For Tuesday: The Hobbit, Chapters 8-12 (approximately)

Keep reading as much as you can, and get close, if not all the way through Chapter 12 (especially since you have more time to read over the weekend than you will from Tuesday to Thursday next week). I'd like to try to finish it for Thursday's class, though we can continue to discuss it for weeks to come as we read Anglo Saxon literature! 

Here are some questions to consider for class...

* In Chapter Eight, after fighting the spiders, Bilbo says, “I will give you a name,” he said to it,” and I shall call you Sting” (142). Why do you think he names his sword, which clearly isn’t a legendary weapon like “Beater” or “Biter”? Why might this also illustrate the transformation going on in Bilbo by this point in the novel?

* Unlike most novels, Tolkein’s narrator is almost a character in the novel, full of coy hints about the world’s history, and riddling sense of humor. Where do we most see the narrator intrude on the story itself, and why do you think he does this? Why not just tell the story ‘straight’?

 * Writing about the Wood-elves, Tolkein remarks, “They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People” (152). What do the elves seem to represent for Tolkein, since they are the greatest race in Middle Earth? Why, too, are they people of “the gloaming and the dusk”?

 * Why do the people of Lake Town (unlike the Master) give the dwarves such a warm welcome? What ‘world’ does the town seem to belong to—the ancient or the modern? Likewise, why does the Master reject them and assume they’re all frauds?