Discussing The Hobbit

[Merry]

Good insights, RR. This is good for me to do: I think that, even though I've read Hobbit a couple of times, I've never really studied it. You're right about all the little hints about a darker past--there's one in today's calendar.

You're right, too, about the sense of dread that permenates LOTR. But I don't think Hobbit is lighthearted: there is nasty danger at every turn. And while I agree that Rivendell is a more pleasant place, the description of it is unsatisfyingly (is that a word?) short! I think I would describe the difference between the two books as this: the dangers in Hobbit are all natural dangers, where LOTR's dread is all supernatural.

[Iolanthe]

I find it so hard to read The Hobbit now without seeing it as the start of the Ring story. When I read it again last year I tried very hard to put LotR and all we know about Gandalf, Gollum, the Ring, The Necromancer and Elrond out of my head and I just couldn't do it. Even though most of the book was written when even Tolkien didn't know the whole story or who some of these characters would really turn out to be.

And because The Hobbit was later 're-coloured' to fit with the bigger story, it's no longer the book that it's very first readers enjoyed. It's ike a loss of innocence where little dangers turn out to be much bigger dangers, only partly glimpsed. I think the story benefits hugely from that - the re-written Ring episode is much stronger - but it's no longer the same book and after you read LotR it can no longer be seen in the same way.

To re-write parts of a book backwards from a sequel is extraordinary. Who ever did that before or since? And Tolkien can even make the original story Bilbo's version of events, proving he was being influenced by the Ring. That's just amazing when you think about it!

I like Del Toro's idea of The Hobbit as more 'golden' - in my imagination it is 'sunnier' than the sequel. And the hobbit scenes at the beginning of Fellowship were warmly coloured compared with the later scenes.

[Merry]

I've been thinking about Thorin Oakenshield. I have loved his name since I first read it as a child, but I can't say I love him. His death scene is a great moment in Tolkien literature, but I don't think I've read much about his character in the secondary literature. I'm wondering why. Is it that his character is not well drawn? Is it that we don't 'get' dwarves? Is it that there are too many dwarves to keep them straight?

[Riv Res]

Merry, I am not at all sure that it is a matter of us not getting dwarves, but more the impression that Tolkien himself did not like Thorin. I think that Tolkien gives us a more complete picture of Thorin in Unfinished Tales, where Gandalf labels him 'the proud Thorin'. Gandalf is surprised that Thorin even spoke to him. Gandalf calls Thorin 'contemptuous and suspicious' of Bilbo. Gandalf's and Thorin's conversations are most always contentious and argumentative. Thorin is indeed proud and stubborn.

Tolkien builds Thorin's history quite well in UT, and he does not paint a very flattering picture. The word greedy also comes to mind. While Tolkien attributes like qualities/flaws to dwarves in general, it seems to me that he anoints Thorin as the benchmark for the race.

Speaking of races, I believe that I read in Tolkien's letters somewhere that he compared the race of dwarves to the Jewish race in that they assimilated into other societies, but always stood out (remained somewhat seperate) because the dialect of their speech was always affected by their native tongue. I have always thought that was an interesting comparison that only a philologist would make.

Obviously he also uses Thorin's character to build literary tension.

[Merry]

There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much. (The Hobbit)

Yikes! The Professor's estimation of dwarves seems to have risen by the time he wrote LOTR, thank goodness!

[Iolanthe]

I think writing The Hobbit and then LotR and Gimli in particular must have made him think more deeply about them. Before that he thought most about Elves and the dwarves were peripheral to their story. Though there is a great deal of sympathy for Mim, the Petty Dwarf. In the Hobbit they really do start off as 1D children's story dwarves, then evolve into something entirely different by the Battle of Five Armies. By the time we get to Gimli it seems that Tolkien is learning to love them along with Legolas .

Hey - I've just made the name connection between 'Mim' and 'Mime' in the Opera Siegfied. The names, but not the characters, are very similar. I must go back to the original stories and think about this....

[Merry]

I've been thinking about this, too, Iolanthe. Could Tolkien have been thinking about this from a socio-economic point of view? The dwarves in The Hobbit, while comfortable enough, I guess, were essentially in exile and had endured poverty. Gimli was the child of success against Smaug and so could easily be nobler.

I look forward to reading to more about Mim and Mime!

By the way, I learned last night, from The Annotated Hobbit, the origin of 'Smaug':

. . . the dragon bears as a name--a pseudonym--the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan, to squeeze through a hole: a low philological jest". (Tolkien's letter published in the Observer on February 20, 1938.

I remember wide speculation when I was a kid that it was all about 'smog'!

[Iolanthe]

In The Ring of Words Gilliver et al. say that *Smaug would also be the Old Norse of the Old English word 'smeag'. It must have been very satisfying to tie two of The Hobbit's best villains together in one word .

I suppose this should be on the CofH thread but I did some digging into Mime and Mîm. Their stories and origins don't appear to be at all related apart from the fact that they are both smiths (like most of the dwarves) and the closeness of the name could be a coincidence. But then Tolkien would have known about Mime and the fact that he gave a similar name to his dwarf is interesting. It's also interesting that there is a connection from Mime back to Odin and the Fountain of Wisdom for which Odin lost his eye.

I found this here

From: The Baldwin Project
Bringing Yesterday's Classics to Today's Children

NOTE 2.—MIMER. Page 18.
"The Vilkinasaga brings before us yet another smith, Mimer, by whom not only is Velint instructed in his art, but Sigfrit (Siegfried) is brought up,—another smith's apprentice. He is occasionally mentioned in the later poem of Biterolf, as Mime the Old. The old name of Münster in Westphalia was Mimigardiford; the [295] Westphalian Minden was originally Mimidun; and Memleben on the Unstrut, Mimileba. . . . The elder Norse tradition names him just as often, and in several different connections. In one place, a Mimingus, a wood-satyr, and possessor of a sword and jewels, is interwoven into the myth of Balder and Hoder. The Edda gives a higher position to its Mimer. He has a fountain, in which wisdom and understanding lie hidden: drinking of it every morning, he is the wisest, most intelligent, of men. To Mimer's fountain came Odin, and desired a drink, but did not receive it till he had given one of his eyes in pledge, and hidden it in the fountain: this accounts for Odin being one-eyed. . . . Mimer is no Asa, but an exalted being with whom the Asas hold converse, of whom they make use,—the sum total of wisdom, possibly an older Nature-god. Later fables degraded him into a wood-sprite, or clever smith."—GRIMM'S Deutsche Mythologie, I. p. 379.
Concerning the Mimer of the Eddas, Professor Anderson says, "The name Mimer means the knowing. The Giants, being older than the Asas, looked deeper than the latter into the darkness of the past. They had witnessed the birth of the gods and the beginning of the world, and they foresaw their downfall. Concerning both these events, the gods had to go to them for knowledge. It is this wisdom that Mimer keeps in his fountain."—Norse Mythology, p. 209.
In the older versions of the legend, the smith who cared for Siegfried (Sigurd) is called, as we have before noticed, Regin. He is thus described by Morris:—

"The lore of all men he knew,
And was deft in every cunning,
save the dealings of the sword.
So sweet was his tongue-speech fashioned,
that men trowed his every word.
His hand with the harp-strings blended
was the mingler of delight
With the latter days of sorrow:
all tales he told aright.
The Master of the Masters
in the smithying craft was he;
And he dealt with the wind and the weather
and the stilling of the sea;
Nor might any learn him leech-craft,
for before that race was made,
And that man-folk's generation,
all their life-days had he weighed."
Sigurd the Volsung, Bk. II.

The only root for mim I could find comes from the Greek mimesis “imitation”. Words starting mim (mimic for one) seem to relate to copying or mimicking. So Tolkien’s name for the Petty dwarf must come from an altogether different route as he wouldn't have drawn from that.

[Merry]

Yes, I thought of the Greek root as well, and made the same conclusion--it doesn't work.

[Merry]

Another great Hobbit Calendar entry today, everybody: make sure to read it if you haven't!

Three thoughts:

--It's obvious here that Tolkien isn't dealing with as detailed a calendar as with the LOTR. The Annotated Hobbit has a few notes dealing with the fact that the date that Bilbo and the dwarves leave the Shire is not even consistent throughout the story: on the timeline, it's at the end of April, but several times through the story, Bilbo says something about leaving his lovely hobbit hole at the beginning of May. Rather than try to defend JRRT here, I guess we need to consider how much he had grown by the time of LOTR.

--Does it strike anyone as strange that Gandalf just disappears without telling anyone he's going?

--Do the trolls reveal by their names and the way they speak that they represent any particular British class?

[Riv Res]

--Does it strike anyone as strange that Gandalf just disappears without telling anyone he's going?

Merry, I have always felt that in The Hobbit, Gandalf was perhaps no more than a work in progress. It is always handy to have a wizard around when one goes on adventures, but do you really think that the White Council and all the doings at Dol Guldur were in Tolkien's mind already when he wrote this story basically for children?

I have felt that Gandalf's disappearances were a quick tool used for other character and plot development. Just sort of get him out of the way and talk about other things. It is Tolkien's genius that allows him to develop this story's timeline so succinctly with pertinent happenings, and further Gandalf character development in LOTR.

Of course, this is just MHO.

[Lindariel]

Merry, thanks for your kind words about the new Hobbit Calendar entry. I had a great time working on it. The episode with the trolls is one of my favorite passages in the book. We often get so caught up with the scope and majesty of The Professor's incredible works that we forget that the man did have a marvelous sense of the silly and terrific comic timing. The bickering Dwarves and the rowdy, scrapping Trolls could have come straight out of an old fashioned vaudeville act, or maybe the village pub down the street!

Like you, I'm really curious to know if any of our British members can identify the dialect/region/county/class The Professor used as a model for Bert, Bill, and Tom? Being a hopeless Yank, I haven't a clue!

[Iolanthe]

They are definitely lower class and - I'm pretty sure - Londoners. Words like 'Blimey', 'copped', 'blighter' are definitely East London, almost cockney. Think all those old British Ealing Comedies like The Lavender Hill Mob and The Lady Killers and old war films like the able seamen in In Which We Serve.

It actually jars on my ear because I can identify it. I keep thinking 'What are Trolls doing sounding as though they have just come down the apples and pears to go for a jar at the Old Bull and Bush?' .

As for vanishing Gandalf, at least when he vanishes in LotR we are given a decent explanation and it's not just that he's fickle!

[Philipa]

I'm always late to these discussions but for what it's worth Iolanthe is right on regarding the trolls speech. Here is a short bit from The Annotated Hobbit page 70.

Tolkien presents the Trolls' speech in a comic, lower-class dialect. This linguistic joke shows a perception for language similar to that which Tolkien ascribed to Geoffrey Chaucer in a long paper presented to the Philological Society in Oxford on May 16, 1931...

As for Gandalf leaving without any explanation he also did so in FotR leaving Frodo and Sam to head out for Bree without him. He was of course detained by Sauruman at Orthanc at the time. Or am I mistaken?

[librislove]

Yes--but that was an involuntary absence he did not intend. The fact that
Gandalf felt compelled to account to the Ringbearer for his failure to arrive at Bree (see Council of Elrond) signals (IMHO ) a far different relationship with Frodo than with Bilbo and the Dwarves. It seems as though he feels not only responsibility for the welfare of the Ringbearer, but a profound sense of obligation to him we have not seen in Gandalf before. He, like the rest of Middle Earth, is beholden to the Ringbearer in a way he was not to Bilbo.