The king's cave was his palace...
August 24: At dusk the dwarves are captured by wood elves & taken to the Elvenking’s halls
Demoralised by Thorin‘s capture, and exhausted after escaping from the spiders, Bilbo & the dwarves desperately search for a way out of Mirkwood. The dwarves are in no state to offer any resistance to the wood-elves, but Bilbo is quick-witted enough to slip on the ring, and make his way invisibly to the Elvenking’s halls in the wake of the wood-elves and their prisoners.
The Elvenking is an interesting figure: guardian of Mirkwood, he sits “ . . . on a chair of carven wood. On his head was a crown of berries and red leaves, for the Autumn was come again. In the Spring he wore a crown of woodland flowers. In his hand he held a carven staff of oak.”
Tolkien’s description brings to mind the Green Man, who traditionally represented nature and the cycle of the seasons. The oak tree is King of the Greenwood and symbolises the power of the High King and his ancient and spiritual link to the land. In pagan tradition the Oak King fights with the Holly King at the Summer and Winter solstice to bring about the changing of the seasons. Tolkien would have been familiar with these mythologies, as they underlie the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which Tolkien co-edited with E V Gordon during the early 1920s.
The treatment the dwarves receive at the hands of the wood-elves is in contrast to the way they are dealt with by the goblins in Chapter IV. Then, they were led off in chains and left to rot; here the King orders them to be untied while he questions them. Angered by their trespassing - which has roused the spiders - and their refusal to reveal their mission, he has them locked up until one of them changes his mind, but they will be treated decently in the meantime. Are the dwarves right to defy the Elvenking or are they merely being stubborn and greedy?
Bilbo spends many, many days in hiding, venturing into the woods from time to time but never daring to go too far and unwilling to desert his imprisoned companions:
“I am like a burglar that can’t get away, but must go on miserably burgling the same house day after day,” he thought. “This is the dreariest & dullest part of all this wretched, tiresome, uncomfortable adventure” . . . he often wished, too, that he could get a message for help sent to the wizard, but that of course was impossible, and he soon realised that if anything was to be done, it would have to be done by Mr Baggins, alone and unaided.”
Although Bilbo finds this wait frustrating, it is a character building exercise. Until now he has relied on his sword and quick wits to see him through, making snap decisions. Forced to be patient, Bilbo shows himself to be determined and resourceful, working out where each dwarf is held, eventually discovering Thorin’s cell “in an especially deep, dark place” and becoming a means of communication between them all.
Thorin takes new heart at this; he and the other dwarves now rely on Bilbo to get them out of their predicament:
“ . . . . they all trusted Bilbo. Just what Gandalf had said would happen, you see. Perhaps that was part of his reason for going off and leaving them,”
Bilbo finds the dwarves’ dependence on him a burden, but it is the making of him. By biding his time he eventually finds a means by which they can all escape . . .
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