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squire
Half-elven
Jul 11 2012, 7:28pm
Post #51 of 61
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There was no "Third Age" before LotR was almost completed
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There was no "continent", there were no other "ages", into which Tolkien "moved" The Hobbit after writing it. The continent and the ages came into being much later, when The Lord of the Rings came to be. The continent and the ages emerged from that project when Tolkien finally realized he had written a sequel not to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. The Hobbit just bobbed along in LotR's ever-broadening wake.
The History of Middle-earth vol. XI has some interesting material on how LotR became embedded in a more exact and far larger Middle-earth chronology only when the book was mostly completed. Originally while writing LotR as the Hobbit sequel, Tolkien simply thought of Bilbo's and Frodo's adventures in terms of "now" vs. the "Elder Years", i.e. the ancient days of the Silmarillion tales. In fact, the loss of the One Ring by Sauron was at first imagined as having taken place just a few centuries before Bilbo found it!
Re-thinking, and looking at what he had written, led Tolkien by the mid-1940s to stretch out the years between then and now, to accommodate more intermediary history and achieve more mythic distances. Eventually he added Numenor (from a different and abandoned book project) and so coined a "Second Age", pushing the Hobbit/LotR into a "Third Age". (Which explains why the Second Age is so underwritten compared to the others: its only purpose was to explain when Numenor existed, effectively in a historical vacuum tube)
The same jiggery takes place with Middle-earth's physical arrangements, by the way. Tolkien made heroic efforts to fit The Hobbit map and its enlarged LotR successor in relation to the very similar map of Beleriand which he had long before drawn up to illustrate the Silmarillion tales.
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 (and NOW the 4th too!) TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
 = Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
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Curious
Half-elven
Jul 11 2012, 8:43pm
Post #52 of 61
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So the next day they tried again,
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but Bilbo was not there. So they tried at the inn, but the dwarves had checked out. So they followed the party, and had their own adventures, each of which made them just a bit late to the party. In the Misty Mountains they had to deal with angry goblins and wargs, in Mirkwood with angry spiders. Since they sensibly stayed on the path, they had to deal with the fact that the path disappeared at the east end, and so completely missed the Battle of Five Armies. When they arrived at Laketown there was no Laketown. When they arrived at the Lonely Mountain the treasure had already been divided and there was none left for them. All because of a missing bell.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jul 11 2012, 8:54pm
Post #53 of 61
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No contintents upon Middle-earth before LotR?
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There was no "continent", there were no other "ages", into which Tolkien "moved" The Hobbit after writing it. The continent and the ages came into being much later, when The Lord of the Rings came to be. The continent and the ages emerged from that project when Tolkien finally realized he had written a sequel not to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion. The Hobbit just bobbed along in LotR's ever-broadening wake. This is demonstratably untrue. In The Shaping of Middle-earth (HOME Vol. IV), Christopher Tolkien dates The Ambarkanta and the maps that accompany it to the 1930s (unfortunately, he cannot be more precise). Map V in particular clearly shows the major continents of Middle-earth in the First Age following the War of the Gods. That map was redrawn by Karen Wynn Fonstad when she revised her Atlas of Middle-earth. You can see it here: http://www.elvenesse.net/maps/Arda_FirstAge.gif.
"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house." - Aragorn
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Noel Q. von Schneiffel
Rivendell
Jul 12 2012, 11:38am
Post #54 of 61
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Well played, sir! 
...Decades later, they returned to the Shire when they learned Frodo was about to leave Bag End. They figured they could make it all right by aiding Bilbo's nephew instead of Bilbo himself. But they were very old and slow by now. So once again, they were late and arrived just the day after Frodo and Sam had left. They rung the doorbell - which had long been repaired - but who opened the door? Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, of course. "I'll teach you not to disturb my afternoon nap", she screamed and beat them up horribly with her umbrella.
The Glorious Truth of J.R.R. Tolkien
Radiates from his Holy Writings
http://www.tolkientruth.info/
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Jul 13 2012, 9:21am
Post #55 of 61
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Even Sam thought about Rose once in a while... Well, we never hear a word about Rose until the hobbits get to Mount Doom. Yet from what we are told at the end of the story, Sam surely must have been thinking of her long before that too, but we never hear a word about it. I think perhaps it's more a question of what "private" thoughts of the protagonists belong to the story. We don't need to know about Rose until Sam starts to face up to the certainty of death, and thinks of what he is losing.
So I think it's quite possible that Bilbo's friends aren't mentioned just because we don't know them, and our interest is all with this hobbit that we know. His friends just don't belong in the story. Bilbo's isolation as the only one of his kind on the adventure is also very important to the story's atmosphere, so I don't think hearing about his friends would really be helpful or relevant.
Bilbo may lack authentic relationships with other hobbits, because he is so concerned about what they think about him... That's a very good point, I could well believe that most of Bilbo's social network consists of superficial friendships and taken-for-granted, "duty" interactions with his relatives. Lots of tea parties and stuff, but little deep conversation or sharing of true feelings. I think that's what going on an adventure is supposed to help to cure! This is how Tolkien describes Recovery, to be found in Faerie:
We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity...Of all faces those of our familiares are the ... most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces.
Bilbo starts out as a hobbit whose windows need a serious cleaning.  When he gets back he does manage to find a few true friends with whom he can share real conversation - especially Frodo of course, but from what we hear of his influence on Sam growing up, there must have been others too. Not to mention elves, dwarves and wizards....
That's the payoff for the adventure in Faerie, so it only makes sense for the story to start out with those things missing.
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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Curious
Half-elven
Jul 13 2012, 2:46pm
Post #56 of 61
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In hindsight, I think it is pretty clear that Sam was thinking of Rose
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in Lothlorien, both when tested by Galadriel and when he looked into the mirror. As you say, "...from what we are told at the end of the story, Sam surely must have been thinking of her long before that too...." In hindsight, it still isn't clear that Bilbo ever thought of anyone in particular during his adventures. No special friend or relationship is revealed at the end of the tale, except perhaps for his new friendship with the younger, wilder Tooks. It seems clear that he was not associating with them at the beginning of the tale, nor they with him.
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FarFromHome
Valinor
Jul 14 2012, 10:27pm
Post #57 of 61
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That Lothlorien moment of hesitation has to be about Rose, doesn't it? Even though we are never told for sure. What's also interesting, though, is that Merry seems to have had a very similar experience, and like Sam clams up when he realises there are things he doesn't want to talk about:
"‘That’s funny,’ said Merry. ‘Almost exactly what I felt myself; only, only well, I don’t think I’ll say any more,’ he ended lamely."
So did Merry already have his eye on someone? Maybe his future wife, Estella Bolger (as we learn only from his family tree)? Is she Fatty's sister? That never becomes relevant to the story, so we never learn within the story whatever it was Merry didn't want to say any more about.
And that was my point really - that whether or not Bilbo had friends, if they weren't relevant to the story of The Hobbit, we wouldn't be told about them. It's not about hindsight, but about what belongs in the story. Sam's love for Rose becomes relevant, and that's when we learn about it. Merry's love-life (assuming he had one!) doesn't. Bilbo's friendships, such as they were, don't really have any bearing on the story, so it's not surprising they're not mentioned. I don't think we are supposed to imagine that he had no friends just because we aren't told about them.
But I assume that his pre-adventure friendships were, like him (and like his "Good morning" and "I beg your pardon"), superficial and conventional. In fact, we do finally meet the members of his social circle at the Long-expected Party, by which time they are relevant to the story, to show how different Bilbo has become from the other hobbits of his age and class.
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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squire
Half-elven
Jul 15 2012, 1:21am
Post #58 of 61
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Superficial and conventional friendships, past and present
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I agree with you that Bilbo's social life is not relevant to the events in The Hobbit. I would go further, and not assume that the friendships he did have were "superficial and conventional" just because he is short and formal with Gandalf. That is to sell the hobbit very short (so to speak). He "loves visitors", is remarkably polite and hospitable even to a rude and pushy bunch of strangers, and shows throughout the story that he is a sympathetic and strong individual - which are not traits that would only come out on an adventure. In fact, he loses his friends after his return mostly because he has changed into someone who has a hard time readjusting to the domesticity of the Shire; but does that mean he was a shallow or bland friend and companion beforehand? I wouldn't say so, on the same principle you promote: it doesn't really matter to the tale at hand.
I remember that at the end of his life Bilbo, having given up the Ring and adjusted to exile from the Shire in Rivendell, is desperate for what he calls a "good old fashioned talk between hobbits". I take that as an indication of how, despite his personal odyssey, he remains a truly friendly and sincere individual at heart.
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 (and NOW the 4th too!) TORn Reading Room LotR Discussion; and "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
squiretalk introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
= Forum has no new posts. Forum needs no new posts.
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Curious
Half-elven
Jul 15 2012, 12:54pm
Post #59 of 61
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But Bilbo's friendships are relevant to the story.
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We are told about his social life both before and after his adventure, and it is one of the major changes that takes place. Before, he has a stellar reputation and many visitors, and he is apparently quite popular among his fellow hobbits. After, he is considered queer and has lost his reputation, he uses the ring to avoid unwelcome visitors, and only hobbits like the younger Tooks regularly associate with him. However he has now developed friendships with dwarves and elves and wizards (in The Hobbit it's not clear that there are so few wizards in the world).
It's true that the specific names and backgrounds of his friends, both before and after, are left out of this story, but based on what we are told it would be very strange to learn that he had a best buddy or girlfriend before his adventure who remained his best buddy or girlfriend after. It seems far more likely that his relationship with other hobbits changed completely, and that he had a whole new set of hobbit friends, smaller in number and much younger than himself. Indeed, the chances that he settles down and marries seem to have dwindled, and I'm not basing that on what we learn in LotR.
The difference is that he no longer has to suppress his Tookish behavior, he no longer has to watch what he says or does -- he can be himself, and his new friends love him for who he is. Furthermore, he no longer depends solely on hobbits for friendship, he can visit elves and entertain dwarves and wizards. He doesn't miss the reputation he has lost.
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Curious
Half-elven
Jul 15 2012, 1:11pm
Post #60 of 61
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For the reasons you cite, I consider Bilbo's social life
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highly relevant to the story in The Hobbit. It may not be relevant to the events in his adventure, but it is highly relevant to the change that takes place in Bilbo's life as a result of the adventure. It is clear that Bilbo cares very much about his social relationships with other hobbits before the adventure; and it is equally clear that his attitude has changed after his adventure.
Where before he had a stellar reputation and many hobbit friends, and undoubtedly was polite and hospitable to them, after the adventure he lost his reputation and was considered queer. Queer might not be the same as rude, but then again it might -- the hobbits might consider it rude for Bilbo to read them poetry, for example, and certainly would have considered him rude if they had known he used the ring to avoid them entirely. Indeed, according to the narrator, Bilbo's good reputation was based primarily on being dull and predictable, so the hobbits might have considered any unusual behavior to be rude. Just the fact that Bilbo returned from his adventure unexpectedly was considered rude.
It's not that Bilbo was a bad friend before his adventure, it's that he was not an authentic friend, and he was not true to himself. He was a doormat, and people walked all over him, just as Gandalf and the dwarves do. People took him for granted, and did not know or care what he really thought or felt. Bilbo himself was not in touch with his Tookish side, though, so it is hardly surprising that other people were unaware of it -- and of course, once he let it out he had to cultivate an entirely different group of friends, most of whom were not hobbits.
Does he still have hobbit friends? Yes, among the younger Tooks and their like. The good old fashioned talk between hobbits referenced in LotR must refer to hobbits like Frodo and Sam and Merry and Pippin, who are hardly ordinary hobbits. Indeed, they would not be who they are if not for the influence of Bilbo. Who else at Bilbo's farewell party would have been interested in such a talk with Bilbo? Maybe the twenty or so who attended Frodo's annual birthday party for Bilbo -- certainly not the majority of the 144 who were under Bilbo's tent and feared that he might spout poetry at any moment.
(This post was edited by Curious on Jul 15 2012, 1:12pm)
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Count Balrog
The Shire
Jul 30 2012, 1:49am
Post #61 of 61
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So they went to Crickhollow ....
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but they were disguised as Black Riders, and scared Fredegar Bolger away. So they entered the Old Forest and met Tom Bombadil, whose poetry made them run away screaking.
Balrogs rule (literally)
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