Hobbit2 - Chapter 02 - Roast Mutton

[Pomegranate]

I think Roast Mutton is a lovely, and yet very somewhat unfitting chapter. That is, unfitting to the regular idea of Middle Earth - isn't there, for example, talking wallets (which is probably one of the most confusing things in the whole book, where did that come from? What is it related to?), trolls that turn into stone with sunlight, the complete lack of understanding from the side of dwarves as to what Bilbo is capable of (the owl calls are sweet and fairytale-like, but just don't match with anything else I 'know' about dwarves).

This is a very much children's book -like chapter. Things happen fast and they don't have to be fully explained. Also Gandalf's appearance and the unexpected solution for the mortal danger.

[jallanite]

I can’t recall any authentic folk tale with a talking purse or a talking wallet but it feel perfectly right to me.

In Jack and the Beanstalk the harp calls out, “Master, master!” when Jack takes it and that wakes up the giant.

Also, evil magical beings in folk tales often roam about at night but are turned to stone at dawn. Tolkien only uniquely make this a characteristic of the monsters known as trolls.

This works, for me, in part, because Tolkien presents these magical characteristics as though the reader really ought to know about them and most readers accept that, at least for this story.

The effete and city-bred character who is ridiculed because he cannot do bird calls is a common motif in tales. The point of Thorin urging that Bilbo ought to “hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl” is surely to point out that the dwarves have previously been involved in many adventures so that the could not imagine that anyone, especially a supposed professional burglar, could not do something so simple. But Bilbo can’t.

Bilbo makes a mess of his first adventure, and he knows it. Bilbo understands what a legendary burglar ought to do but it is simply beyond his capability. Gandalf is necessary to save the dwarves by the simple folk tale method of distracting the evil creatures until dawn comes, like the hero of the Grimm Brothers’ “The Brave Little Tailor” near the end of that tale: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm020.html . The tailor tricks the giants into fighting just as Gandalf tricks the trolls.

The difference in Tolkien’s tale as compared to most (but not all) traditional tales is that usually the protagonist may start out as an apparent failure but beginning with his first adventure he triumphs over whatever he comes across. It is a more modern technique to actually show the protagonist as a failure to allow a build-up to his latter success.

[Galadriel55]

I think it's funny that trolls have last names. That's what "Huggins" is supposed to be, in context. In the LOTR-Middle Earth, last names are a purely hobbitish thing. Men, Elves, and Dwarves do not have them, and creatures of evil barely have first names. And here's a typical troll standing about with a last name. Seems that Tolkien had a much more "human" conception of trolls, and a more modern one.

Also, about Bilbo not knowing the "basic" skills of immitating birds -

But there are no legends of their deeds, for it is said that they do little, and avoid the sight of men, being able to vanish in a twinkling; and they can change their voices to resemble to piping of birds. ~Theoden, The Road to Isengard

Since Merry and Pippin don't gainsay Theoden, I assumed this is true; what an author gives as a character's opinion is fact to the reader, unless contradicted by another fact or opinion. I never realized any problem here until this discussion took place. By LOTR logic Bilboo shouldn't have found it that difficult to immitate an owl. To make different owl hoots - that's understandable, this was probably added by the Professor as a hyperbole, but not to immitate birds. The "typical hobbit" of TH seems much more "modernised" and "city-people" than the LOTR hobbits...

Yeah, yeah, TH and LOTR are to be considered separate stories, they shouldn't be compared for canonicity, etc, ok, I'm going.

[Tuor in Gondolin]

There are several interesting notes in Chapter 2 of the
Annotated Hobbit.

1)

It is traditional in fairy tales for the sight of the sun
to be fatal to trolls. In the Norse folk tales collected by Peter Christen
Anbjornsen and Jorgen Moe, translated into English by George Webbe
Dasent as Popular Tales from the Norse (1859), trolls caught in
the sunlight burst into pieces.

2) [QUOTE]In 1977, Tolkien's second son Michael told the Tolkien Society in
Great Britain that as children, he, his two brothers, and his sister had each,
at some point in their development, thought that the Troll chapter was the
best chapter in the book. He continued, "We thought there was something
rather nice about Trolls, and it was a pity they had to be turned to stone
at all."/QUOTE]

It's also noted that Tolkien's having the trolls use lower class speech is akin to
that of Chaucer using the Middle English northern dialect as a source of humor for his
southern English audience, in a 1931 paper presented to the Philological Society
of Oxford, entitled "Chaucer as a philologist: The Reeve's Tale."

[Selmo]

“Hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl”.

Barn owl and screech-owl are two different names for the same bird.
They don't hoot, they screech.

Does this explain Bilbo's confusion or is Bilbo ignorant of all things pertaining to owls?
Is Thorin also ignorant or is it all down to a lapse of memory on Bilbo's part when he wrote down the story some years later?

Or, horror of horrors, is Tolkien wrong?

.

[jallanite]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screech_owl .

Screech owl is sometimes used to mean barn owl but usually denotes a separate kind of owl from the barn owl. Unfortunately this kind of owl is a kind of American owl.

I suspect that Tolkien borrowed this distinction from some account associated with the New World and himself did not know the distinction.

The barn owl (Tyto alba) is found almost worldwide. The screech owl, (Strigidae) belonging to the genus Megascops, is limited to the Americas.

See http://www.inkart.com/pages/nature/owls.html

[Boromir88]

It's interesting reading this story after all the years of reading LOTR several times. The light, comedic tone (I think especially prevalent in Roast Mutton) was a bit jarring when compared to digging Tolkien's other works.

Although, I haven't always agreed with LOTR being strictly a dark/serious/adult story. The heavy moments are certainly more serious and terrifying than anything in The Hobbit. LOTR also flows like a roller coaster, it starts with a light and fun party atmosphere in The Shire, then Frodo's own adventure begins. But it continues with moments of rest and recovery (sometimes coming in the form of humor) and then gets heavier/more dangerous. My memory of The Hobbit may be completely off, but I think it follows the same roller coaster pattern.

TH-Bilbo doesn't jar with LOTR-Bilbo to me. I would even say Gandalf in LOTR still maintains some of his clever and light Hobbitish character. Of all the races Gandalf seemed most fond of Hobbits (even though he may have been compared more similarly to the Elves), and certainly with Hobbits (particularly with Bilbo) his personality is different, different than say when he's with Aragorn or Elrond.

It's the dwarves who may be the most jarring, and different from LOTR. Although, the only dwarf we get to know in LOTR is Gimli. And really TH-dwarves prove the essential personality trait in LOTR. LOTR tells us Dwarves are tough to tame, don't easily forget those who have aggrieved them, but also remember proven friends. The Dwarves never abandon Bilbo's friendship (even when Sauron's messenger comes looking for information from them in LOTR) and Gloin extends kindness to Frodo based on being Bilbo's relative.

This may not be specifically about Roast Mutton, but generally I agree the tone of the chapter was very light and child-like...possibly jarring when compared to even the lighter chapters in LOTR. Although, I think all of the personalities of the characters...make sense/fit.