The Hobbit - Ramble - Ep 8

[ach_sss_no]

Livebloggy notes while reading The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, chapter 8. 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. 

 OH boy it’s spider time!! Spider time!!

 

But first it’s eerie walk in woods time. Mirkwood has always been one of my favorite locations. (But I wouldn’t want to really go there. Geez.)

 

Bilbo tried flapping his hand in front of his nose, but he could not see it at all. Well, perhaps it is not true to say that they could see nothing: they could see eyes.

 

*appreciative shudder*

 

They come to an ominous river Beorn warned them about and there’s an eerie abandoned(?) boat they snag with a grappling hook. I don’t remember where this goes but I assume the boat is cursed or owned by someone angry or something.

 

"I'm always last and I don't like it," said Bombur. "It's somebody else's turn today."

"You should not be so fat. As you are, you must be with the last and lightest boatload. 

Bombur has Hurley from Lost syndrome, I guess. They have almost zero food and my mans is still getting called fat every time he says a word or someone just happens to remember he exists.

 

Don't start grumbling against orders, or something bad will happen to you."

 

Thorin are you threatening to execute your friend for being too fat

 

They cross the river but then a deer comes out of nowhere and knocks Bombur in the water. Somehow, I am convinced this is Thorin’s fault.

 

Joke’s on Thorin, I guess, because Bombur is now in a blissful enchanted sleep and everyone else has to carry him around and this might never have happened if he hadn’t been in the last boat.

 

Bilbo climbs a tree to see where they are and there are pretty butterflies up there which, as I have come to expect, receive more concrete visual description than most things in these books. They sound neat. 

 

"The forest goes on for ever and ever and ever in all directions! Whatever shall we do? And what is the use of sending a hobbit!" they cried, as if it was his fault.

They did not care tuppence about the butterflies

 

Hey remind me never to go hiking with dwarves. At least not without Legolas to be there to teach them how to feel wonderment, I guess.

 

Bombur wakes up soon after and is not very happy to be awake. Thorin calls him annoying and says they were on the verge of abandoning him. I have a modest proposal for you: eat Bombur if you’re so tired of him

Uh anyway then lights in the dark tempt everyone off the path, because they’re all out of supplies and desperate.

 

There’s some time spent chasing eerie phantom elf feasts that vanish as soon as they are stumbled onto. I feel like this would genuinely translate really well to a movie and I feel like now that I’ve said that this part won’t even be in the movies. Then Bilbo ends up all alone and OH OH OH THIS IS THE PART WHERE HE KILLS THE SPIDER

 

"I will give you a name," he said to it, "and I shall call you Sting."

 

Yaaaaaay!

 

Bilbo essentially levels up again. He’s earned a Swordsman skill perk. From here he immediately without hesitation goes to find his friends and help them, even though his friends are… occasionally kind of awful. He’s just a hero like that.

 

He comes across the spiders. They talk. I assume Shelob also can talk and we just don’t see her do it, probably because whatever dialog she was given didn’t fit the tone and menace of her scenes.

 

The spiders torment Bombur. Everything bad happens to Bombur.

 

-indeed he could do lots of things, besides blowing smoke-rings, asking riddles and cooking, that I haven't had time to tell you about
 

1) This is another thing that’s way funnier if Bilbo wrote it. ‘Oh I can do all these things and I don’t have time to tell you the whole long list of things’

2) I’m sure someone with a more practiced critical eye would have noticed more ‘do nots’ before this point. To my myopic vision this is the first time Jirt breaks a ‘cardinal rule’ of writing: Don’t introduce a skill or power your character has never previously displayed in order to solve an immediate plot crisis.

Now, in this case, it’s just throwing rocks, and I don’t think anyone approaching the text fair-mindedly would take serious issue with this. But it is a common ‘do not do’, and I think it’s worth a mention. The reason why this is a ‘do not’ is because when you give a character too many mechanisms of solving problems and avoiding danger, that just pop up whenever they’re needed, you break the illusion of the fiction because the reader realizes that whenever you put your guy in danger you will essentially say ‘haha just kidding’ and pull him back out in a way that doesn’t satisfy our desire to see interesting consequences follow from narrative events. It's not really about 'character is only allowed to have x amount of skills and is too special beyond that number', it's about establishing your causes and effects at the appropriate times.

 

Bilbo causes general chaos in the crowd of spiders by throwing rocks and then running off and singing mocking songs while invisible, inducing them to follow him in a rage. He manages to lead them quite a way away, then double back and slip back to the dwarves to free them.

 

I am afraid Bilbo actually laughed

 

I feel like he’s earned a good laugh at a dwarf by now, for several reasons

 

Here we have what I think might be the first real battle that Bilbo is thoroughly awake for and participating in. The spiders come back when he’s freed about half of the dwarves and Bilbo slaughters many of them. However there is a big, huge swarm of spiders, and he has to draw them off with mocking poetry again. Everyone gets to a safe place where some Elves were camping. Success all around, good vibes, everyone’s a big fan of Bilbo, and

…

THEY FORGOT THORIN

I also forgot Thorin. I was distracted by how much I like Balin. 

 

We cut to Thorin- turns out he passed out in a fairy circle and got captured by Elves, who brought him to their King. He’s been gone this entire time.

 

The king looked sternly on Thorin, when he was brought before him, and asked him many questions. But Thorin would only say that he was starving.

"Why did you and your folk three times try to attack my people at their merrymaking?" asked the king.

"We did not attack them," answered Thorin; "we came to beg, because we were starving."

"Where are your friends now, and what are they doing?"

"I don't know, but I expect starving in the forest."

"What were you doing in the forest?"

"Looking for food and drink, because we were starving."

"But what brought you into the forest at all?" asked the king angrily.

At that Thorin shut his mouth and would not say another word.

"Very well!" said the king. "Take him away and keep him safe, until he feels inclined to tell the truth, even if he waits a hundred years.'"

 

The Elf-king is of course Thranduil but I don’t think his name is ever given in this book. I am going to call him Thranduil even if it’s metagaming to do so, because there are other Elf-kings and if I don’t call him by name I will forget who is who. 

 

That’s the end of the chapter. We have a prison break on the horizon.

Comments

This is my favorite chapter!

[(Anonymous)]

I think part of it is that the fact that they are starving adds a layer of anxiety that makes me more keen to lean in and pay attention. It makes me worried about them even though I already know what is going to happen because I have read this chapter several times.
I also love the butterflies and the description of the switch from the oaks to beeches, beeches are one of my favorite trees. And this is the chapter where Bilbo probably gets the most action. Plus his song is very silly.