The Hobbit - Ramble - Ep 6

[ach_sss_no]

Livebloggy notes while reading The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, chapter 5. These are notes I'm making in the process of assembling a proper chapter-by-chapter review of the book. There was some indication of interest in seeing a liveblog-style thing when I asked on Tumblr, so I'm posting my notes.  

 Bilbo realizes his friends are still gone, and now he’s on the other side of the mountains. 

 

He had just made up his mind that it was his duty, that he must turn back-and very miserable he felt about it-

 

I believe he would have done it, too. Every time I read this book I fall in love with Bilbo Baggins all over again.

 

He hears voices, which turn out to be his friends. Since he has the ring on still, Bilbo decides to eavesdrop a little. He hears the dwarves arguing against going to rescue him from the goblins, which is very cringe of them, particularly since Bilbo was just going to go try and rescue them, all on his own. 

Bilbo gets the satisfaction of jumping out to show them that he’s rescued himself. 

 

He says nothing about the magic ring and lets everyone believe he’s just sneaky (particularly Balin, who he walked right past) 

 

The dwarves looked at him with quite a new respect, when he talked about dodging guards, jumping over Gollum, and squeezing through, as if it was not very difficult or very alarming.

 

In fairness, Gollum is not very tall. The first edition of this book didn't mention that, so Bilbo might have left it out too.
(As an unrelated aside. Tolkien characters are so well known that their names are often recognized by my spellcheck without me changing anything. But it’s an oddly random assortment. Scrivener recognizes ‘Bilbo’ as a word but not ‘Baggins’. And not ‘Gollum’. Or ‘Gandalf’. Even though they’re all from the same story and/or the same name.

 

The wizard, to tell the truth, never minded explaining his cleverness more than once,

 

This is funnier if you remember that Bilbo wrote this in-universe and has been friends with Gandalf for quite a long time by the time he writes it. 

 

Here is where we find out there was a huge battle offscreen. They killed the Great Goblin and everything. It’s just a shame Bilbo was hanging out swapping poetry by the lake and missed it all.

 

They have a miserable little hike and then there are wolves.  All the dwarves go into the trees and they just abandon Bilbo to run around on the ground! They abandoned him! 

 

"You've left the burglar behind again!" said Nori to Dori looking down.

"I can't be always carrying burglars on my back," said Dori, "down tunnels and up trees! What do you think I am? A porter?"

 

I’m assembling a dwarf tier list and these two are going near the bottom… oh, okay, Dori does save Bilbo, at risk to himself… but Thorin had to tell him to do it. 

 

The wolves, who are actually Wargs, assemble for a very ominous council that Gandalf can understand. They are… griping that the goblins are late for an appointment with them. As it turns out, the goblins and the wolves were planning to go massacre a village tonight, so, uh, it's a good thing most of the goblins are dead now! 

 

Gandalf thinks this is very cringe, and he starts setting the wolves on fire. Unfortunately, the goblins show up, having sorted out the matter of most of them being dead, and they drive the fire towards the trees the dwarves are in, and they’re rude about it, calling the dwarves birds and daring them to fly off. 

 

So then eagles show up and carry everyone away. The goblins should be careful what they wish for.

 

I’m sure you’re all fascinated by spell check stories so here’s another one, ‘dwarves’ is marked as a misspelling in Scrivener. The ‘correct’ spelling is ‘dwarfs’. Legend tells that Tolkien was actually the one who started spelling it ‘dwarves’ because he wanted it to match the plural of ‘elves’. Now everyone does it. Thanks, Professor! Dwarves rolls off the tongue a lot easier for me, idk about you.

 

These eagles are apparently chaotic neutral entities that steal sheep, but they happen to be friends with Gandalf. 

They bring dinner for everyone and… it includes a sheep, which is… which is probably stolen…

 

But all night [Bilbo] dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like.

 

oh it's famed best video game ever made; Ice-pick Lodge's Knock-knock This feels very eerie in connection with Bilbo having just picked up the Ring, knowing it works on your mind to make you terrified of losing it. I think probably when it was written it was only intended to be a homesick dream, but maybe not.

 

That’s the end of the chapter. The next one has a fun encounter in it. We hiked along without care/Then we ran into a bear

Comments

Scrivener recognizes ‘Bilbo’ as a word

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, a bilbo is a small rapier noted for the temper and elasticity of its blade, or a long bar of iron with sliding shackles used to confine the feet of prisoners especially on shipboard.
Maybe Bilbo was originally supposed to be looking for the respectability he used to care about while now instead of getting his sense of self respect from his predictability, it is from his prowess. 15 birds is actually one of my favorite songs.