Monday, August 6, 2012

Chapter V - Riddles in the Dark

[P. 80]; §1. When Bilbo opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright! He could hear nothing, see nothing, and he could feel nothing except the stone of the floor.

§2. Very slowly he got up and groped about on all fours, till he touched the wall of the tunnel; but neither up nor down it could he find anything: nothing at all, no sign of goblins, no sign of dwarves. His head was swimming, and he was far from certain even of the direction they had been going in when he had his fall. He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment. He did not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home - for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler.

§3. He could not think what to do; nor could he think what had happened; or why he had been left behind; or why, if he had been left behind, the goblins had not caught him; or even why his head was so sore. The truth was he had been lying quiet, out of sight and out of mind, in a very dark corner for a long while.

[P. 81]; §4. After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely. Just as well for him, as he agreed when he came to his senses. Goodness knows what the striking of matches and the smell of tobacco would have brought on him out of dark holes in that horrible place. Still at the moment he felt very crushed. But in slapping all his pockets and feeling all round himself for matches his hand came on the hilt of his little sword - the little dagger that he got from the trolls, and that he had quite forgotten; nor do the goblins seem to have noticed it, as he wore it inside his breeches.

§5. Now he drew it out. It shone pale and dim before his eyes. “So it is an elvish blade, too,” he thought; “and goblins are not very near, and yet not far enough.”

§6. But somehow he was comforted. It was rather splendid to be wearing a blade made in Gondolin for the goblin-wars of which so many songs had sung; and also he had noticed that such weapons made a great impression on goblins that came upon them suddenly.

§7. “Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!” So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.

§8. Now certainly Bilbo was in what is called a tight place. But you must remember it was not quite so tight for him as it would have been for me or for you. Hobbits are not quite like ordinary

people; and after all if their holes are nice cheery places and properly aired, quite different from the tunnels of the goblins, still they are more used to tunnel-[P. 82]-ling than we are, and they do not easily lose their sense of direction undergroundnot when their heads have recovered from being bumped. Also they can move very quietly, and hide easily, and recover wonderfully from falls and bruises, and they have a fund of wisdom and wise sayings that men have mostly never heard or have forgotten long ago.

§9. I should not have liked to have been in Mr. Baggins’ place, all the same. The tunnel seemed to have no end. All he knew was that it was still going down pretty steadily and keeping in the same direction in spite of a twist and a turn or two. There were passages leading off to the side every now and then, as he knew by the glimmer of his sword, or could feel with his hand on the wall. Of these he took no notice, except to hurry past for fear of goblins or half-imagined dark things coming out of them. On and on he went, and down and down; and still he heard no sound of anything except the occasional whirr of a bat by his ears, which startled him at first, till it became too frequent to bother about. I do not know how long he kept on like this, hating to go on, not daring to stop, on, on, until he was tireder than tired. It seemed like all the way to tomorrow and over it to the days beyond.

§10. Suddenly without any warning he trotted splash into water! Ugh! it was icy cold. That pulled him up sharp and short. He did not know whether it was just a pool in the path, or the edge of an underground stream that crossed the passage, or the brink of a deep dark subterranean lake. The sword was hardly shining at all. He stopped, and he could hear, when he listened hard, drops drip-drip-dripping from an unseen roof into the water below; but there seemed no other sort of sound.

§11. “So it is a pool or a lake, and not an underground river,” he thought. Still he did not dare to wade out into the dark-[P. 83]-ness. He could not swim; and he thought, too, of nasty slimy things, with big bulging blind eyes, wriggling in the water. There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains: fish whose fathers swam in, goodness only knows how many years ago, and never swam out again, while their eyes grew bigger and bigger and bigger from trying to see in the blackness; also there are other things more slimy than fish. Even in the tunnels and caves the goblins have made for themselves there are other things living unbeknown to them that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners are still there in odd comers, slinking and nosing about.

Monday, August 6, 2012

** The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark”** 1. – On and on he went, and down and down

Welcome to this week’s Reading Room discussion of Chapter Five in The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark.” This is a very well-known chapter for reasons that Tolkien certainly did not anticipate when he published The Hobbit in 1938.

More famous than the restThis chapter all like best.At its chills and giggles

No bedtime listener wiggles.But it was altered long agoWhat is the secret few now know?

He might have guessed that its latter-day fame would come from the clever suite of rhymed riddle-verses that he invented for Bilbo’s competition with Gollum. But the answer to the riddle above is what he himself discovered just a few months after publication: that the best device on which to build a sequel to The Hobbit was the magical ring that Bilbo found in Gollum’s cave. Once the ring became the One Ring, Tolkien felt obliged to rewrite large sections of this chapter so that the circumstances of its finding would be consistent with its later stature as the Doom of Middle-earth.

I will do my best to address the fact that there are two “Riddles in the Dark” chapters, one dating from 1938 and one from 1951 – but not today.

Today, we will follow Bilbo from the end of the last chapter, lying unconscious on the floor of a dark cave tunnel, to the point where he arrives at Gollum’s lake.

A. Do Bilbo’s feelings on waking, and his recovery of his equilibrium and senses, reflect what happens when you are thrown violently onto a stone surface?

Bilbo discovers the Ring just at this moment. It is very far from Gollum’s lake, as we will soon see. B. How did the Ring come to “leave” Gollum (as it is later said in LotR) at this point in the tunnels? Wouldn’t he have heard it hit the stone floor?

Bilbo tries to console himself by thinking of “frying bacon and eggs” back home, but it just makes him more depressed.C. Why does Bilbo think of a breakfast meal as the answer to a need for “some meal or other”?

Bilbo attempts to smoke “after some time” of being miserable. D. Where else do we see tobacco used in the story?

E. Is it “politically incorrect” for today’s readers that Bilbo smokes with pleasure (or wishes he could, in this case)?

F. On a minor note, given the major changes we know are coming, why did Tolkien not later edit this part to change “tobacco” to “pipe weed” as the product is called in LotR?

The sword turns out to be an “Elvish blade” with the quality of glowing when evil creatures are near. G. Why hasn’t Bilbo thought of or looked at this sword before this? Surely wearing a sword “inside his breeches” is going to be uncomfortable enough that one would take it out for sleeping at least, no?

H. Where are the goblins just now, so that the blade glows dimly?

The narrator reassures us that Bilbo is not in as uncomfortable a spot as we readers might think. Hobbits, evidently, are “not quite like ordinary people” with regard to being underground; are tough and resilient physically; and … wait for it, you’d want this if you were buried deep in a mine … they know a lot of old sayings!I. What’s up with that last bit?

As Bilbo decides to go on, since he knows goblins are behind him and doesn’t know what’s ahead, the tunnel continues downward as it did in the previous chapter. J. Why are there “twist[s] and a turn or two”?

Bats “whirr” past his ears, so often that he stops being bothered by it. This just doesn’t ring true to me, given the setting (a long narrow tunnel miles from the outside), but I imagine that when I was a kid and didn’t know any better this just added to the suspense. K. How much of this setting is Tolkien representing from nature, and how much from storytelling traditions?

Bilbo repeatedly imagines monsters in the dark that are not goblins: “Goodness knows what the striking of matches and the smell of tobacco would have brought on him out of dark holes in that horrible place.” “hurry past [side passages] for fear of goblins or half-imagined dark things coming out of them.” “he thought, too, of nasty slimy things, with big bulging blind eyes, wriggling in the water.” (squire’s bolds)L. Why do we imagine “monsters” in darkness? What is such fear based on?

M. Are children more vulnerable to such writing (I’m thinking of Monsters Inc. now, right)? Why or why not?

More specifically, as he encounters the lake, the narrator takes over and assures us that Bilbo is right: “there are other things living unbeknown to [the goblins] that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark.” “the original owners [of the caverns] are still there in odd comers, slinking and nosing about.” (squire’s bolds)N. Is this a reference to Gollum, called “slinker” and “old noser” in LotR? If so, isn’t it the shortest foreshadowing on record since he shows up in the next line? If not, who is Tolkien referring to so specifically?

What If?

As a special feature, I’d like to turn to the writing style of The Hobbit – something some readers dislike and some readers cherish, especially in contrast to the later book, The Lord of the Rings. Below I identify some turns of speech that Tolkien uses in this chapter, that I think he would not use in the same way in LotR. You may comment any way you want – or even better, suggest how Tolkien might have rewritten these words, had he decided to complete the infamous 1960 revision of The Hobbit to place it more in the stylistic world of LotR.

1. Just imagine his fright!2. neither up nor down it could he find anything3. gave himself up to complete miserableness,4. it was high time for some meal or other5. that only made him miserabler.6. It was not broken, and that was something.7. Goodness knows what8. in slapping all his pockets and feeling all round himself9. It was rather splendid to be wearing a blade10. he had noticed that such weapons made a great impression on goblins

11. “Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!”12. his heart all of a patter and a pitter.13. Bilbo was in what is called a tight place.14. it was not quite so tight for him as it would have been for me or for you.15. I should not have liked to have been in Mr. Baggins’ place, all the same.16. until he was tireder than tired.17. It seemed like all the way to tomorrow and over it to the days beyond.18. without any warning he trotted splash into water! Ugh!19. That pulled him up sharp and short.20. goodness only knows how many years ago,

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

§12. Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind, if they ever came down alone anywhere near the edge of the water, while he was prowling about. They very seldom did, for they had a feeling that something unpleasant was lurking down there, down at the very roots of the mountain. They had come on the lake, when they were tunnelling down long ago, and they found they could go no further; so there their road ended in that direction, and there was no reason to go that way—unless the Great [P. 84] Goblin sent them. Sometimes he took a fancy for fish from the lake, and sometimes neither goblin nor fish came back.

§13. Actually Gollum lived on a slimy island of rock in the middle of the lake. He was watching Bilbo now from the distance with his pale eyes like telescopes. Bilbo could not see him, but he was wondering a lot about Bilbo, for he could see that he was no goblin at all.

§14. Gollum got into his boat and shot off from the island, while Bilbo was sitting on the brink altogether flummoxed and at the end of his way and his wits. Suddenly up came Gollum and whispered and hissed:

§15. “Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!” And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat. That is how he got his name, though he always called himself ‘my precious.’

§16. The hobbit jumped nearly out of his skin when the hiss came in his ears, and he suddenly saw the pale eyes sticking out at him.

§17. “Who are you?” he said, thrusting his dagger in front of him.

§18. “What iss he, my preciouss?” whispered Gollum (who always spoke to himself through never having anyone else to speak to). This is what he had come to find out, for he was not really

very hungry at the moment, only curious; otherwise he would have grabbed first and whispered afterwards.

§19. “I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves and I have lost the wizard, and I don’t know where I am; and I don’t want to know, if only I can get away.”

§20. “What’s he got in his handses?” said Gollum, looking at the sword, which he did not quite like.

§21. “A sword, a blade which came out of Gondolin!”

§22. “Sssss,” said Gollum, and became quite polite. “Praps ye sits here and chats with it a bitsy, my preciousss. It [P. 85] likes riddles, praps it does, does it?” He was anxious to appear friendly, at any rate for the moment, and until he found out more about the sword and the hobbit, whether he was quite alone really, whether he was good to eat, and whether Gollum was really hungry. Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before he lost all his friends and was driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains.

§23. “Very well,” said Bilbo, who was anxious to agree, until he found out more about the creature, whether he was quite alone, whether he was fierce or hungry, and whether he was a friend of the goblins.

§24. “You ask first,” he said, because he had not had time to think of a riddle.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 (posted Friday, August 10)

** The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark”** 2. – Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum

Let’s pick up the story with Bilbo splashing to a halt in the lake at the bottom of the mountain tunnel. We have just been warned that “the original owners [of the caverns] are still there in odd comers, slinking and nosing about” and sure enough, the next line makes it real:

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. (Hobbit V)

A. Doesn’t the phrase “old Gollum” convey a kind of folksiness to the character?

He is a “small slimy creature” evidently. Sliminess typifies amphibian creatures, not reptiles or mammals; the slime keeps their skin moist while it is out of the water. I argued earlier http://newboards.theonering.net/forum/gforum/perl/gforum.cgi?post=473138#473138in this discussion that C.S. Lewis was wrong to call Gollum a fish-type creature, but I guess I didn’t notice this particular line. B. Is slimy metaphorical or literal here?

He is “as dark as darkness”. C. Does this mean he has what we would call black skin (or deep brown, whatever)?

In a bit that is characteristic of a number of creatures in Tolkien, Gollum’s eyes are called “lamp-like” as if they gave off light – which eyes never do, at least in our world. But medieval theorists of sight thought for a long time that the eyes did give off rays of vision. Also, the illusion of illumination that we get when we see some animals’ eyes reflecting a campfire or flashlight back at us in the dark is powerfully suggestive of original generation of light.D. Again, is Tolkien being metaphorical or literal here?

“He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it.” Clearly, Goblin is one option among many. E. What other meat does Gollum like?

It seems that Gollum never risks discover by going up the tunnels to hunt goblins—except that later in this chapter it appears he does after all (otherwise he would not know the way out, to Bilbo’s benefit). Nevertheless at this point in the story the writing is very plain and even emphatic: Gollum never leaves his lake.F. What do you think?

Speaking of the goblins who “sometimes” don’t come back from the fishing expeditions G. Why doesn’t the Great Goblin, who seems like a rather responsible monarch, show more curiosity, or guts, in solving this mystery?

Gollum with his eyes “like telescopes” can tell from some distance, that is from his island in the lake, that Bilbo is “no goblin at all”.H. How does he do that? This place has no light whatsoever.

“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!”This is Gollum’s opening line, and it lets us know a great deal about him. He doesn’t just attack Bilbo. He doesn’t, on the other hand, address Bilbo. He says “bless us and splash us”, which I have always suspected is an old Christian imprecation based on baptism – more charming than terrifying, like an tetchy old priest or nun might say. He says “my precioussss”, which as I have argued elsewhere is a common nursery endearment that children would find funny coming out of the mouth of a monster. He hisses or lisps, so that precious runs off with three extra s’s – providing another comic sound effect for the reader-aloud. He calls Bilbo “it”, “guessing” that the hobbit is either a feast or a morsel, a large or small meal – confirming that, for all the quaint mannerisms, Gollum is supposed to be a mortal threat who hopes or intends to kill and eat Bilbo. But he uses “choice” and “tasty” which continue the theme of “cute” diction that makes Gollum so odd a villain. All in all, an engaging character who promises us an adventure but who, for many reasons, we can’t take very seriously as a threat to Bilbo’s life. I. Or not … what do you think?

The “horrible swallowing noise” written as “gollum” is “how he got his name”.J. Who exactly gave him that name? And does Bilbo really jump to the conclusion that this thing is “named” Gollum, even though the thing never calls himself that?

“He always called himself ‘my precious’.K. Did Tolkien consider having this guy self-refer as “my dear”, “my sweet”, or “my goodness”, which are near-equivalents? The latter is even more ironical, and also has the same ‘-ss’ ending allowing for the lisping gag.

L. Would a more modern Gollum call himself “babe”?

It turns out that Gollum is “not really very hungry at the moment”, thus explaining his choice to talk to Bilbo rather than kill him on the spot.M. Is this particularly plausible to you? Because, given the particularly shaky calorie pyramid that Gollum sits at the top of, it isn’t to me.

“I am Mr. Bilbo Baggins. I have lost the dwarves and I have lost the wizard, and I don’t know where I am; and I don’t want to know, if only I can get away.”Bilbo’s answer is, if you think about it, just as opaque to Gollum as Gollum’s opening is him. “The dwarves”? “The wizard”? And to jump the gun a bit, in the subsequent book Gandalf complains that Bilbo “very foolishly” gave his full name to Gollum. N. Isn’t it classic Bilbo to give his full name as a dignified introduction, even in the absurd and panicked situation he is in? Is Gandalf being fair?

Gollum asks what the thing in Bilbo’s hand is, “which he did not quite like”. It’s hard to imagine what Gollum could be thinking the thing in Bilbo’s hand is, other than a (glowing?) sword with the point facing him.O. Is this over-the-top coy writing?

Once Bilbo identifies it as a sword, from Gondolin, Gollum “became quite polite”.P. Was it the information that, yes, it is a sword – or the information that it came from Gondolin – that changes Gollum’s approach?

Now Gollum, trying to be polite and “appear friendly”, calls Bilbo “ye” instead of “it” or “he”. He asks Bilbo to “sit and chat” and then proposes that they play at “riddles”. This is presented by the narrator as a kind of stalling tactic on Gollum’s part, until he can figure out what Bilbo is. The questions on Gollum’s mind are: is Bilbo really alone; is Bilbo “good to eat”; and is Gollum “really hungry”. The first is reasonable, but the latter two are just gags.Q. Are you enjoying Tolkien’s mix of quiet comedy and comfy adventure? How does he achieve the balance – what are his methods?

It seems that Riddles is the only game Gollum has ever played in his life – that he liked to ask them rather than guess them – and that he hasn’t played them since “long, long ago” before he entered the mountain caves after he “lost all his friends”. At that time, he played Riddles with “other funny creatures sitting in their holes”.R. Does this description remind you more of a kind of slimy Wind in the Willows setting, with Gollum, Moley, Frog and Badger, rather than some riverine Shire as was later retrofitted onto this story?

Bilbo agrees to a game, also desiring to stall until he finds out if Gollum is: really alone, “fierce or hungry”; and a friend of the goblins.S. Is “pity staying his hand”, so that Bilbo doesn’t just stab Gollum now – after hearing the creature’s opening words be a guess whether he’d be a “feast” or a “morsel”?

It is later remarked that Bilbo automatically knows just what the Riddle game is and how to play it.T. Is it a common game among English children in Tolkien’s time? I certainly never had heard of anyone playing it when I was a kid in the U.S. in the 1960s and was hearing this story for the first time.

"Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn't answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn't answer, we gives it a present, gollum!"

Anyway, the game is about to begin. I apologize for the delay in posting this week. I will try to catch up this weekend!

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

§25. So Gollum hissed:

R1G. “What has roots as nobody sees,

Is taller than trees,

Up, up it goes,

And yet never grows?”

§26. “Easy!” said Bilbo. “Mountain, I suppose.”

§27. “Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn’t answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes!”

§28. “All right!” said Bilbo, not daring to disagree, and nearly bursting his brain to think of riddles that could save him from being eaten.

R1B. “Thirty white horses on a red hill,

First they champ,

Then they stamp,

Then they stand still.”

[P. 86]; §29.That was all he could think of to ask—the idea of eating was rather on his mind. It was rather an old one, too, and Gollum knew the answer as well as you do.

§30. “Chestnuts, chestnuts,” he hissed. “Teeth! teeth! my preciousss; but we has only six!” Then he asked his second:

R2G. “Voiceless it cries,

Wingless flutters,

REPLACES: §27."Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn't answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn't answer, we gives it a present, gollum!"

Toothless bites,

Mouthless mutters.”

§31. “Half a moment!” cried Bilbo, who was still thinking uncomfortably about eating. Fortunately he had once heard something rather like this before, and getting his wits back he thought of the answer. “Wind, wind of course,” he said, and he was so pleased that he made up one on the spot. “This’ll puzzle the nasty little underground creature,” he thought:

R2B. “An eye in a blue face

Saw an eye in a green face.

“That eye is like to this eye”

Said the first eye,

“But in low place,

Not in high place.”

§32. “Ss, ss, ss,” said Gollum. He had been underground a long long time, and was forgetting this sort of thing. But just as Bilbo was beginning to hope that the wretch would not be able to answer, Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river, “Sss, sss, my preciouss,” he said. “Sun on the daisies it means, it does.”

REPLACES: §32. "Ss, ss, ss," said Gollum. He had been underground a long long time, and was forgetting this sort of thing. But just as Bilbo was beginning to wonder what Gollum's present would be like, Gollum brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river, "Sss, sss, my preciouss," he said. "Sun on the daisies it means, it does."

§33. But these ordinary aboveground everyday sort of riddles were tiring for him. Also they reminded him of days when he had been less lonely and sneaky and nasty, and that put [P. 87] him out of temper. What is more they made him hungry; so this time he tried something a bit more difficult and more unpleasant:

R3G. “It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.

It lies behind stars and under hills,

And empty holes it fills.

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter.”

§34.Unfortunately for Gollum Bilbo had heard that sort of thing before; and the answer was all round him anyway. “Dark!” he said without even scratching his head or putting on his thinking cap.

R3B. “A box without hinges, key, or lid,

Yet golden treasure inside is hid,”

§35. he asked to gain time, until he could think of a really hard one. This he thought a dreadfully easy chestnut, though he had not asked it in the usual words. But it proved a nasty poser for Gollum. He hissed to himself, and still he did not answer; he whispered and spluttered.

§36. After some while Bilbo became impatient. “Well, what is it?” he said. “The answer’s not a kettle boiling over, as you seem to think from the noise you are making.”

§37. “Give us a chance; let it give us a chance, my preciouss-ss-ss.”

§38. “Well,” said Bilbo, after giving him a long chance, “what about your guess?”

REPLACES: §38."Well," said Bilbo, after giving him a long chance, "what about your present?"

§39.But suddenly Gollum remembered thieving from nests long ago, and sitting under the river bank teaching his grandmother, teaching his grandmother to suck“Eggses!” he hissed. “Eggses it is!” Then he asked:

[P. 88] R4G. “Alive without breath,

As cold as death;

Never thirsty, ever drinking,

All in mail never clinking.”

§40.He also in his turn thought this was a dreadfully easy one, because he was always thinking of the answer. But he could not remember anything better at the moment, he was so flustered by the egg-question. All the same it was a poser for poor Bilbo, who never had anything to do with the water if he could help it. I imagine you know the answer, of course, or can guess it as easy as winking, since you are sitting comfortably at home and have not the danger of being eaten to disturb your thinking. Bilbo sat and cleared his throat once or twice, but no answer came.

§41. After a while Gollum began to hiss with pleasure to himself: “Is it nice, my preciousss? Is it juicy? Is it scrumptiously crunchable?” He began to peer at Bilbo out of the darkness.

§42. “Half a moment,” said the hobbit shivering. “I gave you a good long chance just now.”

§43. “It must make haste, haste!” said Gollum, beginning to climb out of his boat on to the shore to get at Bilbo. But when he put his long webby foot in the water, a fish jumped out in a fright and fell on Bilbo’s toes.

§44. “Ugh!” he said, “it is cold and clammy!”and so he guessed. “Fish! Fish!” he cried. “It is fish!”

§45. Gollum was dreadfully disappointed; but Bilbo asked another riddle as quick as ever he could, so that Gollum had to get back into his boat and think.

R4B. “No-legs lay on one-leg, two-legs sat near on three-legs, four-legs got some.”

§46. It was not really the right time for this riddle, but Bilbo was in a hurry. Gollum might have had some trouble guessing [P. 89] it, if he had asked it at another time. As it was, talking of fish, “no-legs” was not so very difficult, and after that the rest was easy. “Fish on a little table, man at table sitting on a stool, the cat has the bones”that of course is the answer, and Gollum soon gave it. Then he thought the time had come to ask something hard and horrible. This is what he said:

R5G. “This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats high mountain down.”

§47. Poor Bilbo sat in the dark thinking of all the horrible names of all the giants and ogres he had ever heard told of in tales, but not one of them had done all these things. He had a feeling that the answer was quite different and that he ought to know it, but he could not think of it. He began to get frightened, and that is bad for thinking. Gollum began to get out of his boat. He flapped into the water and paddled to the bank; Bilbo could see his eyes coming towards him. His tongue seemed to stick in his mouth; he wanted to shout out: “Give me more time! Give me time!” But all that came out with a sudden squeal was:

“Time! Time!”

§48. Bilbo was saved by pure luck. For that of course was the answer.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012 (posted Friday, August 10)

** The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark”** 3. – “It must have a competition with us, my preciouss!”

At this point, Bilbo has accepted Gollum’s offer to play at Riddles. He lets Gollum go first, for lack of any ideas of his own. Gollum opens with:

R1G. “What has roots as nobody sees,

Is taller than trees,

Up, up it goes,

And yet never grows?”

[I have identified the Riddles with a short code for reference: R for riddle; 1 for the sequence of paired riddles in the story; in each contesting pair G is for Gollum going first and B is for Bilbo responding.]

Bilbo claims that is easy, and says “Mountain, I suppose.” A. Is it easy? Did you get it when you first read it, before reading the answer in the next line? Why does Bilbo get this one instantly, but will struggle to think of several of the others?

Gollum seems pleased that Bilbo has a competitive spirit for Riddles, and proposes “a competition”. Based on the rule of “the one asks…the other doesn’t answer”, either Gollum wins and eats Bilbo, or Bilbo wins and gets a present from Gollum.B. Does it make sense that Gollum expects Bilbo to abandon his sword and agree to be killed and eaten, if he loses a game – even a game of honor?

WAIT! Hold the phone! Did I say Bilbo “gets a present” if he wins? No, of course not – if Bilbo wins, Gollum will do “what it wants…We shows it the way out, yes!”

Yes, this is the beginning of the famous re-write. In 1947, Tolkien sent a typed copy of the first book of The Lord of the Rings to his publisher to show them that his sequel actually existed after ten years of work. One comment that Rayner Unwin made was that Gandalf’s explanation of Gollum’s finding the Ring and losing it to Bilbo did not make much sense compared to the account in The Hobbit. Tolkien (in Letters, #109) grumbled that Gandalf was doing pretty well given the circumstances; that probably he, Tolkien, would shorten and rewrite LotR I.2 (‘The Shadow of the Past’) to elide the problem, but the better solution would be to revise the ‘Riddles’ chapter in The Hobbit – a solution that was out of the question due to costs, he supposed. Nevertheless, later that year he sent along some minor proof-type corrections for a future reprinting of The Hobbit, and with these, “(for the possible amusement of yourself and Rayner) a specimen of re-writing of Chapter V of [The Hobbit], which would simplify, though not necessarily improve, my present task [of finishing LotR].” (Letters, #111).C. Why did Tolkien do this? What does he mean by “specimen”?

Well, the rest is history, of course. Three years later the publishers had decided to re-issue The Hobbit in the improved post-war economy, and they sent Tolkien the proofs. He was shocked, shocked to discover that his notes on a re-write for Chapter V had been set in type, radically changing the story of Bilbo and Gollum and the Ring. He pissed and moaned that now he would have to rewrite Chapter 2 (“most of a chapter”, he speculates) of LotR I, because it had been written to work with the original Hobbit. (Letters, #128)D. Does anyone know if he did, in fact, re-write ‘The Shadow of the Past’ in 1950-53 to catch up with his own changes to The Hobbit?

But in reality, he almost immediately convinced himself that the new version was “better, in motive and narrative” (Letters, #128) and after passing the proofs around, he somewhat grudgingly conceded that “Such people as I have consulted think the alteration is in itself an improvement (apart from the question of a sequel). That is something.” (ibid., #129).E. We have just begin to read the altered portion of the chapter – but do you have a feeling, based on what we’ve read of The Hobbit so far, that the new and more aggressive Gollum and the more sinister Ring are “better” from a literary point of view, and not just because they cohere with the LotR?

Well, that question can’t really be answered unless you’ve read the original version, can it! I confess I am in the now-tiny minority of readers who were raised on the old Hobbit – I have an aging child’s sentimental soft spot for the creepy but endearing “old Gollum” and his “present”. So, for reference, here is a chart of the comparative changes, which I will refer to going forward. http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/F. This chart aside, have you read the earlier version before? Straight through as part of the chapter, or in excerpt?

So, to continue! Bilbo agrees to Gollum’s contest, and “nearly bursts his brain” to come up with riddles that “could save him from being eaten.”G. What exactly is a “riddle”? Do they have to rhyme? Is there a format or length? How does one differ from a “puzzle” or, as it happens, a mere “question”?

Bilbo says,R1B. “Thirty white horses on a red hill,

First they champ,

Then they stamp,

Then they stand still.”

This the narrator tells us is “an old one” that came to Bilbo’s mind because he was hungry. Gollum, it seems, “knew the answer as well as you do.”H. As well as who does?

My sources (Tolkien and John Rateliff) agree that this is the one riddle in the chapter that was a commonplace example from our real world, at least at the time of writing. I. Does this place Bilbo’s world and our world on the same plane, and take us out of the fairy-tale world of hobbits, dwarves, wizards and dragons?

Gollum gets that the answer is ______________ (you already know it, right?), and comes back with:R2G. “Voiceless it cries,

Wingless flutters,

Toothless bites,

Mouthless mutters.”

Bilbo at first is flustered, but “got his wits back” because “he had once heard something like this before”. It is (“of course”) the wind.

Ah. We may say that the wind mutters, or flutters; the wind cries; it bites. Yet it doesn’t actually do any of those things, which are actions of a body. Doesn’t it seem that riddles, at least as Tolkien presents them, are playing with the power of language to make metaphors? Thus, to imagine a riddle, think of some picturesque phrase or phrases that can’t be taken literally. Then make a verse asking the listener to identify the subject of the phrase, entirely from clues in the metaphorical usage.J. Just speculating here – any takers or comments?

K. Do such riddles become easier or harder if one is listening rather than reading on a page?

Bilbo starts to strategize: knowing that Gollum lives underground, he “makes one up on the spot” that refers to a setting Gollum won’t imagine easily:R2B. “An eye in a blue face

Saw an eye in a green face.

“That eye is like to this eye”

Said the first eye,

“But in low place,

Not in high place.”

Truly Gollum is puzzled, but finally he brings up childhood memories of “ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river”. Then he realizes that the answer is “Sun on the daisies.”L. It turns out that “daisy” is descended from “day’s eye”, a reference to the sun – did you get that?

Just to speculate on a riddle whose twist is a detail of English etymology. If as Tolkien would sometimes have us believe, this book was “translated” by him from Bilbo’s memoirs which were written in (according to the LotR appendices) Westron, a Third Age patois of Númenórean, Sindarin, and the Valar only know what else – K. If not Daisy as a wordplay on Day’s Eye, then what was this riddle about originally?

At this point comes the first emendation of the text to accommodate the change in Gollum’s terms of competition. Originally, while Gollum struggled to remember the outside world, “Bilbo was beginning to wonder what Gollum's present would be like”. That doesn’t work now, and the present reading is “Bilbo was beginning to hope that the wretch would not be able to answer”. http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change2L. Which version fits the story better: Bilbo imagining a pleasant reward for his victory, or Bilbo imagining the defeat of an enemy?

Gollum fights back hard. The riddles up to now have been of the “aboveground everyday sort.” These are “tiring” him, and also remind him of better days, when “he had been less lonely and sneaky and nasty”. He resents this and is also starting to get hungry! M. How does the idea of a monster wishing he was less awful, but hating the feeling that results, fit into The Hobbit? Is this a typical nursery tale for kids?

N. In what other books might children of the Tolkien family have been exposed to the pathos of the human condition along these lines?

Anyway, Gollum is starting to feel mean, so he “tried something a bit more difficult and unpleasant”:R3G. “It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,

Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.

It lies behind stars and under hills,

And empty holes it fills.

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, kills laughter.”

Bilbo gets it immediately, partly because he “has heard that sort of thing before” (just as he had the “Wind” one, R2G above), and partly because he is sitting in pitch-black darkness – for the answer is “Dark”.

It is to “gain time, until he could think of a really hard one” that Bilbo asks his next short one, a “dreadfully easy chestnut” as he thinks, although “he had not asked it in the usual words”:R3B. “A box without hinges, key, or lid,

Yet golden treasure inside is hid,”

But Gollum cannot make it out! He hisses and whispers and sputters, until Bilbo actually makes a joke about the answer not being a tea-kettle. Again, a small change was made in the text here because Bilbo imagined winning the contest entirely in terms of getting a “present” from Gollum. Now instead of asking “what about your present?”, he asks “what about your guess?”O. Does it matter much that Bilbo goes from assuming he’s won, to simply nagging his opponent?

Not to be too niggly – my point is I think Tolkien actually cared about such niceties of storytelling detail. To me, these changes confirm that they are from a first draft that went to publication without a chance for him to consider the full nuances of his rewrite.

Anyway, Gollum finally (again) remembers his childhood “thieving from nests” and “sitting under the river bank” teaching his grandmother to suck eggs – and “Eggs” is the answer.P. What is the joke here?

Gollum is flustered, and asks one that he in turn thinks is too easy:R4G. “Alive without breath,

As cold as death;

Never thirsty, ever drinking,

All in mail never clinking.”

Bilbo, who is not a water-man and is feeling rather threatened by the general situation, cannot think this one through. The narrator inserts this semi-helpful comment: “I imagine you know the answer, of course, or can guess it as easy as winking, since you are sitting comfortably at home and have not the danger of being eaten to disturb your thinking.”Q. Why does the narrator interject a comment like this, just now?

R. Is Bilbo in danger of being eaten alive? Or will Gollum kill him first, which is bad enough but not as purely horrifying and painful to contemplate. And why is Bilbo so lacking in confidence in his sword?

Gollum begins to talk about how Bilbo will taste! Bilbo asks for more time, as he gave to Gollum on the eggs riddle, but Gollum is getting greedy and starts to climb out of his boat “to get at Bilbo”.S. Did you remember that Gollum has been in his boat the entire time? Because I didn’t – nor did any of the many illustrators of this iconic scene, as far as I can remember. But are there any actual clues in the text that have given us the impression that Gollum has been sitting on the ground next to Bilbo all this time?

In any case, this move of Gollum’s is ill-timed, because he disturbs a fish, who jumps out and lands on Bilbo’s feet. This inspires him to realize the riddle’s answer is – “Fish!” And quickly he calls out his own riddle, “so that Gollum had to get back into his boat and think”:R4B. “No-legs lay on one-leg, two-legs sat near on three-legs, four-legs got some.”

The problem with this one is, the previous subject had been fish, and fish have no legs. Thus Gollum pieces it together quickly, when it might have quite tough otherwise. He gives it as “Fish on a little table, man at table sitting on a stool, the cat has the bones.”

This one has always reminded me of the Sphinx’s riddle to Oedipus. T. Is it a common type of riddle – and if so, why would it have been trouble for Gollum at another time?

Gollum now plays to kill – or so we’re given to understand. “He thought the time had come to ask something hard and horrible.”R5G. “This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town,

And beats high mountain down.”

This baffles Bilbo completely. He knows instinctively that the answer is not of the “giants and ogres” sort, but he can’t put his finger on it. His wits get muddled with the fear of losing. Gollum gets out of the boat, into the water, and paddles towards Bilbo – his eyes getting closer and closer in the darkness.U. Is this the most suspenseful moment in the chapter? Do children get scared at this point?

But Bilbo saves himself by squealing for more time, and only getting out the words “Time! Time!” And that is the answer, “of course”.

And with our reading audience on the edge of its seat or hiding half under a pillow, that’s it for now – in my next post, the riddle game comes to its end and then the real drama begins. One final question:V. If you’ve ever read this aloud to a child, does the writing lend itself to a dramatic performance or is it too complex to fight with? Do the kids ever get the riddles, or do you just give them a chance to think and then read on to the answers?

Thursday, August 9, 2012

§49. Gollum was disappointed once more; and now he was getting angry, and also tired of the game. It had made him very hungry indeed. This time he did not go back to the boat. He sat down in the dark by Bilbo. That made the hobbit most dreadfully uncomfortable and scattered his wits.

[P. 90]; §50. “It’s got to ask uss a quesstion, my preciouss, yes, yess, yesss. Jusst one more quesstion to guess, yes, yess,” said Gollum.

§51. But Bilbo simply could not think of any question with that nasty wet cold thing sitting next to him, and pawing and poking him. He scratched himself, he pinched himself; still he could not think of anything.

§52. “Ask us! ask us!” said Gollum.

§53. Bilbo pinched himself and slapped himself; he gripped on his little sword; he even felt in his pocket with his other hand. There he found the ring he had picked up in the passage and forgotten about.

§54. “What have I got in my pocket?” he said aloud. He was talking to himself, but Gollum thought it was a riddle, and he was frightfully upset.

§55. “Not fair! not fair!” he hissed. “It isn’t fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it’s got in its nassty little pocketses?”

§56. Bilbo seeing what had happened and having nothing better to ask stuck to his question. “What have I got in my pocket?” he said louder.

§57. “S-s-s-s-s,” hissed Gollum. “It must give us three guesseses, my preciouss, three guesseses.”

§58. “Very well! Guess away!” said Bilbo.

§59. “Handses!” said Gollum.

§60. “Wrong,” said Bilbo, who had luckily just taken his hand out again. “Guess again!”

§61. “S-s-s-s-s,” said Gollum more upset than ever. He thought of all the things he kept in his own pockets: fishbones, goblins’ teeth, wet shells, a bit of bat-wing, a sharp stone to sharpen his fangs on, and other nasty things. He tried to think what other people kept in their pockets.

§62. “Knife!” he said at last.

§63. “Wrong!” said Bilbo, who had lost his some time ago. “Last guess!”

[P. 91]; §64.Now Gollum was in a much worse state than when Bilbo had asked him the egg-question. He hissed and spluttered and rocked himself backwards and forwards, and slapped his feet on the floor, and wriggled and squirmed; but still he did not dare to waste his last guess.

§65. “Come on!” said Bilbo. “I am waiting!” He tried to sound bold and cheerful, but he did not feel at all sure how the game was going to end, whether Gollum guessed right or not.

§66. “Time’s up!” he said.

§67. “String, or nothing!” shrieked Gollum, which was not quite fairworking in two guesses at once.

§68a. “Both wrong,” cried Bilbo very much relieved; and he jumped at once to his feet, put his back to the nearest wall, and held out his little sword. He knew, of course, that the riddle-game was sacred and of immense antiquity, and even wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played at it. But he felt he could not trust this slimy thing to keep any promise at a pinch. Any excuse would do for him to slide out of it. And after all that last question had not been a genuine riddle according to the ancient laws.

§68b. But at any rate Gollum did not at once attack him. He could see the sword in Bilbo’s hand. He sat still, shivering and whispering. At last Bilbo could wait no longer.

REPLACES: §68. "Both wrong," cried Bilbo very much relieved; and he jumped at once to his feet, put his back to the nearest wall, and held out his little sword. But funnily enough he need not have been alarmed. For one thing Gollum had learned long long ago was never, never, to cheat at the riddle-game, which is a sacred one and of immense antiquity. Also there was the sword. He simply sat and whispered.

§69. “Well?” he said. “What about your promise? I want to go. You must show me the way.”

REPLACES: §69. "What about the present? asked Bilbo, not that he cared very much, still he felt that he had won it, pretty fairly, and in very difficult circumstances too.

§70a. “Did we say so, precious? Show the nassty little Baggins the way out, yes, yes. But what has it got in its pocketses, eh? Not string, precious, but not nothing. Oh no! gollum!”

§70b. “Never you mind,” said Bilbo. “A promise is a promise.”

§70c. “Cross it is, impatient, precious,” hissed Gollum. “But it must wait, yes it must. We can’t go up the tunnels so hasty. We must go and get some things first, yes, things to help us.”

[P. 92]; §70d. “Well, hurry up!” said Bilbo, relieved to think of Gollum going away. He thought he was just making an excuse and did not mean to come back. What was Gollum talking about? What useful thing could he keep out on the dark lake? But he was wrong. Gollum did mean to come back. He was angry now and hungry. And he was a miserable wicked creature, and already he had a plan.

§70e. Not far away was his island, of which Bilbo knew nothing, and there in his hiding-place he kept a few wretched oddments, and one very beautiful thing, very beautiful, very wonderful. He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring.

§70f. “My birthday-present!” he whispered to himself, as he had often done in the endless dark days. “That’s what we wants now, yes; we wants it!”

§70g. He wanted it because it was a ring of power, and if you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible; only in the full sunlight could you be seen, and then only by your shadow, and that would be shaky and faint.

§70h. “My birthday-present! It came to me on my birthday, my precious,” So he had always said to himself. But who knows how Gollum came by that present, ages ago in the old days when

such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said. Gollum used to wear it at first, till it tired him; and then he kept it in a pouch next his skin, till it galled him; and now usually he hid it in a hole in the rock on his island, and was always going back to look at it. And still sometimes he put it on, when he could not bear to be parted from it any longer, or when he was very, very, hungry, and tired of fish. Then he would creep along dark passages looking for stray goblins. He might even venture into places where the torches were lit and made his eyes blink and smart; for he would be safe. Oh yes, quite safe. No one would see him, no one would notice him, till he had his fingers on [P. 93] their throat. Only a few hours ago he had worn it, and caught a small goblin-imp. How it squeaked! He still had a bone or two left to gnaw, but he wanted something softer.

§70i. “Quite safe, yes,” he whispered to himself. “It won’t see us, will it, my precious? No. It won’t see us, and its nassty little sword will be useless, yes quite.”

§70j. That is what was in his wicked little mind, as he slipped suddenly from Bilbo’s side, and flapped back to his boat, and went off into the dark. Bilbo thought he had heard the last of him. Still he waited a while; for he had no idea how to find his way out alone.

§70k. Suddenly he heard a screech. It sent a shiver down his back. Gollum was cursing and wailing away in the gloom, not very far off by the sound of it. He was on his island, scrabbling here and there, searching and seeking in vain.

REPLACES: §70. "Must we give it the thing, preciouss? Yess, we must! We must fetch it, preciouss, and give it the present we promised." So Gollum paddled back to his boat, and Bilbo thought he had heard the last of him. But he had not. The hobbit was just thinking of going back up the passage—having had quite enough of Gollum and the dark water's edge—when he heard him wailing and squeaking away in the gloom. He was on his island (of which, of course, Bilbo knew nothing), scrabbling here and there, searching and seeking in vain, and turning out his pockets.

Thursday, August 9, 2012, posted Monday August 13

** The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark”** 4. – “My birthday-present! It came to me on my birthday, my precious”We are continuing from the point where Bilbo has just guessed Gollum’s last and hardest riddle, the one whose answer is coincidentally Bilbo’s panicked plea for more “TIME!”

Gollum is getting angry and hungry. He does not return to his boat, but sits by Bilbo, which unnerves the hobbit. Gollum demands, “It’s got to ask uss a question, my preciouss, yes, yess, yesss. Just one more question to guess, yes, yess.”

As at the beginning of the contest, Gollum here characterizes the riddle game as “asking a question” instead of “saying or reciting a riddle-verse.” And we are told that Bilbo “simply could not think of any question…”A. Is this the author’s device for allowing Bilbo the leeway to get away with what is about to happen: literally asking a question instead of giving a true riddle?

B. Why the additional hissing s’s in this speech of Gollum’s? Doesn’t he hiss like this all the time?

Repeatedly Bilbo “pinches himself”, and slaps and scratches himself, as he tries to think of a riddle. Meanwhile Gollum is “pawing and poking him.”C. Why all this sudden physicality?

In his distracted and desperate state, Bilbo “even felt in his pocket” – and finds the ring there. He asks himself “What have I got in my pocket?” out loud, but not as a question to Gollum. According to the narrator, “he was talking to himself.” But Gollum takes this to be the “question”, that is, the riddle, he has been waiting for.D. I find this musing out loud in the middle of a deadly-tense confrontation to be rather contrived and unbelievable. Do you? Why does Bilbo not simply make up a rhyming riddle on the spot, that is based on the ring in his pocket?

Gollum calls this “not fair!” but Bilbo goes with what he’s got and repeats the question, thus insisting that it counts as his riddle. Gollum accepts with an extended hiss, but demands three guesses and Bilbo agrees.E. Is three guesses the traditional number? Why not two, or five, for instance?

F. Does Gollum’s ready acceptance of Bilbo’s question on condition of multiple guesses – along with his repeated use of the phrase “ask a question” in his setting of the rules of the game – indicate that this is an understood variation within the riddle game? Or does his first reaction (“Not fair!”) suggest otherwise?

The contest’s terms were “if you/I ask, and I/you don’t answer, you/I win”. There is no allowance for a contestant failing to ask. Yet it would seem clear that failure to ask constitutes a forfeit and a loss.G. Why does Gollum accept Bilbo’s question as a riddle, if he doesn’t have to according to the “rules”? Couldn’t he just attack and eat Bilbo as soon as Bilbo asks a question instead of stating a riddle?

Gollum cannot guess what is in Bilbo’s pocket. He tries “hands”, and then “knife” – after inventorying the contents of “his own pockets” (“fishbones, goblins’ teeth, wet shells, a bit of bat-wing, a sharp stone to sharpen his fangs on, and other nasty things”) and racking his brains to “think what other people kept in their pockets”.H. Wait… Gollum has pockets? Is this consistent with our mental image of Gollum up to this point?

I. Any comments on the items in those pockets? Why does he not remember his ring, which we will soon learn he had “kept in a pouch next his skin” for a time?

Gollum has one last guess, and goes through his own set of rather comic contortions: “He hissed and spluttered and rocked himself backwards and forwards, and slapped his feet on the floor, and wriggled and squirmed”.J. Is this a joking description of a small child acting out his frustration with some impossible task?

Bilbo calls “Time’s up!” and Gollum yells (actually shrieks) “String, or nothing!”. The narrator comments this was “not quite fair” to state two guesses at once, but Bilbo cheerfully says “Both wrong”, thus accepting the validity of a double guess.

K. What if one of Gollum’s guesses had been right, but the other one had been wrong: “String, or a ring!” Could Bilbo honestly say “wrong a third time” by choosing which one counted as the third?

Bilbo backs up to “the nearest wall” and holds out his sword – unsure what Gollum will do now that he has lost. The narrator comments that Bilbo “knew, of course” that “even wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played at it” – because the game “was sacred and of immense antiquity.”L. How does Bilbo know that wicked creatures – goblins, dragons, trolls, etc. – play the riddle game honestly?

Bilbo’s problem is that, for all he knows, Gollum is even more evil than the standard “wicked creatures”, and more to the point, the last question had “not been a genuine riddle according to the ancient laws” so that Gollum had a ready excuse for not conceding his loss gracefully.M. “Sacred”, “immense antiquity”, “ancient laws” – what kind of game is this? Are there any other games in the world of The Hobbit that are equally holy?

N. Is Tolkien having fun with children’s tendency to ascribe great antiquity to any custom they learn in the schoolyard from older children? Or how they put great authority in any casual rule their parents lay down, so that exceptions or holes in the rule can be cleverly taken advantage of?

O. Or, from his professional knowledge, is he referring to apparently childish games and rituals in our everyday lives that we unconsciously regard as sacred and that do in fact go back to the origins of our culture?

OKAY, at this point Tolkien seriously began to tackle the problem of the Ring in his 1947 revision of this chapter. The following section of the narrative, from Bilbo saying “Both wrong” to the goblin guards at the gate being amazed at his sudden disappearance, was extensively rewritten, and expanded from five pages (12 paragraphs) to ten (51 paragraphs). I will refer to the earlier version from time to time as part of our discussion of the later (and now authoritative) version, because I think the changes reveal interesting things about Tolkien’s process as a writer. They also illustrate the differences between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – which, it is arguable, this segment of this chapter is actually a part of, since the rewrite was driven entirely by the need to make the episode consistent with the latter book.

To start with, in this passage http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change4 the earlier Gollum never had the slightest intention of betraying his word – “funnily enough”, as Tolkien explains: “one thing Gollum had learned long long ago was never, never, to cheat at the riddle-game, which is a sacred one and of immense antiquity. Also there was the sword.” The emphasis in the revised paragraph is on Bilbo’s fear of Gollum. The emphasis in the original is on Gollum’s fear of Bilbo. The emotional tenor of this first moment after Bilbo’s victory has changed.

What has happened, or rather, what is about to happen? Tolkien in his revision has to take a different route entirely from what he had written originally, where Gollum had promised to give Bilbo a “present”. At this point in the original he is realizing that he will have to follow through, in honor of his promise. The newer story lays down here the fundamental idea expressed by Frodo in LotR I.2: “Gollum meant to cheat all the time.”P. As Gollum sits still, “shivering and whispering”, what is going through his mind? What was going through his mind in the original version?

Impatient and anxious to get on with the business of the competition, Bilbo in both versions http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change5 demands that Gollum render satisfaction. What follows is the first substantial expansion of the text in the revision http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change6, with 11 paragraphs replacing one. First Gollum bitterly asks Bilbo what the answer was: what was in his pocket? “Not string, precious, but not nothing. Oh no! gollum!”Q. What does Gollum mean by this kind of leading questioning? Does he suspect the truth yet?

Bilbo says, never mind, keep your promise. Gollum snidely says he can’t just go up the tunnels before he gets “some things first, yes, things to help us.” Although Bilbo thinks Gollum is making an excuse to disappear and not help him after all, in fact an indistinct but omniscient narrative voice takes over and seemingly gives us Gollum’s thought-processes as a form of exposition. Gollum intends to come back for sure, because “already he had a plan.” He thinks about the island where he keeps his “birthday-present”, a “ring, a golden ring, a precious ring.” Alternating with Gollum whispering to himself in dialogue (“My birthday-present!”), the narration explains that the ring is a “ring of power”, which makes you invisible when you wear it (except in full sunlight). R. “If you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible…” Why does the voice of the writing slip into the second person (“you”) just here?

The “birthday present” is said to be Gollum’s term for it, but the narrator doubts the truth of that will ever be known, not even by “the Master who ruled [such rings].”S. Is all this exposition relevant to The Hobbit, aside from its obvious foreshadowing of events and facts developed only in The Lord of the Rings? Did Tolkien rewrite in more depth than he had to?

Continuing with this inner/outer monologue…T. Who is telling this part of the tale, the narrator or Gollum?

…we are told that Gollum at first wore it all the time “until it tired him” – then “kept it in a pouch next his skin, till it galled him” – and “now usually he hid it in a hole in the rock on his island”, although he is constantly drawn to look at it and wear it.U. Hearing of the apparently toxic qualities of the ring, are we supposed to start worrying about Bilbo?

Gollum, we are told, used it to hunt goblins even in their lit quarters, because he was safely invisible. “Oh yes, quite safe.” He had in fact strangled and eaten “a small goblin-imp” just a few hours ago. Now he “wanted something softer,” i.e., Bilbo to eat.

A few thoughts. Now we know how the ring came to be found far away up the tunnels where Bilbo found it, but we still don’t know how the ring fell unnoticed from Gollum’s finger especially when he is so attuned to it that he cannot bear to be without it for long. Nor do we know why he goes from not being particularly hungry – having just eaten an entire small goblin, apparently – at the beginning of the contest, to surpassingly hungry near the end when begins to poke and prod Bilbo.V. Are these contradictions legacies of the fact that Tolkien only rewrote this part of the chapter and neglected to fully rethink all the threads of story that he had laid down in the earlier parts?

We definitely come back to Gollum’s point of view now, when he gloatingly whispers that Bilbo’s sword will be “useless, yes quite” once Gollum becomes invisible. “That is what was in his wicked little mind” as he slips off in his boat to his island. Bilbo waits in the darkness, assuming Gollum is gone for good, and

considers how he will escape now, when “suddenly he heard a screech.” Gollum is “cursing and wailing away in the gloom…scrabbling here and there, searching and seeking in vain.”

W. Does this exposition about the ring, expressed as part monologue, part narration, work well here or does it feel misshapen or misplaced?

To review the original writing at this point, all of the above from the point where Gollum asks what actually was in Bilbo’s pocket, is actually one paragraph. In it, Gollum admits to himself he will have to give up “the thing…the present we promised”, leaves Bilbo to go to his island; Bilbo assumes Gollum is gone for good and “was just thinking of going back up the passage”; and then he hears Gollum “wailing and squeaking away in the gloom… scrabbling here and there, searching and seeking in vain, and turning out his pockets.” In short, all of Gollum’s treacherous thoughts of murder and revenge and all of his reflections on the magical ring, are what was added here. Not only was the original Gollum going to give Bilbo the ring had he been able to, it seems that Bilbo, in the original, was quite prepared to find his own way out.X. Although we will continue to explore this subject, what do you feel so far about the way in which the tone and dynamics of the chapter’s plot are changing due to the revision?

Friday, August 10, 2012

§71. “Where is it? Where iss it?” Bilbo heard him crying. “Losst it is, my precious, lost, lost! Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!”

REPLACES: §71."Where iss it? Where iss it?" Bilbo heard him squeaking. "Lost, lost, my preciouss, lost, lost! Bless us and splash us! We haven't the present we promised, and we haven't even got it for ourselves."

§72a. “What’s the matter?” Bilbo called. “What have you lost?”

§72b. “It mustn’t ask us,” shrieked Gollum. “Not its business, no, gollum! It’s losst, gollum, gollum, gollum.”

§72c. “Well, so am I,” cried Bilbo, “and I want to get unlost. And I won the game, and you promised. So come along! Come and let me out, and then go on with your looking!”

§72d.Utterly miserable as Gollum sounded, Bilbo could not find much pity in his heart, and he had a feeling that anything Gollum wanted so much could hardly be something good. “Come along!” he shouted.

§72e. “No, not yet, precious!” Gollum answered. “We must search for it, it’s lost, gollum.”

§72f. “But you never guessed my last question, and you promised,” said Bilbo.

§72g. “Never guessed!” said Gollum. Then suddenly out of [P. 94] the gloom came a sharp hiss. “What has it got in its pocketses? Tell us that. It must tell first.”

REPLACES: §72-1. Bilbo turned round and waited, wondering what it could be that the creature was making such a fuss about. This proved very fortunate afterwards. For Gollum came back and made a tremendous spluttering and whispering and croaking; and in the end Bilbo gathered that Gollum had had a ring—a wonderful, beautiful ring, a ring that he had been given for a birthday present, ages and ages before in the old days when such rings were less uncommon. Sometimes he had it in his pocket; usually he kept it in a little hole in the rock on his island; sometimes he wore it—when he was very, very hungry, and tired of fish, and crept along dark passages looking for stray goblins. Then he might even venture into places where the torches were lit and made his eyes blink and smart; for he would be safe. Oh yes! very nearly safe; for if you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible; only in the sunlight could you be seen, and then only by your shadow, and that was a faint and shaky sort of shadow.

§72-2. I don't know how many times Gollum begged Bilbo's pardon. He kept on saying: "We are ssorry; we didn't mean to cheat, we meant to give it our only only pressent, if it won the competition." He even offered to catch Bilbo some nice juicy fish to eat as a consolation.

§72-3. Bilbo shuddered at the thought of it. "No thank you!" he said as politely as he could.

§73a. As far as Bilbo knew, there was no particular reason why he should not tell. Gollum’s mind had jumped to a guess quicker than his; naturally, for Gollum had brooded for ages on this one thing, and he was always afraid of its being stolen. But Bilbo was annoyed at the delay. After all, he had won the game, pretty fairly, at a horrible risk. “Answers were to be guessed not given,” he said.

§73b. “But it wasn’t a fair question,” said Gollum. “Not a riddle, precious, no.”

§73c. “Oh well, if it’s a matter of ordinary questions,” Bilbo replied, “then I asked one first. What have you lost? Tell me that!”

§73d. “What has it got in its pocketses?” The sound came hissing louder and sharper, and as he looked towards it, to his alarm Bilbo now saw two small points of light peering at him. As suspicion grew in Gollum’s mind, the light of his eyes burned with a pale flame.

§73e. “What have you lost?” Bilbo persisted. But now the light in Gollum’s eyes had become a green fire, and it was coming swiftly nearer. Gollum was in his boat again, paddling wildly back to the dark shore; and such a rage of loss and suspicion was in his heart that no sword had any more terror for him.

§73f. Bilbo could not guess what had maddened the wretched creature, but he saw that all was up, and that Gollum meant to murder him at any rate. Just in time he turned and ran blindly back up the dark passage down which he had come, keeping close to the wall and feeling it with his left hand.

§73g. “What has it got in its pocketses?” he heard the hiss loud behind him, and the splash as Gollum leapt from his boat.

§73h. “What have I, I wonder?” he said to himself, as he panted and stumbled along. He put his left hand in his pocket. The [P. 95] ring felt very cold as it quietly slipped on to his groping forefinger.

§73i. The hiss was close behind him. He turned now and saw Gollum’s eyes like small green lamps coming up the slope. Terrified he tried to run faster, but suddenly he struck his toes on a snag in the floor, and fell flat with his little sword under him.

§73j. In a moment Gollum was on him. But before Bilbo could do anything, recover his breath, pick himself up, or wave his sword, Gollum passed by, taking no notice of him, cursing and whispering as he ran.

§73k. What could it mean? Gollum could see in the dark. Bilbo could see the light of his eyes palely shining even from behind. Painfully he got up, and sheathed his sword, which was now glowing faintly again, then very cautiously he followed. There seemed nothing else to do. It was no good crawling back down to Gollum’s water. Perhaps if he followed him, Gollum might lead him to some way of escape without meaning to.

§73l. “Curse it! curse it! curse it!” hissed Gollum. “Curse the Baggins! It’s gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He’s found it, yes he must have. My birthday-present.”

§73m. Bilbo pricked up his ears. He was at last beginning to guess himself. He hurried a little, getting as close as he dared behind Gollum, who was still going quickly, not looking back, but turning his head from side to side, as Bilbo could see from the faint glimmer on the walls.

§73n. “My birthday-present! Curse it! How did we lose it, my precious? Yes, that’s it. When we came this way last, when we twisted that nassty young squeaker. That’s it. Curse it! It slipped from us, after all these ages and ages! It’s gone, gollum.”

§73o. Suddenly Gollum sat down and began to weep, a whistling [P. 96] and gurgling sound horrible to listen to. Bilbo halted and flattened himself against the tunnel-wall. After a while Gollum stopped weeping and began to talk. He seemed to be having an argument with himself.

§73p. “It’s no good going back there to search, no. We doesn’t remember all the places we’ve visited. And it’s no use. The Baggins has got it in its pocketses; the nassty noser has found it, we says.”

§73q. “We guesses, precious, only guesses. We can’t know till we find the nassty creature and squeezes it. But it doesn’t know what the present can do, does it? It’ll just keep it in its pocketses. It doesn’t know, and it can’t go far. It’s lost itself, the nassty nosey thing. It doesn’t know the way out. It said so.”

§73r. “It said so, yes; but it’s tricksy. It doesn’t say what it means. It won’t say what it’s got in its pocketses. It knows. It knows a way in, it must know a way out, yes. It’s off to the back-door. To the back-door, that’s it.”

§73s. “The goblinses will catch it then. It can’t get out that way, precious.”

§73t. “Ssss, sss, gollum! Goblinses! Yes, but if it’s got the present, our precious present, then goblinses will get it, gollum! They’ll find it, they’ll find out what it does. We shan’t ever be safe again, never, gollum! One of the goblinses will put it on, and then no one will see him. He’ll be there but not seen. Not even our clever eyeses will notice him; and he’ll come creepsy and tricksy and catch us, gollum, gollum!”

§73u. “Then let’s stop talking, precious, and make haste. If the Baggins has gone that way, we must go quick and see. Go! Not far now. Make haste!”

§73v. With a spring Gollum got up and started shambling off at a great pace. Bilbo hurried after him, still cautiously, though his chief fear now was of tripping on another snag [P. 97] and falling with a noise. His head was in a whirl of hope and wonder. It seemed that the ring he had was a magic ring: it made you invisible! He had heard of such things, of course, in old old tales; but it was hard to believe that he really had found one, by accident. Still there it was: Gollum with his bright eyes had passed him by, only a yard to one side.

REPLACES: §73-1. He was thinking hard, and the idea came to him that Gollum must have dropped that ring sometime and that he must have found it, and that he had that very ring in his pocket. But he had the wits not to tell Gollum.

§73-2. "Finding's keeping!" he said to himself; and being in a very tight place, I daresay, he was right. Anyway the ring belonged to him now.

§73-4. "Never mind!" he said. "The ring would have been mine now, if you had found it; so you would have lost it anyway. And I will let you off on one condition."

§73-5. "Yes, what iss it? What does it wish us to do, my precious?"

§73-6. "Help me to get out of these places," said Bilbo.

§73-7. Now Gollum had to agree to this, if he was not to cheat. He still very much wanted just to try what the stranger tasted like; but now he had to give up all idea of it. Still, there was the little sword; and the stranger was wide awake and on the look out, not unsuspecting as Gollum liked to have things which he attacked. So perhaps it was best after all.

§73-8. That is how Bilbo got to know that the tunnel ended at the water and went no further on the other side where the mountain wall was dark and solid. He also learned that he ought to have turned down one of the side passages to the right before he came to the bottom; but he could not follow Gollum's directions for finding it again on the way up, and he made the wretched creature come and show him the way.

§73-9. As they went along up the tunnel together, Gollum flip-flapping at his side, Bilbo going very softly, he thought he would try the ring. He slipped it on his finger.

§73-10. "Where iss it? Where iss it gone to?" said Gollum at once, peering about with his long eyes.

§73-11. "Here I am, following behind!" said Bilbo slipping off the ring again, and feeling very pleased to have it and to find that it really did what Gollum said.

Friday, August 10, 2012, posted Tuesday August 14

** The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark”** 5. – “My birthday-present! Curse it! How did we lose it, my precious?”

Let’s continue at the point in the chapter when Bilbo hears Gollum, off on his island in the darkness, crying and wailing at the discovery that his ring is missing. “My precious is lost!” Wait, what is lost? The narrator quite clearly explained at the beginning that Gollum called himself “my precious”.A. Does the average reader of The Hobbit catch that this is the first time that Gollum refers to the ring, rather than himself, as “my precious”?

Bilbo calls across the water, “What have you lost?” and Gollum yells back, none of your business!B. Why does Bilbo intrude on Gollum’s personal misery?

Bilbo insists that Gollum abandon his search for whatever it is. Since he could not guess the question, Bilbo cries, Gollum must return to the shore to redeem his promise: to show Bilbo out. By pushing the argument that Gollum must forget about his ring because he could not guess the contents of the hobbit’s pockets, Bilbo unwittingly helps Gollum make a dangerous connection. Gollum “suddenly” hisses sharply, “What has it got in its pocketses? Tell us that. It must tell first.”C. Would Gollum have figured it out without Bilbo’s intervention here?

Now, if you remember the previous post, Tolkien in his 1947 rewrite had drastically expanded the section just before this one, where originally Gollum had gone to his island to find his “present” to give to Bilbo but found it missing. It was there that Tolkien inserted the backstory of the ring, as the narrator, more or less channeling Gollum’s thoughts, explained to us that Gollum was going to get his magic ring by which he intended to overcome the sword-armed Bilbo.

But in the original writing, it was actually at this point here http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change8 – after Gollum finds the ring missing – where we learned about the ring. After the screeching and crying (“We haven't the present we promised, and we haven't even got it for ourselves"), he returned to Bilbo and explained that he had meant to give Bilbo his ring, with all its magical invisibility power which he explained in detail. Then he apologized profusely for his inability to fulfill the terms of the contest: “We are ssorry; we didn't mean to cheat, we meant to give it our only only pressent, if it won the competition."

Briefly, the structural change is this:Original: Gollum loses game – Gollum goes to island to find present – Bilbo almost leaves but decides to stay out of curiosity – present is missing – Gollum apologetically explains to Bilbo about magic ring.Revision: Gollum loses game – Gollum goes to island to get equalizer – Bilbo has no choice but to wait – narrator/Gollum explains to reader about magic ring – the ring is missing – Gollum angrily realizes Bilbo has the ring.

Not surprisingly, of course, the explanation about the ring was considerably less developed before the revision: it was “a wonderful, beautiful ring, a ring that he had been given for a birthday present, ages and ages before in the old days when such rings were less uncommon.” He sometimes kept it in his pocket, but usually kept it on the island. He only wore it when he was tired of fish and went goblin-hunting, because (he reveals at this point) “if you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible” (except for the sunlight thing). But there was nothing about a growing obsession mixed with unpleasant side effects of wearing it; nothing about the ring’s “Master”; and nothing about recently killing and eating a young goblin.D. Do the additions – consistent with LotR, but irrelevant to Bilbo’s adventure – violate the rule of not telling more story than you have to?

Well, he may not have economized on details, but as was typical of Tolkien in revision, he economized his composition. Thus as much of the language of Gollum’s explanation of the ring to Bilbo (in original paragraph §72-1 http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#UsuallyOriginal72-1 ) as he could use, was recycled and inserted into Gollum’s interior monologue (in revised paragraph §70h http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#UsuallyRevision70h ). Most of Tolkien’s revisions to this chapter involve subtle changes in the wording of a paragraph, or (as in this central section) wholesale cutting and rewriting but with the preservation of existing language wherever possible. This example here is actually the only significant place where he transposed much of a passage to a different place in the parallel narratives. (In my opinion, this explains the stylistic awkwardness of the exposition about the ring in the current version.)E. Given the parameters, do you see any other ways Tolkien could have accomplished his goal here? How much does the reader have to know, that Bilbo doesn’t know, at any given point?

To pick up the story, Gollum has just challenged Bilbo to reveal the answer to his last riddle-question – a request Bilbo has already been asked once, which he refused to answer then (“Never you mind,” http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#NeverYouMindRevision70b said Bilbo. “A promise is a promise.”) Now he refuses again, but not because he yet suspects his ring is what Gollum lost. Bilbo is still clueless. Rather, he is “annoyed at the delay” and feels he is owed his reward without a lot of revisiting the contest – “After all, he had won the game, pretty fairly, at a horrible risk.” F. How does Tolkien seem to choose when to have his characters think silently, in dialogue form, and when to have the narrator state the thoughts in the third person, as in this instance?

Gollum is determined not to let it go. “But it wasn’t a fair question. Not a riddle, precious, no.” G. Why didn’t Gollum stick to this approach during the game, when he could have?

Bilbo deflects once again: he points out that he had just asked a question himself. “What have you lost? Tell me that!” The answer comes right back: “What has it got in its pocketses?” Standoff! H. Is this kind of combative verbal behavior characteristic of Bilbo?

Suddenly Bilbo can see Gollum’s eyes as “two small points of light” – because, we are told, his eyes are literally lighting up along with his suspicion about the ring being in Bilbo’s pocket. Bilbo tries again with “What have you lost?”I. Does Bilbo really care at this point? Why ask again?

Gollum’s eyes are aflame like “a green fire” and he is “paddling wildly” from the island towards Bilbo on the shore. He is so angry and upset, we are told, that he is no longer afraid of Bilbo’s sword. Bilbo finally gets the message, and hightails it up the tunnel, using his left hand along the “wall” to guide himself. Gollum, leaping onto the shore, again asks what Bilbo has in his pocket, and Bilbo thinks about the question: “ ‘What have I, I wonder?’” he said to himself, as he panted and stumbled along.”J. Since this is the same thought process that led him to ask the final game-winning “riddle”, is it possible that Bilbo actually does not know what it is that he has in his pocket?

K. Is this the time and place for Bilbo to be thinking like this, as he runs for his life? Why did he not think this through while Gollum was trying to guess his question/riddle, or the two earlier times that Gollum asked him afterwards?

He puts his left hand in his pocket and “The ring felt very cold as it quietly slipped on to his groping forefinger.”

L. Again, is this as plausible as we might like? (I.e., try sticking your hand into your pocket where a ring is, while running fast. See what happens.)

Suddenly, Bilbo trips and falls flat, with his sword under him. Gollum passes him right by and continues running up the slope. Bilbo is baffled, since he knows that “Gollum could see in the dark” – in fact, as Gollum runs on ahead, Bilbo can see the glow of his eyes faintly illuminating the walls of the tunnel!M. What does it mean to “see in the dark”? And does that ability have any connection with the ability of eyes to give off light? – given that earlier, we know that Gollum could tell Bilbo from a goblin from across the lake, when his eyes were not giving off light.

http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/images/DMoftheRings-InvisibilityRingFlaw.jpgN. Why does Gollum not hear Bilbo fall, or smell him as he runs past him?

Bilbo, without knowing what’s happened to save him, chooses to follow Gollum, hoping the creature will lead him to a way out of the caverns. Now Gollum realizes that he has lost Bilbo, who was up ahead of him. He begins to talk to himself. As Bilbo listens, Gollum talks to himself about how Bilbo has his “birthday-present”, and how it must have “slipped from us, after all these ages and ages” while Gollum was strangling the young goblin (just a few hours before, as we were told earlier).

“Oh, ho ho! You sly dog! You got me monologuing! I can't believe it...”O. What is wrong with monologuing?

Gollum stops and has a good cry, which is “horrible to listen to.”

Then he begins to “have an argument with himself,” to which Bilbo listens attentively.Gollum A is in despair, saying “it’s no use”, the present can’t be found, it could be in too many places he’s visited, and in any case “the Baggins” must have it in his pocket now. Gollum B points out that that is probably true, but may not be. In any case, Bilbo doesn’t know what the present can do, and he doesn’t know the way out so he can’t get very far before Gollum can find him and kill him. Gollum A suspects Bilbo may know a way out, because he is a proven liar, as witness his trick question about the thing in his pocket; it’s probable that Bilbo knows about the “back-door”. Gollum B points out that that way is guarded. Gollum A says yes, but that means the goblins will get the present for themselves after they capture Bilbo. With the present, the goblins will be invisible and will be able to hunt and kill Gollum! Gollum B agrees that is the greatest danger, and that they should head for the back-door immediately and try to get the present back before the goblins get it.

P. How does this debate relate to the famous Stinker/Slinker debates that Gollum engages in during the journey with Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings? Do Gollum A and Gollum B as separate speakers (A and B are simply my terms of reference) represent anything?

Q. How does this method of exposition serve as a way for Bilbo to find out what the ring’s power is, compared to what we saw was in the original version: Gollum simply tells Bilbo what the ring can do.

R. If overhearing vital information from bad guy conversation is a classic device in adventure genre fiction, how does Tolkien make the device his own here? Or does he?

S. Where else does Tolkien use this device? Are the instances comparable, and is their frequency and variety acceptable to the reader?

As Gollum heads off “at a great pace”, Bilbo runs after him as quietly and carefully as he can. He is excited to realize the power of the ring, which he had “heard of, of course, in old old tales.” Now he knows how it is that Gollum “with his bright eyes” had passed him in the tunnel without seeing him, “only a yard to one side.”T. This has come up in some rather scholarly articles, but which “old old tales” involve a ring of invisibility?

Well, we have just read 22 almost entirely new paragraphs in the revised edition, http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change9 from the point where Bilbo unwittingly inspires Gollum to guess he has the ring, to this moment where Bilbo has discovered the nature of the Ring and realizes that following Gollum will get him to the “back-door”. This very long section replaces 11 paragraphs in the original.

The replaced segment has Bilbo cleverly keeping his mouth shut about the fact that he already has the ‘present’ Gollum has just told him all about. “‘Finding's keeping!’ he said to himself; and being in a very tight place, I daresay, he was right. Anyway the ring belonged to him now.”U. Why does the narrator justify Bilbo’s failure to be honest with Gollum, who has just honestly apologized for failing to produce the present?

Bilbo, taking advantage of Gollum’s dishonor at “cheating”, said “I will let you off on one condition." That was to show him the way out. Gollum considered for one last time his ability to overcome Bilbo and eat him anyway, but realized he has no chance now that Bilbo was alert and aware of him – not to mention the “little sword”.V. Is the sword/knife supposed to be so small, that both Bilbo and Gollum doubt its ability to settle the matter between them in a pinch?

Gollum explained to Bilbo that the tunnel stopped here at the lake, and did not go further; and that Bilbo ought to have taken one of the side passages that he passed on the way down. When Gollum tried to describe which passage was the right one, Bilbo couldn’t follow the directions. And so he compelled Gollum to lead him up to the right one. During the ascent, Bilbo put the ring on, and Gollum immediately missed him, “peering about with his long eyes”. Bilbo, pleased with himself for proving the ring’s power, took it off again and reassured Gollum that he was still there “following behind.” Gollum never suspected that Bilbo’s sudden disappearance was due to the ring.W. Is it an irresistible temptation to try an invisibility ring out? Doesn’t your sudden disappearance kind of give away the trick?

Today’s discussion has covered the largest and most substantial differences between the original “Riddles” chapter and the post-LotR one.X. It might be silly or meaningless to ask, which do you prefer? But is it fair to ask which is more consistent with the tone of The Hobbit as it is largely written?

Y. Is it an indication of the difficulty of updating The Hobbit to LotR’s “standards” that the new chapter is five pages longer than the old, and far more complex in its interior plot line and narrative style?

Z. Not fair perhaps: but is this the same difficulty MGM and Peter Jackson are having in trying to make a Hobbit film or films after making The Lord of the Rings?

Saturday, August 11, 2012

§74a. On they went, Gollum flip-flapping ahead, hissing and cursing; Bilbo behind going as softly as a hobbit can. Soon they came to places where, as Bilbo had noticed on the way down, side-passages opened, this way and that. Gollum began at once to count them.

§74b. “One left, yes. One right, yes. Two right, yes, yes. Two left, yes, yes.” And so on and on.

§75c. As the count grew he slowed down, and he began to get shaky and weepy; for he was leaving the water further and further behind, and he was getting afraid. Goblins might be about, and he had lost his ring. At last he stopped by a low opening, on their left as they went up.

§75d. “Seven right, yes. Six left, yes!” he whispered. “This is it. This is the way to the back-door, yes. Here’s the passage!”

REPLACES: §74. Now on they went again, while Gollum counted the passages to left and right: "One left, one right, two right, three right, two left," and so on. He began to get very shaky and afraid as they left the water further and further behind; but at last he stopped by a low opening on their left (going up)—"six right, four left."

§75a. He peered in, and shrank back. “But we durstn’t go in, precious, no we durstn’t. Goblinses down there. Lots of goblinses. We smells them. Ssss!”

§75b. “What shall we do? Curse them and crush them! We must wait here, precious, wait a bit and see.”

§75c. So they came to a dead stop. Gollum had brought Bilbo to the way out after all, but Bilbo could not get in! There was Gollum sitting humped up right in the opening, and his eyes gleamed cold in his head, as he swayed it from side to side between his knees.

REPLACES: §75. "Here'ss the passage," he whispered. "It musst squeeze in and sneak down. We durstn't go with it, my preciouss, no we durstn't, gollum!"

§76a. Bilbo crept away from the wall more quietly than a mouse; but Gollum stiffened at once, and sniffed, and his [P. 98] eyes went green. He hissed softly but menacingly. He could not see the hobbit, but now he was on the alert, and he had other senses that the darkness had sharpened: hearing and smell. He seemed to be crouched right down with his flat hands splayed on the floor, and his head thrust out, nose almost to the stone. Though he was only a black shadow in the gleam of his own eyes, Bilbo could see or feel that he was tense as a bowstring, gathered for a spring.

§76b. Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword. Gollum had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in

Bilbo’s heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped.

§76c. No great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark. Straight over Gollum’s head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air; indeed, had he known it, he only just missed cracking his skull on the low arch of the passage.

§76d. Gollum threw himself backwards, and grabbed as the hobbit flew over him, but too late: his hands snapped on thin air, and Bilbo, falling fair on his sturdy feet, sped off down the new tunnel. He did not turn to see what Gollum was doing. There was a hissing and cursing almost at his heels at first, then it stopped. All at once there came a bloodcurdling shriek, filled with hatred and despair. Gollum was defeated. He dared go no further. He had lost: lost his prey, [P. 99] and lost, too, the only thing he had ever cared for, his precious. The cry brought Bilbo’s heart to his mouth, but still he held on. Now faint as an echo, but menacing, the voice came behind:

§76e. “Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!”

§76f. Then there was a silence. But that too seemed menacing to Bilbo. “If goblins are so near that he smelt them,” he thought, “then they’ll have heard his shrieking and cursing. Careful now, or this way will lead you to worse things.”

REPLACES: §76. So Bilbo slipped under the arch, and said good-bye to the nasty miserable creature; and very glad he was. He did not feel comfortable until he felt quite sure it was gone, and he kept his head out in the main tunnel listening until the flip-flap of Gollum going back to his boat died away in the darkness. Then he went down the new passage.

§77. The passage was low and roughly made. It was not too difficult for the hobbit, except when, in spite of all care, he stubbed his poor toes again, several times, on nasty jagged stones in the floor. “A bit low for goblins, at least for the big ones,” thought Bilbo, not knowing that even the big ones, the orcs of the mountains, go along at a great speed stooping low with their hands almost on the ground.

REPLACES: §77. It was a low narrow one roughly made. It was all right for the hobbit, except when he stubbed his toes in the dark on nasty jags in the floor; but it must have been a bit low for goblins. Perhaps it was not knowing that goblins are used to this sort of thing, and go along quite fast stooping low with their hands almost on the floor, that made Bilbo forget the danger of meeting them and hurry forward recklessly.

§78a. Soon the passage that had been sloping down began to go up again, and after a while it climbed steeply. That slowed Bilbo down. But at last the slope stopped, the passage turned a corner, and dipped down again, and there, at the bottom of a short incline, he saw, filtering round another corner—a glimpse of light. Not red light, as of fire or lantern, but a pale out-of-doors sort of light. Then Bilbo began to run.

§78b. Scuttling as fast as his legs would carry him he turned the last corner and came suddenly right into an open space, where the light, after all that time in the dark, seemed dazzlingly bright. Really it was only a leak of sunshine in through a doorway, where a great door, a stone door, was left standing open.

REPLACES: §78. Soon the passage began to go up again, and after a while it climbed steeply. That slowed him down. But at last after some time the slope stopped, the passage turned a corner and dipped down again, and at the bottom of a short incline he saw filtering round another corner—a glimmer of light. Not red light as of fire or lantern, but pale ordinary out-of-doors sort of light. Then he began to run. Scuttling along as fast as his little legs would carry him he turned the corner and came suddenly right into an open place where the light, after all that time in the dark, seemed dazzlingly bright. Really it was only a leak of sunshine in through a doorway, where a great door, a stone door, was left a little open.

§79. Bilbo blinked, and then suddenly he saw the goblins: goblins in full armour with drawn swords sitting just inside the door, and watching it with wide eyes, and watching the [P. 100] passage that led to it. They were aroused, alert, ready for anything.

REPLACES: §79. Bilbo blinked, and then he suddenly saw the goblins: goblins in full armour with drawn swords sitting just inside the door, and watching it with wide eyes, and the passage that led to it!

§80a. They saw him sooner than he saw them. Yes, they saw him. Whether it was an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it took a new master, it was not on his finger. With yells of delight the goblins rushed upon him.

§80b. A pang of fear and loss, like an echo of Gollum’s misery, smote Bilbo, and forgetting even to draw his sword he struck his hands into his pockets. And- there was the ring still, in his left pocket, and it slipped on his finger. The goblins stopped short. They could not see a sign of him. He had vanished. They yelled twice as loud as before, but not so delightedly.

REPLACES: §80-1. They saw him sooner than he saw them, and with yells of delight they rushed upon him.§80-2. Whether it was accident or presence of mind, I don't know. Accident, I think, because the hobbit was not used yet to his new treasure. Anyway he slipped the ring on his left hand—and the goblins stopped short. They could not see a sign of him. Then they yelled twice as loud as before, but not so delightedly.

§81. “Where is it?” they cried.

§82. “Go back up the passage!” some shouted.

§83. “This way!” some yelled. “That way!” others yelled.

§84. “Look out for the door,” bellowed the captain.

§85. Whistles blew, armour clashed, swords rattled, goblins cursed and swore and ran hither and thither, falling over one another and getting very angry. There was a terrible outcry, to-do, and disturbance.

§86. Bilbo was dreadfully frightened, but he had the sense to understand what had happened and to sneak behind a big barrel which held drink for the goblin-guards, and so get out of the way and avoid being bumped into, trampled to death, or caught by feel.

§87. “I must get to the door, I must get to the door!” he kept on saying to himself, but it was a long time before he ventured to try. Then it was like a horrible game of blind-man’s buff. The place was full of goblins running about, and the poor little hobbit dodged this way and that, was knocked over by a goblin who could not make out what he had bumped into, scrambled away on all fours, slipped between the legs of the captain just in time, got up, and ran for the door.

[P. 101]; §88. It was still ajar, but a goblin had pushed it nearly to. Bilbo struggled but he could not move it. He tried to squeeze through the crack. He squeezed and squeezed, and he stuck! It was awful. His buttons had got wedged on the edge of the door and the door-post. He could see outside into the open air: there were a few steps running down into a narrow valley between tall mountains; the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone bright on the outside of the door—but he could not get through.

§89. Suddenly one of the goblins inside shouted: “There is a shadow by the door. Something is outside!”

§90. Bilbo’s heart jumped into his mouth. He gave a terrific squirm. Buttons burst off in all directions. He was through, with a torn coat and waistcoat, leaping down the steps like a goat, while bewildered goblins were still picking up his nice brass buttons on the doorstep.

§91. Of course they soon came down after him, hooting and hallooing, and hunting among the trees. But they don’t like the sun: it makes their legs wobble and their heads giddy. They could not find Bilbo with the ring on, slipping in and out of the shadow of the trees, running quick and quiet, and keeping out of the sun; so soon they went back grumbling and cursing to guard the door. Bilbo had escaped.

Saturday, August 11, 2012 and Sunday, August 12, 2012, posted on

Thursday, August 16

** The Hobbit, “Riddles in the Dark”** 6. – “Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!”

Continuing Bilbo’s adventure with Gollum, we are at the point in the ascending tunnel where Bilbo has just discovered that he has Gollum’s magical ring of invisibility. He also now knows that he can escape the caverns if he just follows Gollum to the “back-door”, without Gollum noticing him – the ring will help him get past the goblin guards there.

With Bilbo following Gollum silently, they come to the point where “side-passages” go off to one side or another – which Bilbo had noticed on his way down.A. What would these tunnels be for? Are they logical aspects of this complex, or are they just plot-devices for “not getting lost/getting lost”?

Gollum gets more nervous, as he is entering goblin territory without his ring, but he finally counts to the correct opening on the left: “Seven right, yes. Six left, yes!” he whispered. “This is it. This is the way to the back-door, yes. Here’s the passage!”B. Why bother to count on both sides? Doesn’t “six left” get you to the same place as “seven right, six left”?

Looking back at the original writing before the 1947 revision, http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change10 the scene is almost the same – except that Bilbo is accompanying Gollum openly, because Gollum is voluntarily showing him the way out, in lieu of the lost “present” (the ring) that Bilbo won in the riddle game and is secretly keeping anyway. Along with three paragraphs of new writing, one notes that in the original text he only says:

"One left, one right, two right, three right, two left," and so on.instead of, in the revision:

“One left, yes. One right, yes. Two right, yes, yes. Two left, yes, yes.” And so on and on.The additions of “…, yes.” and “…, yes, yes.” and “…and on.” seem unnecessary.C. Why would Tolkien tweak like this? Does this have to do with some difference between LotR Gollum and Hobbit Gollum?

Gollum stops at the entrance, and tells himself he hasn’t the courage to go in, because he smells “lots of goblins.” Instead he sits, saying “We must wait a bit and see.”D. This poses a difficult obstacle for Bilbo to overcome, but what is Gollum thinking? What advantage does he gain to sit at the entrance to a tunnel that smells strongly of goblin, when he believes that Bilbo has long gone ahead of him?

Next comes what I think is the most remarkable passage in the chapter, especially in the context of the revision that has been my theme this week (or two). Bilbo moves away from the wall and Gollum senses him – the creature is tense, ready to spring. Bilbo, in desperation, feels he must use his sword to kill Gollum, whether fairly or not. But another emotion stays his hand: a “sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror” at Gollum’s wretched state of being. Then “as if lifted by a new strength and resolve”, he leaps over Gollum (barely missing the overhead stone) and escaping Gollum’s clutching hands, races down the side tunnel. Gollum is left behind, not daring to follow Bilbo, cursing and shrieking, “Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!”

To readers of The Lord of the Rings, this scene is clearly driven by the Ring. As Gandalf explains to Frodo in I.2, it would be the influence of the Ring that tempted Bilbo to stab a defenseless creature; and it would be the influence of the other Powers that used Bilbo’s native goodness to overcome the evil of the Ring and feel pity for Gollum rather than loathing. It turns out – or, it will turn out – that Bilbo’s pity in this one-paragraph moment of decision literally saves all of Middle-earthE. Would a reader of The Hobbit feel that this level of writing – this penetrating sequence of emotions and inner conflicts – is a bit out of place in The Hobbit, based on how Bilbo thinks and reacts in all his other crises and adventures?

F. How does Bilbo leap so accurately, given that he cannot see Gollum nor the doorway at all?

The contrast between the drama of this scene and the original is quite striking. http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change12 Gollum fearfully refuses to accompany Bilbo any further, and invites him to “squeeze in” (suggesting that the tunnel’s arch was a good deal lower than it became when the “leap in the dark” was added). Bilbo “said good-bye to the nasty miserable creature” and listened to the “flip-flap of Gollum going back to his boat” until he was gone – only then did Bilbo proceed down the tunnel. I think most readers criticize this as an “anti-climactic” exit for Gollum especially compared to the present writing. But I find it consistent with the entire Gollum episode as originally written, not to mention all the other adventures in the book which have rather reassuring “happy endings” after a moment of danger. Of course, given the changes in the nature of

Gollum, and the Ring, in LotR it is at least consistent with the latter book to foreshadow its themes with this Ring-induced mini-play of temptation, redemption, and desperate rage.G. What do you think? Is this scene as it currently stands out of place where it is, even though the reason for its being here is obvious?

Now Bilbo proceeds with his adventure. This new passage is “low and roughly made”. Bilbo speculates that it is “a bit low for goblins, at least for the big ones” – the narrator contradicts him with the information that “the big ones, the orcs of the mountains” traverse their tunnels while bent low to the ground.H. When did Bilbo become an expert in goblin types? (In the original, http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change13 Bilbo does not speculate, but simply proceeds recklessly and ignorantly).

I. Is this the first time the reader is advised that goblins in The Hobbit are also known as “orcs”?

The passage changes slope from down to up, then up steeply, then it turns a corner and descends again.J. For what reasons may we imagine that the tunnels change profile, finish (rough vs smooth construction) and direction? Are there any analogues in our real world for an underground labyrinth like this?

Bilbo sees a hint of true daylight, and runs at top speed right into an open chamber filled with sunlight coming in through a crack in a stone door left “standing open”. Blinking in the unaccustomed light, he realizes there are armed goblin guards sitting by the door, alert with “drawn swords” and “ready for anything”.K. Why are they alert? What has been going on since the time the dwarves escaped?

The changes that Tolkien made in this section http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change14 are entirely stylistic: clarifying, editing or adding words – in short, tinkering. “A “glimmer” becomes a “glimpse”; “scuttling along” becomes “scuttling”; “he suddenly saw” becomes “suddenly he saw”. L. When Tolkien sent his famous “specimen of rewriting” of this chapter of The Hobbit (Letter #111) to coordinate it with his later work in LotR, were these smaller changes part of that?

M. Would Tolkien have similarly tweaked all of The Hobbit for vocabulary and style, had he known the publishers would be so accommodating?

The Goblins see him before he sees them, and they rush at him with murderous glee. Somehow – was it “an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it took a new master” – he is not wearing it any more.N. Why ascribe consciousness to the ring now, when it never shows such a characteristic again?

O. What is the point of the ring’s “trick”, if such it was? Does it want to be found by the goblins, or doesn’t it?

Bilbo suddenly feels that same Gollum-feeling of “misery” that he sensed before when sparing the creature’s life. Rather than draw his sword, he puts both his hands in his pockets, and the ring “slipped on his finger” so that he vanishes before the goblins’ eyes. He did not even have to manipulate it.P. What is the feeling of “fear and loss” that Bilbo is struck by? Does he ever feel this way again in the story?

Q. Is Tolkien’s intention that the readers of The Hobbit should worry about this capricious ring going forward, with its ability to cause “misery” and to slip on and off fingers at its own will? Or is he more concerned that readers of LotR should find this foreshadowing in the earlier book if they look back for it later?

As you might imagine, this too constitutes a change from the original – the last change in this chapter! http://users.bestweb.net/~jfgm/RiddlesWeb/#Change14 Bilbo is visible when he enters the chamber, because he has never worn the ring, having accompanied Gollum on the way out. His act of putting the ring on and vanishing to escape the goblins is ascribed to “accident” – because the other possibility, “presence of mind”, would imply wrongly that the hobbit had already become accustomed to owning a magic ring. So it is Bilbo who “[accidentally] slips the ring on his left hand”, rather than searching desperately through both pockets.R. Why did Tolkien feel he had to do a slight backflip to reproduce this scene of Bilbo vanishing in the face of the goblins, despite the changed circumstances that Bilbo was already invisible thanks to the capricious ring (if you remember, it had already “slipped” onto his finger when he was escaping Gollum back by the lake)?

A Keystone Kops scene follows, with the goblins tripping over themselves to find the now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t intruder. Bilbo figures out that he is invisible – evidently not feeling so in any way – and he hides behind a barrel to avoid getting “caught by feel”. Then he makes a break for it, dodging and scrambling, tripping a goblin “who could not make out what he had bumped into”, slipping between legs, and reaching the door which is still just ajar.S. Is there any scene involving the ring like this in all of LotR? If so, where – and if not, why not?

Trying to squeeze through the narrow opening, Bilbo is trapped by his buttons catching on the door jamb. The sun shines on him, and casts his shadow into the room. The goblins see it and rush for him – he squirms mightily and bursts off all his buttons – and makes off down the steps into the valley of trees outside. The goblins follow, but cannot see him amidst all the tree-shadows, and the sun “makes their legs wobble and their heads giddy.” T. Why does the sun defeat the ring’s invisibility power?

U. What is the point of focusing on the brass buttons?

And so Bilbo escapes, and that is the end of the chapter!

Thank you for your participation and patience. I apologize for the delay in posting this series and for Sador’s and Elizabeth’s forbearance; I found I had engaged myself to do far too many things this past few weeks, and this chapter with its fascinating dual identity demanded more time than I really had to spare. In closing, I offer the thought that Tolkien to some degree fell into a trap that seems to be besetting the MGM film team this year: he let the very much larger tail known as The Lord of the Rings wag the little dog called The Hobbit.

Unlike Peter Jackson, who included almost no Hobbit hints in his LotR trilogy that could reward a previous viewing of a Hobbit film, Tolkien actually had some options, since LotR had not been published yet. He suggests in his letters that he had been prepared to write his way around the Gollum/ring issue entirely in the relevant chapters of Fellowship of the Ring. In my (perhaps unusual) experience, reading about Gollum in the original Hobbit and then reading about him again in The Lord of the Rings does not arouse as much sense of disconnection as Tolkien feared. All of what it does arouse could certainly have

been handled by simply having Gandalf or Bilbo tell Frodo what “actually” happened, as needed, leaving the memoirs part of the “Red Book” as written!

The real problem could not be explained away, and Tolkien cleverly misdirects his reader during the meandering conversation in “The Shadow of the Past” to get past it: V. After finding out the “true story” (i.e., the revised portions of this chapter) by interrogating Bilbo, just why did Gandalf, the one person in a position to make the necessary connections, not suspect or investigate the hobbit’s “misery-inducing” ring with a mind of its own until after Bilbo’s going-away party?