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Undome
Nevrast
Jun 17 2012, 12:19am
Post #1 of 36
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Plot hole in The Hobbit, ch. IX ???
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At the beginning of chapter IX, when the Wood-elves capture the dwarves, Bilbo uses the ring to avoid being captured:
"[Bilbo] popped on his ring and slipped quickly to one side. That is why, when the elves bound the dwarves in a long line, one behind the other, and counted them, they never found or counted the hobbit."
But is it really likely that the elves, with all their wood-craft and hunting skill, didn't already have their quarry counted before they jumped out to seize them?
"It is gone forever, and now all is dark and empty."
- Frodo Baggins
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Yngwulff
Mithlond
Jun 17 2012, 12:43am
Post #2 of 36
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If he was breathing hard enough they could have shot him in the dark ...
Take this Brother May it Serve you Well
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Elizabeth
Gondolin
Jun 17 2012, 2:24am
Post #3 of 36
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They would have a good estimate of the size of the group.
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The mightn't necessarily have an exact count (and apparently they didn't!). Hard to count individuals in the woods.
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Elizabeth is the TORnsib formerly known as 'erather'
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Undome
Nevrast
Jun 17 2012, 3:36am
Post #4 of 36
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Hard to count individuals in the woods.
Elves can do a lot of things with ease that would seem difficult to us (and even "we" have proven to be pretty darn good at military reconnaissance, even in pre-technological times). Given their much-touted woodcraft, and their superior vision and hearing, I find it hard to believe that woods-savvy elf scouts operating on their home turf could not count a band of lost, sickly, starving, slow-moving dwarves who were making no effort to conceal their movements or their numbers.
"It is gone forever, and now all is dark and empty."
- Frodo Baggins
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Lacrimae Rerum
Hithlum
Jun 17 2012, 1:05pm
Post #6 of 36
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An unlikely event = a plot hole?
I had a plot hole in my life last week. Every morning I get up, I put my mobile phone in my pocket and go off to work. Wednesday morning - I fail to put the phone in my pocket. I suspect I am a character in a text full of plot holes.
LR
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Asger
Ossiriand
Jun 17 2012, 3:05pm
Post #7 of 36
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Maybe they just didn't care to count.
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They knew they had captured every dwarf in the wood, and they 'knew' nobody could escape their sight, so no need to count,
"Don't take life seriously, it ain't nohow permanent!" Pogo
www.willy-centret.dk
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PhantomS
Nargothrond
Jun 17 2012, 4:39pm
Post #8 of 36
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catch the hobb-it, catch the hobb-it...ooooh Mutley! kehehehehehhe
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The idea in both the Hobbit and LoTR is that the Elves don't really know what a Hobbit is supposed to look like or sound like- if the Ents themselves don't know, the Elves would know even less. Staying in the Hobbit-verse, it's safe to say that the Elves captured a party of Dwarves- maybe there was one walking barefoot with strangely long hair and no helmet, but there were so many Dwarves to count that the Mirkwood Elves just assumed they got the lot. No one had heard of Dwarves taking along a non-member of their race, much less one that had a quiet footfall and was smaller than Dwarves.
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Undome
Nevrast
Jun 18 2012, 12:34am
Post #9 of 36
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You would be correct, except that in this case the "seemingly unlikely situation" that is explained by the author is not the same "seemingly unlikely situation" to which I am referring.
Tolkien explains the unlikely situation of why Bilbo was not counted after the dwarves were captured by the elves (i.e., because he put on the ring and became invisible). I am questioning the unlikely situation of why Bilbo was not counted before the capture took place, when he wasn't wearing the ring, and during which time the keen-sighted woods-crafty elves were likely to have been closely watching the intruding party of dwarves (and Bilbo).
"It is gone forever, and now all is dark and empty."
- Frodo Baggins
(This post was edited by Undome on Jun 18 2012, 12:35am)
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dormouse
Gondolin
Jun 18 2012, 1:01pm
Post #10 of 36
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Because it's more important to catch your prisoners...
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...before you start counting them?
Or maybe just because that's the way it happened. Sometimes, in real life as in stories, things do just happen the way they happen.
I don't think that's a plot hole, though - or at least, I don't think this is. If Tolkien had written that Bilbo slipped on his ring and it made him ten feet tall and able to fight off all the elves single-handed, that would be a plot hole, because so far as we know the ring can't do that. But... the elves capture the dwarves and miss Bilbo because he has managed to sip on his ring. That fits perfectly well into the logic of the story, both before and after.
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Elizabeth
Gondolin
Jun 18 2012, 5:14pm
Post #11 of 36
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It's not a question of whether they *could* have counted them,
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...but whether they did. Apparently they didn't. We have the author's word for it.
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Elizabeth is the TORnsib formerly known as 'erather'
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Undome
Nevrast
Jun 19 2012, 12:35am
Post #12 of 36
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maybe just because that's the way it happened. Sometimes, in real life as in stories, things do just happen the way they happen.
Thank you. That's the best explanation I've heard. Yes, life/reality is often imperfect, and I guess even elves can make mistakes. That's absolutely reasonable.
"It is gone forever, and now all is dark and empty."
- Frodo Baggins
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Undome
Nevrast
Jun 19 2012, 12:47am
Post #13 of 36
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Apparently they didn't. We have the author's word for it.
Ah, yes. The old concept of author infallibility. It doesn't hold water. The author has an obligation to be consistent. He can't on one hand say that Superman has x-ray vision, and then turn around and say that Superman failed to see Lex Luthor because Lex was hiding in the closet. Well, I guess, the author could say that, but he wouldn't be a very good author then, would he? And the reader certainly wouldn't be obliged to shrug and say, "well if the author said so, it must be true, even though it is totallly ludicrous in the way that it contradicts everything that we've been told to believe about Superman up to this point."
"It is gone forever, and now all is dark and empty."
- Frodo Baggins
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Plurmo
Nargothrond
Jun 19 2012, 12:51am
Post #14 of 36
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In a hole on the plot there escaped a hobbit. //
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Morthoron
Hithlum
Jun 19 2012, 1:18am
Post #15 of 36
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The Elves can only count odd numbers.
Like 13, or the nine, or the seven, or the 3 . It's never the four or the eight. Come to think of it, Elves are odd altogether.
Please visit my blog...The Dark Elf File...a slighty skewed journal of music and literary comment, fan-fiction and interminable essays.
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Elizabeth
Gondolin
Jun 19 2012, 2:30am
Post #16 of 36
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But Tolkien never claimed the Elves count flawlessly.
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They do many things brilliantly, but only the Drúedain are documented as able to count enemies accurately on the fly.
But my point isn't necessarily that they couldn't, but that they didn't (possibly because it wasn't a priority, as dormouse says).
Sign up now in the Reading Room for discussions of The Hobbit, scheduled for July 9-Nov. 18!
Elizabeth is the TORnsib formerly known as 'erather'
(This post was edited by Elizabeth on Jun 19 2012, 2:31am)
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Earl
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jun 19 2012, 5:48am
Post #17 of 36
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Haha! That is brilliant B-) //
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The Plan 9 Interview... in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the release of The Fellowship of the Ring.
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sador
Gondolin
Jun 19 2012, 6:02am
Post #18 of 36
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without Bilbo and Thorin they counted to twelve...
Now that's a plot hole for you!
I wonder if Jackson would somehow solve it, by having Thorin captured with the others. 
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Morthoron
Hithlum
Jun 19 2012, 5:55pm
Post #19 of 36
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The reason for the plot hole is so that plot bunnies can get in.
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Please visit my blog...The Dark Elf File...a slighty skewed journal of music and literary comment, fan-fiction and interminable essays.
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grinman
Ossiriand
Jun 19 2012, 8:27pm
Post #20 of 36
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author infallibility vs. character fallibility
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Apparently they didn't. We have the author's word for it.
Ah, yes. The old concept of author infallibility. It doesn't hold water. The author has an obligation to be consistent. He can't on one hand say that Superman has x-ray vision, and then turn around and say that Superman failed to see Lex Luthor because Lex was hiding in the closet. Well, I guess, the author could say that, but he wouldn't be a very good author then, would he? And the reader certainly wouldn't be obliged to shrug and say, "well if the author said so, it must be true, even though it is totallly ludicrous in the way that it contradicts everything that we've been told to believe about Superman up to this point."
So, using your Superman example; If Superman failed to see Lex Luthor in the closet is it because he "couldn't" or because he "didn't"? Let's say Superman's x-ray vision isn't always "on". He has to actively turn it on, so to speak. So, with Superman searching (regularly) around the room, Lex Luthor gives him no reason to see through the closet, by being so quiet that Superman doesn't know he's there. Thus, Superman leaves and Lex escapes to plot again. Is that an example of the author making a mistake or is it just the character in the story making a mistake? I believe the latter... Many times, characters in stories have to make mistakes in order to further the plot. This is not a mistake on the author's part, but rather a deliberate element in the story. The Elves aren't autonomous creations in Tolkien's story, he wrote them in and they will act as he writes them. If that writing means that they will have faults, then.....
Now, about the Elves. Tolkien NEVER painted them as infallible. In fact, their long history paints quite the opposite picture. So, this isn't a case of the author making a plot mistake so much as it's a case of characters having a lapse in judgement/oversight.
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Undome
Nevrast
Jun 19 2012, 9:51pm
Post #21 of 36
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Many times, characters in stories have to make mistakes in order to further the plot. This is not a mistake on the author's part, but rather a deliberate element in the story.
That's similar to dormouse's point (post #10 above), which I agreed with, and I also completely agree with what you're saying. I still think my question is legitimate at least for the sake of conversation, but I can definitely accept the "mistakes happen" explanation.
"It is gone forever, and now all is dark and empty."
- Frodo Baggins
(This post was edited by Undome on Jun 19 2012, 9:52pm)
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SirDennisC
Gondolin
Jun 20 2012, 2:55am
Post #22 of 36
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He says "they never ... counted the hobbit."
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That would mean he wasn't counted before or after the capture.
As other's said they likely had an idea of the party's size, but there is no indication (in the text) that they counted them before the capture.
Is it true that hobbits are difficult to see because of some sort of [magic] quality upon them? Do we know what Bilbo was up to while his party was chasing lights around in the pitch black of Mirkwood?
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sador
Gondolin
Jun 20 2012, 6:23am
Post #23 of 36
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In a hole on the plot there lived a hobbit.
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The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel... The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill - The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it - and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another... The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.
This seems a very nice plot: large (enough for the tangent of a long tunnel), below a hill, with a nice garden and view to the river.
Sounds good. Who's selling one?
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FarFromHome
Doriath
Jun 20 2012, 9:00am
Post #24 of 36
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only take you so far. The Elves have a weakness that you've not taken into account - their sense of their own superiority in woodcraft and hunting skill! I figure that once they saw they were dealing with dwarves they would have believed that they could take them prisoner with no trouble at all, considering how dwarves are so clumsy and noisy in woods. So their guard would have been down about any other unexpected creatures that happened to be about - such as a small, lightfooted hobbit. I think their failure to notice Bilbo was probably caused by the elves' prejudices regarding dwarves, and their sense of their own superiority. So not a plot-hole after all - more like a bit of character development!
They went in, and Sam shut the door.
But even as he did so, he heard suddenly,
deep and unstilled,
the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth.
From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings
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dormouse
Gondolin
Jun 20 2012, 9:55am
Post #25 of 36
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Tolkien does say (in 'Concerning Hobbits', I think) that hobbits are very good at not being seen by 'the Big People', so it seems they do have a certain knack of avoiding notice, whether magic or just a matter of practice.
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