Tooks and Bagginses

In this episode we look at Chapter 1 of The Hobbit.  Even though Hobbits are a race entirely of Tolkien's own creation, we look at some of the mythic and historical forbearers of hobbits, and of how Tolkien used and altered them.  We look at the voice of the narrator, and just how much he knows.  We look at the songs of the dwarves, and discuss the roles of poetry and of prose in Tolkien and in general.

Transcript

1. Chapter 1 – Tooks and Bagginses
   1. When Peter Jackson et al went to edit the first version of the Fellowship of the Ring they immediately ran into a problem: the film was too long.  And these films are long anyway, but this first cut was too long for everyone - for the producers, for the theaters, even for the director… too long.  So the conversation began on what scenes to leave in the film, and which to leave on the cutting room floor.  And, of course, everyone had their opinions as to which scenes were the most deserving: those that were the best shot or most artistic?  those that were the most central to Tolkien’s conception of the story?  those that were the best written?  those that were simply the most fun.  But finally someone proposed a clarifying thought, and all of the discussions and all of the arguments dropped because it was so obvious.  This was Frodo’s story, and therefore anything that was not Frodo didn’t really belong.  And if you go through and compare the theatrical release of the film with the extended cut, you see that almost all of the additions in the extended cut are non-Frodo scenes.  Tolkien did the same thing with the Hobbit.  This is Bilbo’s story, and for the first half of the book there is not a scene wherein he does not play a central role.  Don’t get me wrong, he is entirely tangential to the larger plot, and telling the larger story through Bilbo is rather like telling the downfall of the Galactic Empire by focusing on C3P0 and R2-D2, but it works in Star Wars, and it’s going to work here too.  When writing the Appendices for the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien re-cast this story through Gandalf’s point of view, placing the Quest of Erebor as a necessary prelude to the war against Sauron.  But we aren’t analyzing the Quest of Erebor because this isn’t Gandalf’s story.   This is Bilbo’s story, and we are looking at The Hobbit.

Hi, I’m Stephen Westbrook, and you’re listening to West of Valinor.

1. Concerning Hobbits
   1. In the original fragment of the story, from the early 1930s, Tolkien took his first stab at describing hobbits, saying that, “What is a hobbit?  I meant you to find out, but if you must have everything explained at the beginning, I can only say that hobbits are small people, smaller than dwarves (and they have no beards), and on the whole larger than lilliputians.  There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them disappear quietly and quickly when ordinary big people like you or me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off; they are inclined to be fat in the tummy, dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow), wear no shoes because their feet grow natural leathery soles and think warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly), have long clever brown fingers, goodnatured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).  Now you know enough to go on with.”
   2. Tolkien kept this description of Hobbits more or less unaltered for the rest of his life.  The wording changed in later versions - the published Hobbit substituted “stomach” for “tummy” and by 1951, the reference to Lilliputians had vanished - but most of the rest of this remained intact.
   3. The 1960 Hobbit truncated the description, but did not mess with the details, reading “They were a small people, about half our height or less, often smaller than the Dwarves of those days, to whom they were quite unrelated: hobbits never have beards.  They loved peace and the quiet of a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside; most of them were in fact farmers in a small way, though many were clever with tools.  The had long and skilful fingers and made many useful and well-shaped things, mostly of wood or clay or leather.  But there were very few shoemakers among them, for they seldom wore either shoes or boots.  They did not need them, for their feet had tough leathery soles, and were covered as high as the ankles in thick curling hair, warm and brown like the hair on their heads.  They had good-natured faces, broad, bright-eyed and red-cheeked, and mouths shaped for laughter.  And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily; for they were fond of jests at all times, and liked six meals a day (when they could get them.)  They dressed in warm colours, especially yellow and green, for the delighted in fields and trees.  Though they were inclined to grow rather fat, and did not hurry unnecessarily, they were nimble; and quick of hearing too, and sharp-eyed.  They had from the first the art of moving swiftly and silently, disappearing when large folk or beasts that they did not wish to meet came blundering by.  To us that might seem magical; but Hobbits have never in fact studied magic of any kind, their skill is a gift improved by long practice and helped by their friendship with the earth and all growing things.  More could be said, but for the present a good enough description of Hobbits, or at least of that kind that in those days of the world lived, as they had done for hundreds of years, in the little land that they called the Shire, away in the North-west of the world.”
   4. So here we can see that some of the playfulness is gone - the reference to elephants, for example - and some more explanation is given - the name Shire is used, which it never is in any published version of The Hobbit - and the tone of “delighting in fields and trees” is much more akin with the tone of the Lord of the Rings than with The Hobbit as we read it.
   5. In the last episode, we discussed the literary and mythological antecedents of dwarves and of wizards, and we looked at how these creatures exist not only in Tolkien's legendarium but also in a pre-Tolkienian world.  This is much more difficult with Hobbits, however, because Tolkien almost definitely invented both the creature and the name hobbit himself.  That said, there are some elements we can pull from to figure out just how Hobbits were made.
      1. Hobbits certainly are not the first “little peoples” to be described in mythologies.  Tolkien himself described them as larger than Lilliputians in his first edition of the novel - Lilliputians being the creatures encountered by Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift who describes them as “human creatures not six inches high.”  But Lilliputians themselves have mythological forerunners.
      2. Homer, in the Iliad, describes the Pygmies, men no more than two span high.  In the Iliad they are said to be the enemies of the cranes.  Paracelsus, in the 1560s, uses the term gnomes as a synonym for Pygmies.  But Paracelsus associated his gnomes far more with the earth than the Greek mythical pygmies.  Although he did not use the terms “four humors” or “for elements”, Paracelsus used gnomes as spirits of earth in conjunction with sylphs as spirits of the air or salamanders as spirits of fire.  Gnomes, said Paracelsus, were small people who lived in caves under the earth.  Alexander Pope played off of this characterization of gnomes and sylphs in The Rape of the Lock, wherein the gnomes and sylphs take fairly (but not completely) opposing sides in the saga of a Baron trying to cut off a piece of the noble Belinda’s hair (the eponymous “lock”).  Another particularly British form of the “Little People” were the Brownies.
      3. Personally, my first introduction to the idea of “Brownies” was Kevin Pollack’s character in the movie Willow, wherein Brownies were arrogant, three inch tall celtic warriors, played for comic relief (and to great effect, by the way.)  But in folklore, Brownies were traditionally Tutelary spirits - guardian spirits of a particular place or, more often, of a home.  Like most mythic creatures, they got traditionally smaller over the centuries (as a way of explaining why we couldn’t see them), but most Scotish stories have the brownies being spirits of the home that come out at night and do various chores or tasks around the farm.  Another name for the brownies was the Hobs or the Hob Men, or perhaps, when they were being more negatively portrayed, the Hobgoblins.

I have tried and tried to gloss the term Hob, and I keep coming up with two different meanings for the term.  Hob is often associated with the hearth, a grate on the fireplace (today on the stove) on which to cook..  In Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, he describes Scrooge’s bedroom as having “a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob.”   But the term Hob also has historic association with the Devil, a la sending someone to see “Old Hob.”  So are Hobs called that because of their association with the hearth and home?  Or are they associated with paganism and therefore were seen as evil by the church and called by the Devil’s name?  I have no idea, really.

The more interesting question is how much of this was on Tolkien’s mind (consciously or subconsciously) when he came up with HOBbits.

1. Certainly Hobbits bear some resemblance to Gnomes, Brownies and Hobs - their diminutive size, their affinity for home, their fondness for living in the earth - for being OF the Earth.  But in terms of characterization, Bilbo Baggins’ home and his manners bear absolutely no resemblance to the way Brownies are described.  Bilbo is not a celtic warrior, nor is he a spirit or servant that pops up at night to do the chores.  (If you want to know, the best modern-day use of Brownies that I can find is actually Dobby the house-elf; up to and including the idea that Brownies would leave a home if they were ever given clothes (as described by Reginald Scott in 1584.)
2. Hobbit holes and manners are distinctly Victorian.
3. Okay, a little history.  If you close your eyes and try to picture something distinctly British, there is a strong possibility that you are thinking of something vaguely Victorian (that or the Beatles).  Queen Victoria rose to the throne in in 1837 and ruled until her death in 1901.  This period of British history is when the sun famously never set on the British Empire.  Randall Monroe, on his blog What If, estimates that the sun stopped setting on the British Empire some time around 1800 when the British first colonized Eastern Australia, and that, since that time, the sun still has not set on the Empire.  Even without its colonial holdings in the Americas, South Africa, India, and Australia, Britain retains enough small island territories around the world that the British daylight will continue for the foreseeable future.  

But that’s neither here nor there.  Britain under Queen Victoria was the high water-mark of British power - Britain claimed the greatest military and economic power in the world, and that reflected in the British standard of living.  And while it is true that the early Victorian era saw massive hardship on the part of the less fortunate citizens, think Oliver Twist, by the late-Victorian era, much of that disparity was displaced to the colonies.  Life for colonized British in India or South Africa was not great, but for those who lived in England proper, “God’s in Heaven, All’s right with the world” as Robert Browning said.

This formality and structure exacerbated even further in the Edwardian Era (1901-1910).  There were no major wars (the Boer War ending in 1902), and there were no economic recessions or depressions.  America and Germany began to outproduce Britain in terms of manufacturing, but that actually made things more pleasant for the British middle and upper classes, who could base their income on trade and not manufacturing.  Think, if you will, of the worlds of Mary Poppins and Downton Abbey.  Mary Poppins is set in 1910, and George Banks sings proudly of it in his introductory song.  Downton Abbey (season 1) is set in 1912-14.  Tolkien himself was born in 1892, and so would have been 18 in 1910.  He grew up in Edwardian England, with Edwardian manners and customs.  He did not, it is true, grow up in quite the manor house that Downton Abbey was, but this same style of living would have been all to familiar to him.  Contrast that with the England of 1930 - in the wake of World War 1 and in the early stages of the Great Depression, and this idyllic natural world of his youth was a beacon.

1. And so we get the manners of Hobbits - the dress and the luxury, the formalized Tea time and affinity for pocket handkerchiefs and dusting the mantle, the well-tilled gardens and woolen waistcoats.  The rest of Middle Earth is set in a mythic past, as we discussed ad nauseum last episode, but Hobbiton, especially in the Hobbit, is pure Victorian / Edwardian England, far closer to The Wind in the Willows and Through the Looking Glass than to Beowulf.
2. History
   1. Okay, so looking forwards in time, as Tolkien originally conceived of them, Hobbits are an entirely new mythological race; a kind of portmanteau of gnomes and brownies with Victorian customs and manners.  But what about looking backwards?  Well, that’s actually hard to do.  Unlike dwarves and elves and trolls and giants and whatever that sprang more-or-less fully formed from mythology and Tolkien got to pick and choose which elements to use and which to modify… Hobbits are, again, his own creation.  And he kept creating them and recreating them for much of his life.
   2. The most complete “scholarly” discussion of Hobbits that we ever get is really the prologue to the Lord of the Rings called, fittingly enough, “Concerning Hobbits.”  But, according to Christopher Tolkien, even though it is presented first, this was actually one of the last sections of the Lord of the Rings to be finished.  There were early drafts of it as soon as the novel started, of course, but apparently every time Tolkien would add a new element to Hobbit-lore - in, say, the chapters at the very end of the Return of the King, the Scouring of the Shire, for example - Tolkien would go back in and add that new bit of mythology to his Prologue.
   3. Hobbits, it is clear, are men, or at least the share a greater affinity for men than they do for any of the other of Tolkien’s races.  As much as Bilbo hobnobs with dwarves, and Frodo hobnobs with elves, and Merry and Pippin hobnob with ents, Hobbits still share more in common with Butterbur and Theoden and Strider than the do anyone else.  But more than just being “men,” Hobbits, as we saw a second ago, are decidedly Britishy men.  The live in the North West of the world (re: England vis-a-vis Europe) and they have decidedly Victorian or Edwardian customs and manners, unlike, say, the men of Lake Town or Rohan or Gondor.
   4. And as decidedly Britishy men, Tolkien gives their history as vaguely similar to the history of the peoples of Britain.
   5. In St. Bede the Venerable’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, which is a “history” of the Anglo Saxons written in the early Anglo Saxon Period (scholars date it to around 730 AD), St Bede lists out 3 tribes that make up the English.  He wrote, “The newcomers received of the Britons a place to inhabit, upon condition that they should wage war against their enemies for the peace and security of the country, whilst the Britons agreed to furnish them with pay. Those who came over were of the three most powerful nations of Germany ­ Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the people of Kent, and of the Isle of Wight, and those also in the province of the West Saxons who are to this day called Jutes, seated opposite to the Isle of Wight. From the Saxons, that is, the country which is now called Old Saxony, came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. From the Angles, that is, the country which is called Anglia, and which is said, from that time, to remain desert to this day, between the provinces of the Jutes and the Saxons, are descended the East Angles, the Midland Angles, Mercians, all the race of the Northumbrians, that is, of those nations that dwell on the north side of the river Humber, and the other nations of the English.”  Three tribes that moved from Central Europe and settled in the North West, in England, each bringing with them their own unique traits from their homeland.
   6. When Tolkien set down his final history of Hobbits in the Prologue to the LotR, he did an eerily similar thing.  He wrote, “Their earliest tales seem to glimpse a time when they dwelt in the upper vales of Anduin, between the eaves of Greenwood the Great and the Misty Mountains. Why they later undertook the hard and perilous crossing of the mountains into Eriador is no longer certain. Their own accounts speak of the multiplying of Men in the land, and of a shadow that fell on the forest, so that it became darkened and its new name was Mirkwood.

Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become divided into three somewhat different breeds: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides. The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides. The Stoors were broader, heavier in build; their feet and hands were larger, and they preferred flat lands and riversides. The Fallohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and they were taller and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and of woodlands.

The Harfoots had much to do with Dwarves in ancient times, and long lived in the foothills of the mountains. They moved westward early, and roamed over Eriador as far as Weathertop while the others were still in the Wilderland. They were the most normal and representative variety of Hobbit, and far the most numerous. They were the most inclined to settle in one place, and longest preserved their ancestral habit of living in tunnels and holes.

The Stoors lingered long by the banks of the Great River Anduin, and were less shy of Men. They came west after the Harfoots and followed the course of the Loudwater southwards; and there many of them long dwelt between Tharbad and the borders of Dunland before they moved north again.

The Fallohides, the least numerous, were a northerly branch. They were more friendly with Elves than the other Hobbits were, and had more skill in language and song than in handicrafts; and of old they preferred hunting to tilling. They crossed the mountains north of Rivendell and came down the River Hoarwell. In Eriador they soon mingled with the other kinds that had preceded them, but being somewhat bolder and more adventurous, they were often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors. Even in Bilbo's time the strong Fallohidish strain could still be noted among the greater families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland.”

1. But here we have, of course, a similar situation to the history of Britain itself: a land that was formerly governed by the greatest Empire in millenia - Rome and/or Gondor - and after that empire lapsed, there existed a place that was cultivated for civilization but no longer civilized, and peoples from the center of the known world - the vales of Anduin / what-would-become-Germany - migrate to fill these habitable lands, and do so from three noticeably distinct tribles - the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons / the Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides.
2. Honestly, I don’t really think that this was actively on Tolkien’s mind… he was a philologist and student of languages and literature, not a professor of 5th century history, but it is interesting, and it may have played into his subconscious.
3. Even more interesting is the way that these three tribes (races?  branches?) of Hobbits mirror the other free peoples of middle earth.  The Harfoots, by Tolkien’s own admission, had the most to do with Dwarves - they were Hobbits at their most dwarvish - living underground in tunnels and holes.  The Stoors were the most mannish - dealing with the residents of Dunland in their early history, and still comfortable with boats - a trait that Tolkien frequently associated with men, either Long Lake in the Hobbit or Boromir and Strider in the LotR.  The Fallohides are elf-like, treasuring song and craft and wisdom and learning - less numerous than the other branches, but more likely to be considered wiser or seen in higher position. 
4. Tolkien himself played with this idea when Hobbits were still in their infancy.  He mentions in the first chapter of the Hobbit that one of the Tooks must have taken a Fairy wife (by which Tolkien would have meant “elvish” wife,) but then the narrator dismisses that out of hand.  In the original version, he actually also acknowledges that Took detractors say that “maybe it was a goblin wife”.  But either way, the idea that the different clans of the Hobbits are noticeably different from one another and that their differences seem indicative of or characteristic of the other races of Middle Earth is a common theme in Tolkien’s description of Hobbits.s
5. And, although he tries to play it as Historically and Genetically predetermined in his prologue to the LotR, it really actually seems to play out on more of a case-by-case basis.  Bilbo seems definitively Harfootish, at least in the Hobbit - dwarvish in the best sense of the word.  Frodo (and Bilbo as he appears in the LotR) seems definitively Fallohideish - having, in Tolkien’s own words “an elvish air”.  And Merry and Pippin seem absolutely Stoorish, making frequent friends of Men on their journey, even going so far to be made knights of manish kingdoms.
6. So, what are Hobbits?  Well, as Phillopa Boyens and Fran Walsh put it, “Hobbits have been living and farming in the four Farthings of the Shire for many hundreds of years quite content to ignore and be ignored by the world of the Big Folk. Middle Earth being, after all, full of strange creatures beyond count. Hobbits must seem of little importance, being neither renowned as great warriors, nor counted amongst the very wise. In fact, it has been remarked by some that Hobbits only real passion is for food. A rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales and the smoking of pipeweed But where our hearts truly lie is in peace and quiet and good, tilled earth. For all Hobbits share a love of all things that grow.”  And If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

1. The Voice of the Narrator
   1. We talked in the last episode about how Tolkien constructed The Hobbit not to be part of his story of the Elder Days, but to be an independent children’s story, a spiritual sequel to Roverandom.  But something that was not set in his mythic Gondolin, Elven infested world where people spoke Quenya and Sindarin, and the like.  It  was not meant to be set in Beleriand.  And then, obviously, The Hobbit sold very well. And when the publishers, Allen and Unwin, came back and asked Tolkien to write a sequel to The Hobbit, it at that point started becoming more Middle Earth-ish.  And as he's writing the sequel to The Hobbit which became the Lord of the Rings, the tale grows up. Tolkien talks about this in his letters, about how his children had grown up, and they were his primary audience, and so he wasn't writing to children anymore so he stopped writing a children's story. And the Lord of the Rings becomes definitely intentionally part of Middle Earth, intentionally part of the Elder Days: and Elrond becomes the son of Earendel who is the son or grandson or whatever of Beren and Luthien and the the story becomes intentionally part of the Elder Days.  But now Tolkien had written himself into a corner because if the Lord of the Rings is part of his mythology then that means that The Hobbit is also part of his mythology and he didn't want The Hobbit to be part of his mythology. Or at least, he hadn’t wanted that.  So, at the end of his life, he spent a lot of time reworking elements of The Hobbit to fit. I often wonder if that was a source of joy or a source of frustration to him. Did he grumble and grit his teeth every time he had to rewrite Riddles in the Dark again? Or try to rewrite An Unexpected Party using the tone and timbre of the Lord of the rings? Or try to explain why Gandalf, this Maiar, this Angel, would even show up at a hobbit’s door?  Why would Gandolf concern himself with this rabble of Eddaic named dwarves in the first place? Is that a puzzle that J.R.R. Tolkien gets to solve and is there a joy in that? Or is it just part of the grind, part of the grumble of “Well, I wrote this for myself now I have to write myself out of it, Grrrrr?” I wonder. 
   2. So his solution for it is to make the story of The Hobbit a precautionary measure against the inevitable rise of Sauron. Peter Jackson, if you’ve seen The Hobbit movies, Jackson uses this as the introduction to -  I believe - the second hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug? one of them anyway.  But Tolkien wrote it as an independent essay, “The Quest of Erebor.” Gandalf is - by the way “the Quest for Erebor”, if it had made it into the Lord of the Rings, is supposed to be set at near the end of the Return of the King; after Sauron his fallen, the ring has been destroyed and all the hobbits and Gimli and Legolas and everybody are hanging out in Minas Tirith before Aragorn's wedding there is supposed to have been a conversation wherein Frodo and Merry and Pippin and Gimli ask Gandalf about why Gandalf helped Bilbo and Thorin and Gloin, and then Gandalf is supposed to have replied with his conception of the “Quest of Erebor.”  That Gandalf knew that Sauron was coming back, that he knew that the Necromancer was Sauron in disguise, and he was plotting his revenge. And if you were Sauron and you were living secretly in Mirkwood but you wanted to rise again, then from Mirkwood wouldn’t your first task, your first goal not be to fly away to Mordor which is farther away but wouldn’t your first goal be to strike out at your enemies? You're so close to Lothlorien; you're so close to Rivendell.  Don't you destroy them from where you are?  And if you are living in Mirkwood, if you're Sauron and you want to attack Lorien then what's your best asset? Well, obviously it's a dragon that's living right next-door.   So Gandalf foresaw Sauron using Smaug as a weapon against Lorien and against Rivendell.  Gandalf had to stop that.  He couldn’t stop Sauron outright, but he could stop the dragon.  So he needed Thorin and company to help get the dragon out of there.   Now, to the best of my knowledge what this never explains is just exactly how burgling from this dragon would ever lead to the death of the dragon in Gandalf’s mind.
   3. Gandalf admits in the opening of The Hobbit, in his first conversation with the dwarves in An Unexpected Party that he looked for a warrior. “I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply lot to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish­covers; and dragons are comfortably far­off (and therefore legendary). That is why I settled on burglary.”  So I don't know how Tolkien jumped from “Well, we’ll steal from the dragon and stealing from the dragon will somehow end up with his death and then Sauron and won't be able to use it.”  Not entirely sure how he got there.  Peter Jackson finished the circle, having Thorin claim that he could unite the dwarves if he only had the Arkenstone, and then Gandalf offering to help him steal it.  But I haven’t found that arc of the story in Tolkien yet.  But, then, he never actually finished writing that piece of the story or the 1960 revisions of The Hobbit.
   4. I'm glad he never finished his 1960 Hobbit.  It does sound a lot more like the Lord of the Rings. First off, it calls The Shire “The Shire,” which book The Hobbit never does.  It mentions places like Bree, which the book The Hobbit never does. It talks about the world in a greater context... but it misses the narrator.  And I think, if I had to put my finger on it, my favorite character in The Hobbit is the narrator.  The narrator is interesting.  Now, I am an English teacher, and as an English teacher I am supposed to teach my students that the narrator is never the author.  The narrator is someone else, that we shouldn't assume that the narrator speaks for the author.  We English teacher types are supposed to point out things like a TS Eliot's Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock where Prufrock is, you know, this wreck of a man but that's not actually Eliot, that's that's the conceit that he puts on in the style of Robert Browning and “My Last Duchess” and the speaker in “My Last Duchess” is not Robert Browning.  But in Tolkien’s case I think that's harder to argue. I think that the narrator in The Hobbit is closer to Tolkien than the English teachers of the world are supposed to give him credit for.  (Sorry other English teachers.)  Now the counter argument to this - let’s start the counter argument - the counter-argument is that “if the narrator were Tolkien, the narrator would know everything, and the narrator obviously doesn’t know everything.”  He says so!  When we meet Gandalf for the first time the narrator says, “Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort I of remarkable tale.”  Blah blah blah.   But he admits that he, the narrator, has only heard very little Gandalf.  How could Tolkien, the creator of Gandalf, only have heard a very little bit about him? 
   5. And will get there again with chapter 5, but in chapter 5, Riddles in the Dark, the narrator talks is introducing column and says something to the effect of “I have no idea what he was or what he was doing there.”   The narrator admits to his own ignorance!  How could the creator of the character be ignorant to the character?  
   6. Well, Bill Watterson, the author of Calvin and Hobbes, talks about how, when he would write a strip, with what ended up being his favorite strips, when he would start writing  he would just climb into Calvin or climb into Hobbes and the characters were taken place is that he hadn't even imagined.  Tolkien, I think thought the same way about it, he actually wrote something similar.  Tolkien described his process of imagining and writing to Milton Waldman in 1951: "[The stories] arose in my mind as 'given' things . . . always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of "inventing'".  He didn't really know where this was going all the time, he wasn’t inventing the story, he was discovering it, as though he had been born knowing all of it and he had forgotten: his sub-created the story. Tolkien considered himself sometimes the finder of the story not the writer of the story.  This is an ancient idea, not about story-telling, but about knowledge in general; that we are not born as blank slates, as tabula rasa, but that we are actually born knowing everything we just have to discover it, have to remember it.  In Platonic dialogues, specifically in the Meno, Plato writes about Socrates -- the character Socrates, not the real Socrates --  but Plato writes about this fictionalized Socrates talking to this other character, Meno, and Socrates’s argument is that we never learn anything; we just are directed to it and then remember it a.k.a. figure it out.  
   7. Socrates, in the dialogue, tells Meno “The soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, rand having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all; and it is no wonder that she should be able to call to remembrance all that she ever knew about virtue, and about everything; for as all nature is akin, and the soul has learned all things; there is no difficulty in her eliciting or as men say learning, out of a single recollection -all the rest, if a man is strenuous and does not faint; for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection.”  Basically, we are born knowing everything, but we have to remember it.  Tolkien seems to view creation this way: he knows his characters ab initio, he just has to remember them.  If this is true, then we can absolutely conflate Tolkien with the Narrator.  Tolkien knows - remembers - somewhere at the edge of his brain that there is more to know about Gandalf.  He just hasn’t remembered it yet.
   8. The narrator has such a wonderful voice in The Hobbit.  He teases us; he dangles things in front of us. When Bilbo is going off as in on his adventure at the very early in the chapter the narrator tells us that “He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained­ -- well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.” Then, in the very next sentence the narrator gets frustrated with us.   “The mother of our particular hobbit … what is a hobbit? I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays…”   And he gets  kind of frustrated. How dare we interrupt him to ask this question?!  He meant to tell us on his own sweet time, but we've interrupted!  We the reader are brought in this this fourth wall breaking narrator, brings us into it.    It makes the book the book is being told to us not written to us.  This lasted, this style -- this narrative style,  lasted into the earliest draft of the Lord of the Rings as well, particularly the Forward to the first edition -- not the second edition -- the forward to the first edition of the Lord of the RIngs the narrator is still treating this as though the narrator had found this manuscript of There and Back Again, and he's telling us the stories that he found himself of hobbits; that he's not creating it.  It’s the same narrative trick that Nathaniel Hawthorne uses, as Hawthorne makes up this way that he “found” the story of The Scarlet Letter.  It's not his story; he found it.  Tolkien does the same thing in the first iteration of the Lord of the Rings. Of course, by the time you get to the second publication, that conceit is mostly gone.  
   9. And I love the Lord of the RIngs, but the narrator's voice playing with us, coaxing us, stringing us along... I think the reason The Hobbit is so accessible is that the narrator drags you into it, coaxes you into it, drives you into it, and that makes it a better book, a better story.   The narrator's able to point out things to us that we wouldn't have caught otherwise because he, even though he doesn't know everything, he knows more than we do.  So he's able to point out the difference between Tooks and Baggins that we would never understand except the narrator is able  to hint to us about the Tookish-side and the Baggins-ish side; the difference between Bilbo’s mother and his father. And what an interesting dichotomy that is!  That's such an important dichotomy!  That difference, the Tookish-ness versus the Bagginsish-ness is the controlling idea in the whole book, and we only get it because the narrator's there to point it out to us. Through the whole book, Bilbo vacillates back-and-forth between: is he Took or is he Baggins? Is his mothers strain, is his mothers DNA, is the slightly fairy blood of the Tooks,  the adventurous, the bold, daring spirit, the one willing to try new things -- is that the side of him that's controlling his actions?  Or is it the Baggins side? Is it his father’s side?   The staid and formal and very proper and very boring homebody?  Is Bilbo Is it the prose side or the poetry side?
   10. Now as a child I did not understand that difference at all: prose vs poetry.  Prose is a word that we stupid English teachers use to describe anything it's not poetry, and Poetry obviously is poetry.  For Tolkien, this was an extremely important difference.  Poetry is the stuff of magic; Poetry is the stuff of legend; Poetry is the stuff of tales.  Anything worth telling is worth telling in verse, according to Tolkien.  And that that was true for him in his own life as well. He, in several of his myths in the Silmarillion, he sketched out the prose but was never satisfied with it.  He wanted his tales to be told in verse: the way Beowulf is told in verse; the way the Iliad and the Odyssey are told in verse.  If it's an epic worth telling, it's worth telling in poetry.   Prose for Tolkien, and certainly for Bilbo, and for the narrator, assuming that that may or may not be Tolkien, is reserved for every day stuff process is business contracts; prose is your iTunes agreement, prose is this podcast.  It's not beautiful, it's not creative.  It's sometimes necessary. It's legalese; it's meant to be specific not to be great.  Poetry derives its power from its imprecision, from its ambiguity and abstraction.  Prose derives its power from its specificity.  In an essay you want to use exactly the right word.  Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.  That's true in an essay; that's true and prose:  you want to be specific.  But in poetry you want to be ambiguous: small words are better, ambiguous words are better because it invites the reader to be a part of it.  The interpretation of the poem is the poem. The Bagginses are prosy; they are staid;  they are specific.  They say what they mean.  The Tooks are poets. Adventurous,  ambiguous, they're hard to understand. A Baggins will always give you the answer you know is coming.  You can always know what he's going to say to a question without the bother of asking him. Tooks aren't like that.  Elves aren't like that.  Gandalf isn’t always like that.
       1. Of course, there is one fantastic exception to this, and it is quite possibly my favorite quote in the entire book.  For the briefest of moments, Bilbo is casual and Gandalf is prosy.  When they first meet, Bilbo says “Good Morning” to Gandalf (like you do) and Gandalf replies, “What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”
       2. [Riff on this]  Also, on “I will give you what you asked for.”  “I beg your pardon, I haven’t asked for anything!” “Yes, you have!  Twice now.  My pardon.  I give it you.”

1. Bilbo, when his speech is described as characteristically his, has a business manner (he also briefly describes it as “putting on his dignity”).  Usually reserved for people trying to borrow money.  When trying to find some control over everything that happens at the Unexpected Party - the news of the dragon and his expected involvement in everything, when trying to get a hold on everything, he says, “I don’t pretend to understand what you are talking about, or your reference to ‘burglars’, but I think I am right in believing that you think I am no good.”  Notice how he defines his terms, quotes the other party… this is all debate 101, legal-speek 101.  He continues, later in the chapter, “All the same, I should like it all plain and clear.  Also I should like to know about risks, out­of­pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth."  He is trying to be specific, he is asking legalistic questions, he is being INTENTIONALLY prosey.  Bilbo won’t get even vaguely poetic until Chapter 8 at least, and even then his poems, by the narrator’s own admission, suck.  He won’t write a real poem until the very end of the novel.  Contrast that with the Dwarves, who have two poetic moments in the very first chapter.
2. Chip the Glasses
   1. The first poem the dwarves sing in the novel is a silly throw-away poem, and I believe that Tolkien mostly included it to be silly for his children and to, if there is any characterization in it, to characterize Bilbo’s narrow-minded and over-civilized worldview.
      1. Chip the glasses and crack the plates! 

Blunt the knives and bend the forks! 

That's what Bilbo Baggins hates 

Smash the bottles and burn the corks! 

Cut the cloth and tread on the fat! 

Pour the milk on the pantry floor! 

Leave the bones on the bedroom mat! 

Splash the wine on every door! 

Dump the crocks in a boiling bawl; 

Pound them up with a thumping pole; 

And when you've finished, if any are whole, 

Send them down the hall to roll ! 

That's what Bilbo Baggins hates! 

So, carefully! carefully with the plates! 

1. Again, just a silly song about how to ruin a kitchen, because THAT’s what Bilbo is really afraid of.
2. The Song of the Dwarves
   1. Far over the misty mountains cold 

To dungeons deep and caverns old 

We must away ere break of day 

To seek the pale enchanted gold. 

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, 

While hammers fell like ringing bells 

In places deep, where dark things sleep, 

In hollow halls beneath the fells. 

For ancient king and elvish lord 

There many a gloaming golden hoard 

They shaped and wrought, and light they caught 

To hide in gems on hilt of sword. 

On silver necklaces they strung

The flowering stars, on crowns they hung 

The dragon­fire, in twisted wire 

They meshed the light of moon and sun. 

Far over the misty mountains cold 

To dungeons deep and caverns old 

We must away, ere break of day, 

To claim our long­ forgotten gold. 

Goblets they carved there for themselves 

And harps of gold; where no man delves 

There lay they long, and many a song 

Was sung unheard by men or elves. 

The pines were roaring on the height, 

The winds were moaning in the night. 

The fire was red, it flaming spread; 

The trees like torches biased with light, 

The bells were ringing in the dale 

And men looked up with faces pale; 

The dragon's ire more fierce than fire 

Laid low their towers and houses frail. 

The mountain smoked beneath the moon; 

The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom. 

They fled their hall to dying ­fall 

Beneath his feet, beneath the moon. 

Far over the misty mountains grim 

To dungeons deep and caverns dim 

We must away, ere break of day, 

To win our harps and gold from him! 

As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine­trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking­stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up­­; probably somebody lighting a wood­fire­ and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag­End, Under­Hill, again.” 

1. The Dwarves sing and Bilbow is almost literally transported.  The song they weave creates this world in Bilbo’s mind so thoroughly that he feels the love of the things the dwarves love.  He wants to go to where the dwarves are singing of.  He looks outside and he can almost see it.
2. Contrast this with the opening lines of the Silmarillion:
   1. There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made. And he spoke to them, propounding to them themes of music; and they sang before him, and he was glad. But for a long while they sang only each alone, or but few together, while the rest hearkened; for each comprehended only that part of me mind of Ilúvatar from which he came, and in the understanding of their brethren they grew but slowly. Yet ever as they listened they came to deeper understanding, and increased in unison and harmony.

And it came to pass that Ilúvatar called together all the Ainur and declared to them a mighty theme, unfolding to them things greater and more wonderful than he had yet revealed; and the glory of its beginning and the splendour of its end amazed the Ainur, so that they bowed before Ilúvatar and were silent.

Then Ilúvatar said to them: 'Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song.'

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void.

1. The music of the Ainur is creation.  Music is magic, poetry is creation.  And although the dwarves in Bilbo’s sitting room do not have the power of the Gods, their music is still sub-creation, and it works!  Bilbo is transported through nothing more than the power of their music.  
2. Bilbo himself has some hidden vestige of poetry in him - when he describes Gandalf’s fireworks, the narrator describes him as “not so prosy as he liked to believe,” but the Baggins side of him keeps it suppressed.
3. All through Chapter 1, and through the rest of the novel, this difference between Poetry and Prose, between Baggins and Took is going to play out.  Even in the Lord of the Rings, when Bilbo is living in Rivendell, his main job, which he seems to assign himself, is to write poetry and to translate and transcribe the poetry of the Elves before the end of the Third Age, but eve at this point, when Bilbo and Frodo are sitting in the Hall of Fire in the chapter Many Meetings, Bilbo and Frodo have to get out of there early, because Hobbits, according to Bilbo, will never “acquire quite the elvish appetite for music and poetry and tales. They seem to like them as much as food, or more.”  And he says this last with mock surprise and awe, as though it is unthinkable that poetry could be more important than food.  But this, still is the Baggins versus the Took dynamic that Bilbo will never truly outgrow.

Even that first night, back in an Unexpected Party, Bilbo decides to be Tookish, to wear a sword instead of a walking stick, to go on an adventure, to give up tea time and rather pursue those smoke rings that cluster around Gandalf’s head, when he goes to bed, he rather hopes that they all wake up and leave without him.