The Hobbit - Chapter 1

Finally able to sort through some of my things from the move and it's time to crack on with reading. I am a bit spoiled for choice on where to begin. I considered revisiting some of Lord Dunsany whose fantastic works are an important part of the lineage of fantasy lit and I debated Howard but I'd really want to get a physical copy of Kull in my hands before I go through Conan. The choice to go with Tolkien was fairly obvious in retrospect.

I saw the Hobbit performed as a play when I was kid and loved it though, at the time, I bounced off of Lord of the Rings. Well, I was 8 and my dad got me this lovely hard back of the trilogy that was probably about the size of my head. When the films came out, I wasn't initially interested but watching the first one night on TV with my dad, we ended up bonding over it and I got pretty excited to watch Return of the King in the cinema. Since then I've always been pretty interested in Middle Earth but I've largely read about it rather than sitting down with books. I think I wanted to just dedicate myself to reading the books when it felt like the right time and then never set any time aside to actually do it. Well, I'm over that now, at least. Time to actually enjoy myself a bit.

It's been a long time since I've tried organising my thoughts on something like this so I can't promise it will make the most scintillating of reading. My hope is that I will better organise my thoughts through this and be able to share the things I enjoy with my friends in the least. Maybe, in the process, I can refine my own writing as well and make the act of putting words to paper less grand in my mind.

Preface

The book opens, as one might expect from a linguist like Tolkien, with a discussion of words. There's a little on the conventional use of dwarf, dwarfs and dwarfish vs dwarves and dwarvish as will be used to refer to the people and culture of the dwarf-folk. There's an explanation of orc as the word hobbits use essentially for goblin. Curiously it suggests hobgoblins as being larger than goblins, which I found surprising. Certainly, Dungeons and Dragons takes this line of reasoning but I always took hobgoblins to be on the small side, being that my understanding was that they live under ovens (hobs) and what not. It occurs to me that I'm not entirely sure how big goblins are expected to be as in the traditional art I can think of, they're perhaps a foot or so tall with bulbous heads. It's one of those things like elves, where you might refer to eldritch fair folk or the kind that mend shoes and make toys.

After this, there's some notes on runes as used by dwarves and reference to the map in the first endpapers. These have some runes writ upon them and cross referencing them against the runic rendition of the books title you can translate them into English. I got myself stumped in making an alphabet of them for a moment as there appears to be two versions of the letter D and I initially missed the runes on the compass which would have let me identify the W rune sooner. This was confusing until then as "when" is spelled "hwen" after translating it so I initially got the letters reversed. I'm assuming that is an archaicism Tolkien opted on. Still, translating the map was fun!

Chapter 1 - An Unexpected Party

We learn a little about holes and the hobbits who live in them. Hobbit-holes are just the most cosy conceivable dwellings and I long to curl up in one like a burrowing animal, especially so since they seem to be 90% cakes by volume. Hobbits, meanwhile, are round little guys who try to stay out of bother and seem to live lives busy with preparing and eating food, punctuated by smoke breaks. Bilbo Baggins is a fairly typical hobbit on his father's (comfortably boring) side but inherits a bit of a bolder streak from his maternal line of slightly more daring Tools. The Took lineage has hobbits occasionally getting up to adventures which gets hushed up like it's scandalous.

On this day, the wizard Gandalf shows up whilst Bilbo is very busy, smoking. Gandalf is a very classical wizard with beard and hat and staff and an excellent capability to make a nuisance of himself. Bilbo tries to wish him a good morning and Gandalf gives him a little bit of hell over the meaning of it - especially when Gandalf tries prodding about adventures and Bilbo uses good morning to half-mean "bugger off". Still, in the interest of maintaining hospitality, he makes the error of inviting Gandalf to tea before disappearing back inside. Rookie move; wizards are like vampires, you can't be inviting them in. Once the door is closed, Gandy scratches a mark into the door before he's in his way.

The next day whilst taking care of the other kind of hobbit business (food), Bilbo finds himself swamped by an ever-increasing swarm of dwarves. Most of the dwarves have names that rhyme (Balin and Dwalin, Ori, Nori and Dori, Oin and Gloin, Fili and Kili) or have the same vibes (Bifur, Bomur and Bofur Deez Nuts) which is I imagine. It going to help with telling them apart. Chief amongst the dwarves is Thorin and in quite a literal sense, being the grandson of Thror, King under the Mountain. They have a lovely time eating Bilbo out of house and home and when it comes time to clean up, sing a rousing song of all the things they could to to add to Bilbo's growing distress but won't do. So far, the whole things been very funny and dips into playful whimsy gleefully but it takes a bit of a turn when the dwarves start singing about themselves.

The dwarves sing of their homeland, their history, the wonders that their people made and what they lost to the greed and violence of a drsgon. It touches both sides of Bilbo, I feel - the homely and the adventurous. He imagines himself exploring caverns and with a sword at his hip but also sees a light in the distance and pictures what it would be like for a dragon to scorch the Shire. Whilst the Tookish part of him feels a pull towards heroism, the Bagginsish part, that yearns for the certainty and comfort of home and fears it's loss... I think this is essential here. In that moment, Bilbo can empathise with the dwarves.

He still ends up a bit squirmy about going and Thorin keeps pressing him about it. Gandalf has decreed that Bilbo be a burglar for their expedition to reclaim their home and hoard of treasure and neither Bilbo nor the dwarves think him especially apt for it. Bilbo does seem interested in proving himself though and the wizard insists they take him, go as an unlucky 13 or get back to cracking rocks for a living.

All in all, I think the first chapter is a lot of fun and I appreciate the turn it takes as the dwarves begin to reveal their plight. The loss of their home saw countless lost and the shaking of their pride has consumed both Thorin's grandfather at Moria and his father, who pursued the quest seemingly alone and was captured by the enigmatic Necromancer. Thorin expresses that Moria was avenged but they should kick the Necromancer's ass and immediately Gandalf is like "no you fucking shouldn't', dude will destroy you, one quest at a time." Damn, wonder if this Necromancer will be important down the line they said with some knowing.

Next time, on to roast mutton.