During this chapter, I thought it was pretty neat that Shippey outlined the way that The Lord of the Rings actually started. A simple sentence written randomly while Tolkien was correcting papers: “In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit”. I had heard about it, before – but then Shippey went into detail about where the name ‘hobbit’ may have come from, and I hadn’t heard ANY of that before. For instance, he mentioned a report the Times did about finding out that the original hobbit was in a list of creatures written in the mid 1800’s. He certainly goes into detail, doesn’t he?
Then later in the chapter, I liked how he wrote about Tolkien building Bilbo’s importance as The Hobbit progressed. It was an interesting point that I had never thought of before. Bilbo was “The Hobbit”, so I always had this perception that he was important, and valuable to the cause of the quest. But as I read on, I found myself agreeing with Shippey. He gets upset during the dwarf-meeting in his home, he gets carried away from battle, and he draws scorn from his companions – they ask things like “why is he with us…what worth is he?” None of these instances is very inspiring. But Shippey proceeds to point out that Tolkien invented Hobbits to be wise and who remember sayings that men have otherwise forgotten. So in order to put Hobbits officially in the “Importance” spotlight, Tolkien draws on this ability in Bilbo during the riddle scene. Like I said…that’s something I would have never thought of if it wasn’t for Shippey.
Joseph Bella? October 18, 2008, at 09:44 PM
