The One Ring Forums: Tolkien Topics: Reading Room: **An Unexpected Party** - 6. “Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.” (squire)

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The One Ring Forums: Tolkien Topics: Reading Room:
**An Unexpected Party** - 6. “Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.”

squire
Valinor

Mar 27 2009, 11:53pm

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An Unexpected Party - 6. “Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.”	Can't Post

We continue with the first chapter of The Hobbit. The supper and the music are done with, and Thorin calls the meeting to order: “‘Gandalf, dwarves and Mr. Baggins!’” We’ll read to the point where Gandalf produces the map: “‘Now Bilbo, my boy, fetch the lamp, and let’s have little light on this!’”

Thorin begins to speak. He proves to be a gassy windbag. His pompous speech is in after-dinner style, as the narrator agrees: “he was an important dwarf…he would probably have gone on like this until he was out of breath, without telling any one there anything that was not known already.”

This is another instance of the stylistic modernity of the dwarves. The Hobbit is often called a collision between a fairy tale adventure and a fanciful bourgeois Englishman (Englishhobbit). By that possibly simplistic description, the dwarves should come under the “fairy tale” rubric. But here as before, we see that the dwarves are quite modern in many ways. They themselves represent a parodic collision between Faerie, and the kind of modern ironic comedy we see in the Keystone Kops, or Gilbert and Sullivan (whose style was called “topsy turvy”. Thorin and Pooh-bah would understand each other).

A. Anyway, that’s my theory. What’s yours, starting from Thorin’s speech?

Bilbo “wags his mouth in protest”, but cannot make a noise, because he is in such shock to be hailed as a “fellow conspirator”.

B. Is this a nod to vaudeville – a popular style of stage entertainment in The Hobbit’s era? Does anyone really open their mouth to express surprise, and move it to make sounds, without succeeding? Or does this stock gesture simply present for an audience the emotion that underlies speechlessness under stress?

Bilbo does finally express (ha ha) himself: he shrieks! In fact, the image is a familiar one to later readers of The Lord of the Rings: “it burst out like the whistle of an engine coming out of a tunnel.” Familiar, because it is a reference to railroad trains, like the express train at the Long-expected Party. Such trains were a basic fact of life to a 1930s audience, but hardly part of a world “long ago” when things were quieter, etc.

We will honor our elders in discussion, by drawing a stock question from the FotR Chapter 1 discussion:

C. Is this an “anachronism”???? I dare you to call it a “translation” and suggest what the original written phrase was that the translator chose to render in railroad terms, because the original was unsuitable for a modern audience to understand. Be specific.

Bilbo has a bit of a nervous breakdown. He quakes “like a jelly that was melting” (what does that mean) and then falls “flat on the floor … calling out ‘struck by lightning, struck by lightning!’”

D. Is this an image of shell shock taken from Tolkien’s WW I days?

E. Why “struck by lightning”?

They take Bilbo away and put him in a kind of sanitarium: the sofa in the drawing room, with “a drink at his elbow”.

F. What drink? Alcoholic or not?

Gandalf is obviously mortified, and tries to make the best of it: “excitable little fellow…gets funny queer fits…but as fierce as a dragon in a pinch.” This leads to a comic little injection, somehow getting to the story of the hobbit Bullroarer Took, who was large enough to ride a horse and fight goblins at some (legendary?) battle. He knocked off the head of the goblin king, Golfimbul, which flew 100 yards through the air and went down a rabbit hole. In a phrase beloved to generations of Tolkien fans, thus “the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.”

G. Hmmm…. What do you think?

The dwarves will have none of it. As they point out, it was obviously a shriek of sheer terror, not the kind of noise a professional burglar can afford to make while burgling a dragon’s lair. Gloin asks if there hasn’t been some mistake of address, given Bilbo’s bewildered and confused behavior: “He looks more like a grocer than a burglar!”

H. Who called England a “nation of shopkeepers”? Is this a reference to that image, which the English adopted with defiant English pride?

Bilbo has recovered, and overhears this last insulting exchange. Now comes a moment that I have argued is one of the core moments of the book, and is certainly the core of this chapter. His Took side, briefly in charge during the music in the dark, is back again, and takes over completely. He steps forward. He denies knowing anything about any of the business at hand, and suggests that they have indeed come to the wrong address. Nevertheless, as a matter of wounded pride, he will do whatever they have in mind for him: “Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.”

I. As foolhardy as this sounds, is it wounded pride alone that is speaking? Or is Bilbo really interested in an adventure? “The Took side had won”: does that refer to a defense of “dignity” or a desire actually to walk to the “East of East”?

The dwarves remain dubious. They do defend their thronging of Bilbo’s hole: the mark of a “Burglar” or “Expert Treasure Hunter” was definitely on the door.

J. Is a treasure hunter really the same as a burglar? Would a burglar/treasure hunter necessarily request “plenty of Excitement” along with a reward? In the modern genre of the heist film, the expert burglar is determined to avoid excitement – always in vain, to be sure.

Gandalf regains control of the discussion. He defends Bilbo again, saying the dwarves asked him to find them a Burglar, and Bilbo it is – without Bilbo they can risk the unlucky number of a company of 13, or even abandon the quest and go back to coal mining. He adds a further explanation: Bilbo may not seem a burglar yet, he will be “when the time comes.” He has more in him than he knows himself!

K. When Bilbo shuts his mouth “with a snap” under Gandalf’s glare, is that an example of Gandalf’s wizardry?

L. Why does Gandalf feel he has a right to be angry at the dwarves’ suspicion of the hobbit, when Gandalf himself admits Bilbo shows no signs yet of being right for the job?

Finally, the dark comes to its end. Gandalf calls for a light!

squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Footeramas: The 3rd TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary

Subject	User	Time
An Unexpected Party - 6. “Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.”	squire	Mar 27 2009, 11:53pm
Anachronism	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 12:06am
John Rateliff concurs.	dernwyn	Mar 28 2009, 2:34pm
Although the narrator in The Hobbit	Curious	Mar 28 2009, 3:13pm
"Narratorphiles"!	dernwyn	Mar 28 2009, 5:34pm
Actually, I borrowed that idea	Curious	Mar 29 2009, 9:04am
Ah, that post!	dernwyn	Mar 29 2009, 5:46pm
Going sideways again, or backwards	sevilodorf	Mar 28 2009, 5:10pm
Hmmm, well-spotted!	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 5:43pm
chinaberries are so much more elegant	sevilodorf	Mar 28 2009, 5:53pm
What a great find!	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 5:56pm
In this article, it's categorized as a musical instrument:	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 6:10pm
etymology of the word	sevilodorf	Mar 28 2009, 6:15pm
scurries to basement to check OED	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 6:25pm
pop-guns?!?!	batik	Mar 28 2009, 5:56pm
My thoughts	Dreamdeer	Mar 28 2009, 1:01am
A few observations...	Morthoron	Mar 28 2009, 2:55am
D'oh!	Dreamdeer	Mar 28 2009, 4:38am
Thanks for that McAdoo quote! :-D //	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 2:03pm
"Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought..."	squire	Mar 29 2009, 2:24am
Tolkien wasn't thinking of McAdoo and Harding...	Morthoron	Mar 29 2009, 11:21am
'He speaks to me as if I were a public meeting'	squire	Mar 29 2009, 6:30pm
Thoughts.	Curious	Mar 28 2009, 12:06pm
I love it!	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 2:02pm
Mmm.	Curious	Mar 28 2009, 2:10pm
Disparate comments	Dreamdeer	Mar 28 2009, 4:39pm
Bilbo's dark psyche.	Curious	Mar 29 2009, 8:57am
You said it better than I.	Dreamdeer	Mar 30 2009, 4:28pm
I remember that!	White Gull	Apr 1 2009, 7:14pm
I remember you!	Curious	Apr 1 2009, 8:04pm
Actually, I deserve that.	White Gull	Apr 2 2009, 5:00pm
Well, it's good to have you back now!	Dreamdeer	Apr 2 2009, 5:04pm
Thanks! :)//	White Gull	Apr 2 2009, 5:53pm
Look for the cookies.	Curious	Apr 2 2009, 5:48pm
Good tip!	White Gull	Apr 2 2009, 5:56pm
Darkstone started it.	Dreamdeer	Apr 2 2009, 10:50pm
Right. I should have looked it up. But Aunt Dora	Curious	Apr 2 2009, 11:39pm
Gingersnaps for Aunt Dora! //	Dreamdeer	Apr 2 2009, 11:59pm
Brilliant! brilliant!	squire	Mar 29 2009, 2:18am
Ah, but Tolkien always does that!	Dreamdeer	Mar 29 2009, 2:57am
Good points!//	Curious	Mar 30 2009, 6:09am
Thanks!	Curious	Mar 29 2009, 10:15am
takes the dare	dernwyn	Mar 28 2009, 2:48pm
Cookies for you!	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 28 2009, 3:53pm
Mmm...thanks! //	dernwyn	Mar 28 2009, 5:36pm
I thought of this one.	squire	Mar 28 2009, 4:15pm
Okay, then.	Dreamdeer	Mar 28 2009, 4:51pm
Some thoughts ....	Elven	Mar 28 2009, 3:32pm
Uncle Baggins wants to know more about those steam trains.	Aunt Dora Baggins	Mar 30 2009, 4:59pm
any connection between 'golf' and "Fingolfin"...	batik	Mar 28 2009, 4:40pm
As a matter of fact...yes!	dernwyn	Mar 28 2009, 5:50pm
That figures...and it's fascinating...	batik	Mar 28 2009, 6:35pm
Dogged determination!	dernwyn	Mar 28 2009, 7:04pm
choke! snork! snicker! //	Dreamdeer	Mar 29 2009, 1:14am
A few answers, some to the point	sador	Mar 29 2009, 9:18am
"I am Bilbo! And Bilbo means....er...."	Darkstone	Mar 30 2009, 5:50pm
What's a Wild Were-Worm?	Dreamdeer	Apr 1 2009, 7:21pm
It was originally	dernwyn	Apr 1 2009, 8:46pm
About the trains	FarFromHome	Apr 7 2009, 10:54am

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