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Old 01-05-2013, 12:33 PM   #5
Legate of Amon Lanc
A Voice That Gainsayeth
 
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: In that far land beyond the Sea
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Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.Legate of Amon Lanc is spying on the Black Gate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh View Post
Two pages later Bombur is mentioned to have produced a drum, after which no attention is paid him for twenty pages.
On absolutely serious note, I have been always wondering whether the choice of instrument had something to do with him being fat. You know, a drum is round, makes the sort of deep sound, so in general the connotations might sort of go together... what do you think?

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After he has fallen into the stream and been duly recovered by his companions, they indulge in some general reported grumbling about his clumsiness (unfair, given that he has been all-but knocked down by a leaping hart)
This is actually one interesting thing. Since he is so fat, he must be pretty difficult to knock down. If Tolkien wanted it to be really hilarious, he might have let the hart be knocked out by knocking Bombur. But it simply ran him over - so is it actually possible that the poor animal was, in fact, even fatter than Bombur? Remember, in the utter darkness of Mirkwood, it's hard to tell how fat an animal is.

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In an innovative new twist, here it is Bombur who complains about his size (p. 178).

This looks very much to me like someone whose self-respect has been repeatedly undermined by incessant references to his weight problem. It calls up a frankly tragic image of poor Bombur eating a pork pie in the dark and crying, like a sad, fat dragon with no friends
Indeed. This really seems like the moment when Bombur, who up to now had no reason to call himself fat, finally gives in, his will is utterly broken and he admits to being fat. If we are talking about character development - Bilbo becoming braver, the Dwarves becoming more appreciative of him and so on - here is a different way of character development, Bombur becoming, not perhaps fatter (even though one might have expected that after what we've seen*), but more conscious about his fatness.

*Of course, that was not possible because of the way the whole story develops. The Dwarves go from comfortable places around the Shire further and further into the wilderness, into more and more dangerous places with less and less resources, so they cannot, unfortunately, grow fatter and fatter, but rather the opposite. However, we can see that Tolkien did not let his dream disappear completely, and led it to an eucatastrophe with the remark in LotR, where Bombur, finally in the place of peace and plenty, has the room to become as fat as he can get.
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"Should the story say 'he ate bread,' the dramatic producer can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own." -On Fairy-Stories
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