The goblins are nowhere near as menacing as the orcs of LOTR, but I was thinking ahead, and burning up people in trees is more frightful. Then go all the way to the end of the book, and there's nothing humorous at all about the Battle of Five Armies. The goblins there are much closer to the bloodthirsty, kill-them-or-be-killed orcs of LOTR. But in this chapter of The Hobbit, just lopping off the head of the goblin king and then running away is all you need to really think about for ending their threat.

squire: So, in the story, the hero descends below the ground, travels east, and re-emerges to greet the rising sun.

Otaku-sempai: That works symbolically, but not quite as well in the literal sense. When Bilbo emerges from beneath the mountains, he is indeed on the eastern side of them, but the sun is already sinking into the west!

In Reply To

That's true of course (and I think that the time of day is an important plot point here, since the coming of night will mean that Bilbo &Co. can be chased by wargs and goblins. Had Bilbo escaped at sunrise, maybe he would have relocated his companions and they'd have got clean away before the pursuit got going). The Fellowship emerging from Moria are put in a similar predicament - but maybe we're anticipating our "Out Of The Frying Pan..." discussion and shouldn't get into too much detail about this yet.

I don't think that negates squire's point though (and maybe, Otaku-sempai, you weren't suggesting that it did?).

But I wonder why Anduril was not invested with more of a personality. Has he skill of the Ekven-smiths diminished?

A last question regarding the swords - if indeed Glamdring was Turgon's sword, how come it didn't perish with him when the tower fell?

And more to the point, whose was Orcrist?

"These are not troll-make. They are old swords, very old swords of the High Elves of the West, my kin. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars. They must have come from a dragon's hoard or goblin plunder, for dragons and goblins destroyed that city many ages ago. This, Thorin, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This Gandalf, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore. Keep them well!"

'We cannot go further tonight,' said Boromir. 'Let those call it the wind who will; there are fell voices in the air; and these stones are aimed at us.'
'I do call it the wind,' said Aragorn. 'But that does not make what you say untrue. There are many evil and unfriendly things in the world that have little love for those that go on two legs..."

"He is a liar, O truly tremendous one!" said one of the drivers. Several of our people were struck by lightning in the cave, when we invited these creatures to come below; and they are as dead as stones. Also he has not explained this!"

There were four goblin-soldiers of greater stature, swart, slant-eyed, with thick legs and large hands.

It is not unlikely that they [the goblins] invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far.

The interview between Thorin and the Great Goblin is exquisite parody, right up there with the more famous (because more significant) dialogue between Bilbo and Smaug.

No citation needed. You know the source. Admit it.

I've spent years on the problem, and I'm happy to report that by now I have almost completely forgotten the movie.

Is mentioned in The Ring Goes South, as one of the routes the scouts sent by Elrond took; they crossed the Anduin and came to Rhosgobel; but Radagast was not at home.

I always wondered whether Tolkien simply forgot that route in the debate in A Journey in the Dark, when Gandalf assured Boromir there are no other passes across the Mountains. The other explanation I can think of is that Gandalf was pulling a fast one on the malcontent.

There is a major difference between the way The Hobbit was written, and the way it is read today.Most Tolkien-fans today cannot separate The Hobbit from The Lord of the Rings, and they re-read the earlier book based on what they know from the latter, greater epic. However, when writing the book, JRRT had no inkling of the fact that there will be a further book – arguably, he did not think that hobbits will ever become an integral part of the Middle-earth mythology. So while LotR is clearly written as a sequel to The Hobbit – on one level, I am reluctant to subjugate The Hobbit to LotR.


...obviously, once we try to create a complete, consistent history of Middle-earth – we need to follow the story in LotR and the appendices (and Tolkien himself tried to achieve that). But The Hobbit still includes many “fossils” of the earlier conception.

...an author looking back over his own work and trying to reduce it to order. ... turning against the sources of his inspiration.

Tom Shippey, 'The Road To Middle Earth' a section called 'The dangers of going on'