Only a few paragraphs in and I found myself smiling. To think that Tolkien first wrote a sentence while grading papers and thought, well, I better find out what hobbits are like. It’s clear enough that when he creates something, be it a creature or place, he’s unfailingly loyal to his concept of it and won’t allow any deviations. Just saying that a hobbit is like a rabbit is out of the question, though Tolkien can be very hypocritical. I thought that was sort of interesting, in a way, how he says that something is so, yet you go back to his writing and see that readers had every reason to think a certain way.
The section on fairy tales was interesting. I didn’t know he went through such detail to arrive at the character for Gandalf. The tale of the dwarves’ names I knew, though it’s still interesting to hear again how he went through and in a way resurrected those names from an old poem.
On page 21, Shippey goes on to explain the chapters in The Hobbit going in threes, and he says at the end, “None of these divisions, of course, is vital, and it is quite likely that Tolkien did not plan them or pay any attention to them.” I think that’s rather gracious of Shippey. He’s not the kind of person to find some kind of coincidence and hold it on high as a great discovery. He presents it as an interesting fact, goes on to say that it showed how Tolkien worked in fairy-tale elements, and goes no further. I’m not quite sure how to explain why I appreciate that, but… I do.
After reading the chapter, I find it absolutely incredible just how much information Tolkien drew from, from character names to words of his own. Old mythologies are in a way revived, though readers aren’t always aware of what they’re seeing on the page. And to think, that was only analyzing The Hobbit. Applying it to the trilogy just makes it even more breath-taking.
Devon Cozad? October 15, 2008, at 09:28 PM
