Reading this chapter makes me want to find time to read The Hobbit, something that I didn’t get around to doing over the summer. The quote from The Hobbit about the hobbits’ ability to “disappear quietly and quickly when large, stupid folk like you and me come blundering along” gives me the impression that reading this book would be entertaining and fun. There was a lot of analysis of The Hobbit, and it will mean more to me when I read it. I liked the quote at the beginning of the chapter that states a candidate “had mercifully left one of the pages with no writing on it (which is the best thing that can possibly happen to an examiner).” As an aspiring teacher and current teacher’s assistant, I can appreciate this good-humored comment. I also like how Tolkien said he had “better find out what hobbits were like.” The comment truly illustrates how Tolkien was re-inventing Middle Earth.
There is a great deal of information I read that was new to me, such as the comparison of hobbits to rabbits that Tolkien rejects and the discussion of Bilbo’s social standing. I find the part about the English social code, and how Gandalf didn’t seem to get the hint, amusing. Shippey makes a valid point when he says that the gap between a reader’s modern awareness and a distant time of a novel would be difficult to bridge. I also appreciated learning about the evolution of Gandalf’s name.
Shippey’s analysis of the fantasies before Tolkien’s time that were “in ruins” brings to light the reason that Tolkien had to reconstruct this mythology. It really makes me appreciate Tolkien’s works when I read about his purpose behind them. The fantasies before Tolkien’s time all seemed to occur in the same world. It is interesting that Shippey explains how Tolkien made his world distinct from the other fantasy worlds and, in doing so, sets the stage for future writers of fantasy. The last part of this chapter that I find interesting is how Tolkien was writing The Hobbit in a way that made the reader buy into the authenticity of the fantasy. Tolkien incorporates a narrator’s input during which he presents elements of the narrative as common knowledge. Finally, I think it is interesting how Tolkien changed the spelling of “dwarfs’” to “dwarves” because he wanted to imply that the name had remained in constant use.
Emily Marvin? October 13, 2008, at 06:02 PM
