From: jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey)
Subject: Re: Hobbits (was Re: Bombadil)
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 93 01:56:33 GMT

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>
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