Looks like my invocation of Sauron's feline origins has conjured up the great cat himself.
Davem wrote:
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The reason this fits more with the rest of TH, for me, is the absence of the tragic element, & perhaps more importantly the lack of any real 'threat' in the competition with Gollum. The Gollum of the revised Riddles chapter is a true 'horror', a canibalistic, immoral, creature, as well as a tragic victim. We feel a pity for him that we don't feel for the Trolls or goblins, or even for Smaug. The Gollum of the original is 'just' a monster, like all the others, just another 'adventure' Bilbo has along the way. In fact, in the original he is A gollum - one of (apparently) a whole race of such creatures. He is not the tragic, lost Hobbit, of LotR.
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I think you are right that this is a matter of individual opinion. Still - I don't see
The Hobbit as horror-less at all. On the contrary, I think that horror is an integral component of it, and of many other succesful 'children's stories'. I think you are right about
tragedy - and I suppose that if the style of the revision differs significantly from that of the original, it is in this. But horror and tragedy are different things.
HerenIstarion:
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and ask for permission to use it a signature (not immediately, but after some future change of my current one)
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Permission granted to use this and any other inadvertantly funny things that roll off my fingers.