[Ivriniel]

Hi Boromirs, Farmir, and Inziladun.

@reader

I've been clear to delineate between the explicit prose and the implicit indications in the aspects of text that are discordant. Three factors have been lifted to highlight the problem (the difficulties are not so much with the explicit prose). The factors, instead, of weight to note are:

1. the delay between Bilbo finding the Arkenstone and declaring this to his 'brothers', with several weeks being involved, and prior to the arrival of the Elven King.
2. the delay between Bilbo finding the ring and his uses of it, before his comrades discovered his stealth, secrecy and lurking.
3. the moral decay implied by Bilbo's attenuation to the use of the Ring, and I've cited actual quotes from the book. Several weeks of invisible stealth in the Elven King's halls, and Bilbo's attenuation to this. I liken this to imagining you had the Ring and were skulking around your friends' homes and got caught.

I argue that we are seduced by the author into an amoral alliance with Bilbo over the course of the book. I remember at my first reading of the book feeling like needing to wash then erasing this, then resuming the irky feeling at reading LotR (Shadow of the Past).

There are other indications of implicit variance (not explicit) from the narrative. Bilbo's reaction (or lack of it) and being governed by boredom in the final hours before leaving the mountain is one. Having re-read how he was received by Bard and the Elven King, recently - there was also something really wrong it. The author, again, seduces us into 'buying' the way the story was presented.