From: mcconnel@mcs.kent.edu (Mike McConnell)
Subject: Re: Hobbits (was Re: Bombadil)
Organization: Kent State University
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1993 18:44:46 GMT

In article <1993Jan9.015633.29564@leland.Stanford.EDU>, jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey) writes:
|> In article <tketchum-080193144518@tketchum.uoregon.edu> tketchum@oregon.uoregon.edu (Tim T Ketchum) writes:
|> >In article <1993Jan8.012527.2074@netcom.com>, solovay@netcom.com (Andrew
|> >Solovay) wrote:
|> >> 
|> >> In article <1iieljINNk90@gap.caltech.edu> damiens@cco.caltech.edu (Damien Sullivan) writes:
|> >> >
|> >> >remember the giants in the Misty Mountains?  More random creations of
|> >> >Morgoth or just an oddity of that novel?
|> >> 
|> >> Added complication: Gandalf muses about getting some "more-or-less
|> >> decent giant" to block up the entrances to the Goblins's caves. If
|> >> there are "decent giants", then they are probably not creations of
|> >> Morgoth's; they're probably more bombadils (i.e. inexplicables).
|> >> -- 
|> >
|> >I have a pet theory for most of these oddities within "The Hobbit".  Since
|> >the story  purports
|> > to be Bilbo's  Memoirs,  I believe the old hobbit took serious poetic
|> >license and embellished his tales immensely to entertain his young
|> >stay-at-home relatives.   I'd imagine that after 50 years of telling the
|> >same stories, maybe Bilbo (who wasn't exactly a spring chicken when he
|> >began actually writing the book) couldn't really remember what actually
|> >happened so filled it in a little.  This could certainly explain all those
|> >"non-canonical" events/species, i.e.  giants, all those (semi-) sentient
|> >wolves, spiders, ravens, etc.   Possibly even visit with Beorn was largely
|> >a fabrication.   Perhaps Beorn was just a large frontiersman (who must have
|> >appeared truly huge to a hobbit) that Bilbo assigned ursine characteristics
|> >and not an actual shape-shifter.  I think Bilbo may even had exagerated his
|> >importance in Smaug's demise by including the tale of the thrush telling
|> >Bard the bowman where the dragon's weak spot was (since Bilbo had
|> >previously discovered it).  
|> >
|> >The Lord of the Rings (purportedly) on the other hand was began by Frodo
|> >(who had gone through a horrific ordeal) and was finished by more sober
|> >hobbit geneologists so may be accepted as canon much easier.  
|> >
|> 
|> 	Another theory which I find much more plausible (primarily because it
|> simpler, and based on the actual chronology of Tolkien's fictional production)
|> is that The Hobbit is a different work from LOTR and from the Silmarillion.  
|> It was written as something distinctly different from the Silmarillion 
|> writings that Tolkien had been working on.  At the time of its creation, The 
|> Hobbit did not take place within the same fictional "world" in which the 
|> Silmarillion stories are set.  It was only when Tolkien started writing LOTR 
|> that he decided to blend the two together.  He revised parts of the Hobbit
|> to fit in with this new schema, but he could not, of course, revise the whole
|> tale.  These "inconsistencies" and "non-canonical" elements of the Hobbit are 
|> there because the Hobbit was not incorporated into the "world" of the 
|> Silmarillion until long after it was written.  
|> 
|> 	That is to say, these inconsistencies are there because the Hobbit was
|> not initially part of the Silmarillion Middle-earth saga. Rather, it was an
|> entirely separate work in which there would be no reason to expect any sort
|> of consistency or coherence with the Silmarillion tales.  It was only after
|> Tolkien tried to unify the two fictional worlds in LOTR that these giants
|> and Bombadil and Goldberry became "inconsistencies" that needed to be 
|> explained away.  Previously, they had simply been a part of The Hobbit that
|> posed no perplexity at all for the reader who wished to find a more or
|> less sensible and coherent textual world.  It is only when that reader 
|> tries to read them in the context of the textual world of LOTR or the
|> textual world of the Silmarillion (which we supposed to think of as being
|> one and the same) that they seem odd or don't make sense. 
|> 
|> 	One might say the same thing about Bombadil.  Bombadil, I think,
|> would make a lot of sense within the textual world of the Hobbit and would
|> pose no problem whatsoever for the reader.  In the textual world of LOTR,
|> he seems a bit perplexing, but is not entirely an "inconsistency".  When
|> one tries to place Bombadil within the textual world of LOTR, however, he
|> becomes a downright anomaly that requires elaborate and fanciful explanations.
|> 
|> 	In short, all of these "inconsistencies" and "inexplicables" are 
|> inconsitencies and anomalies only when one insists upon glossing over the
|> fact that The Hobbit, LOTR, and the Silmarillion are, in fact, different
|> works that present rather different textual worlds. 
|> 
|> 
|> 	--  Jim C. <jchokey@leland.stanford.edu>
 
It is interesting that the first time that I find that I agree with the gist of 
one of Mr. Chokey's arguments is also the first one, as far as I can remember, 
that he also makes a real informational blunder.  Or have I totally missed the
episodes where Tom Bombadil shows up in the Hobbit?

Mike McConnell