly bothered by the sloppiness in Narnia. Tolkien would probably have been bothered by anybody’s works who hadn’t spent their lifetime on creating them, as Tolkien had.

Knowledge of gunpowder is not knowledge of guns. The Chinese had firework rockets without having guns. A very vague statement is that the technology of Middle Earth at the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is that of our world at about 1750, minus some skills, including the ability to make decent machinery. No good machine skills means no guns.

Gandalf’s staff used magic, not gunpowder.

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I think everything has been covered except

Could mean “came before the creation of the world and follows the end of the world,” or (more likely) means the (metaphoric) darkness before you were born and the darkness after you die. Or, for that matter, could mean the darkness that comes before daylight and follows after daylight, although that’s kind of a stretch.

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I believe some of this has been answered already but I just wanted to point out that Thrain never left Dol Guldur (not Barad-dur) either with or without Gandalf…Thrain died there.

I always did kind of wonder exactly how Thrain had managed to keep Sauron from getting the key to the Side Door at Erebor while he was imprisoned at Dol Guldur so that he was able to give it to Gandalf. I mean, when Frodo is taken prisoner in the tower of Cirith Ungol the Orcs take everything away from him first thing. Was it Sauron’s earlier policy to let the people he was torturing keep various personal effects on them?

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Yup, no good, basically.

At the end of the second age, Sauron was defeated by the last alliance of men and elves. All of his nasty little minions were killed or scattered, but because the one ring had not been destroyed, Sauron managed to hang on and begin to slooooowly rebuild his power. He moved into Dol Guldur to, I think, keep strengthening himself and establishing a foothold in the world again without letting the rest of middle earth know for certain that he was back. If he’d moved back into Mordor right away, they’d have known, and he’d have had to defend all of that while he was not yet very strong. He got to sit in Dol Guldur and do Evil Stuff while the rest of the world didn’t do anything because they weren’t really sure who or what he was or what they ought to do about him.

Probably incomplete, as I’m sleepy, but I think it’s accurate.

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That key seems to have magic properties, as the king of the Wood-Elves didn’t take it from Thorin, either.

And regarding the Eagles, I’m sorry: I understand that Tolkien wanted to tell a different story, but dammit, he set up the rules and cheated. If the eagles were willing to and could be used to rescue Sam and Frodo, then dammit, they could take them in the other direction as well. I’d be happier if there had been some in-story explaination. I understand what you all are saying, but someone in the story should have though of this, even if it’s brought up simply to be dismissed.
(“The Eagle flew you from Isengard to Rivendell?” asked Merry “Great! Then the Eagles can take Frodo to Mt Doom. A few seconds to ditch the ring and he’ll be back in time for luncheon!”

From under his bushy eyebrows Gandalf silenced Merry with a stern gaze “And when Sauron uses his anti-aircraft guns on the eagles and Frodo is dashed to pieces on the ground in Mordor, and the enemy picks the ring up like a bauble from a jeweler’s tray and crushes the west under his heel, will you continue to make innane suggestions, Meridoc Brandybuck?”)

(BTW: From Poly’s remarks, the Eagles in question were NOT the same as the Eagles in the Battle of the Five Armies? The Five Army eagles were birds. Smart birds, but birds. If I’m understanding, the Eagles in LotR were (for lack of a better word) angelic beings?)

Fenris

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No, they were the same eagles. Angelic beings still, but of lesser lofty intellect than the average Maiar, it would seem. Apparently being sprung directly from the thought of The Creator didn’t automatically make you the sharpest knife in the drawer.

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This question has been discussed on these boards before, and the general consensus is that there are two reasons:

  1. The Eagles themselves are subject to the ring’s power. If the Eagle carried the ring directly, he might fall under it’s power and not destroy it. If he carried Frodo, who in turn carried the ring, the Eagle might try to take the ring.

  2. Mordor is not defensless. If an Eagle made a run on Mount Doom, Sauron could send out some winged minion to deal with the situation.

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Fenris:

The Eagle didn’t fly Gandalf from Isengard to Rivendell; he just carried him away from the tower and Saruman’s clutches. Gandalf had to hike most of the way back to Rivendell (or maybe he rode Shadowfax; I don’t remember, but Gwaihir definitely couldn’t have born Gandalf’s weight for such a long way).

And your second paragraph above sort of answers the same question it raises. Sauron didn’t have anti-aircraft guns, but he did have many fell beasts and other aerial defenses around Mordor’s perimeter. The eagles couldn’t have crossed the border until after Sauron had already been destroyed.

  1. I always thought Bombur was funny.
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From Unfinished Tales, p. 351: