Bilbo´s treachery

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

I'm not exactly sure we get an exact definition of 'what' the Ring does to character and what character traits are varied. I understood that appeals to domination and control were a part of the transition. I see appeals to greed, themes of seduction, to self-serving behaviour, and also lust of sadism implicit in the transition. I'd add increased tendency for objectification, and for callous lack of empathy. If I had to draw on modern day conceptions, I'd be looking at psychopathy/sociopathy for assistance to clarify how the Ring exerted influence.

What the Ring offered its possessor was power, whatever the individual felt he needed such power for was really unimportant.

Isildur was a king with the attendant desire for strength to rule his realm and secure it; Gollum wanted to be able to sneak around and spy on others; Bilbo wanted the Ring's invisibility effect to aid him as the 'burglar', though he had also come to enjoy the power itself, feeling pride when it hid him from Smaug, and so forth.

The Ring called to the chink in one's armor which was one's greatest want, and it offered the power to effect it. Gandalf said the Ring would weigh on his innate feelings of pity and the desire to do good to corrupt him.

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

There are several tacit themes in the book that don't square with the explicit prose. One is the delay Bilbo had in declaring he had the Arkenstone. A number of weeks prior to the arrival of the Elven armies was involved.

After Bilbo took the stone, the more time passed, the more difficult telling anyone he had it became. I can relate to that myself. The longer you keep some unpleasant secret, it gets harder and harder to let it go.
Also, he may have had some inkling that it would be useful in some way unrelated to him, whether that was a conscious thought or not.

Originally Posted by Ivriniel

His delay at telling his comrades about the Ring a second. His habituation/attenuation to long-term use of the Ring a third (which was amoral. He ceased caring that he was an unwanted spy and became duly self-focussed in his motivations). His delivery of the Arkenstone to Bard and the Elven King was also just weird. The explicit prose states that he had no coveting of the stone and was pleased to be relieved of it. But, the problem with the behaviour was lack of affect and attachment to his Dwarf pals after the betrayal.

The Ring certainly could have been a factor in Bilbo's keeping it a secret so long. But he also was proud to have shown he wasn't as useless as some of the Dwarves seem to have thought, by the way he made it past Balin with appeared to be clever 'burglar' professional technique.

As for his 'betrayal' of the Dwarves after giving up the stone, he could hardly have stayed with them when Thorin had made it pretty clear he wasn't welcome anymore. Being picked up and threatened with being thrown to one's death wouldn't exactly make one want to stay with the person making the threat.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Bilbo sees and is drwn to the Arkenstone just a paragraph after Tolkien describes not only his 'bedazlement' at the hoard, but allure of Dragon-gold; I think he pocketed it primarily because even our stolid Hobbit got a touch of the dragon-sickness, nothing more.

Certainly Tolkien in 1930 or so wasn't thinking of the malign influence of the One Ring!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Bilbo sees and is drwn to the Arkenstone just a paragraph after Tolkien describes not only his 'bedazzlement' at the hoard, but allure of Dragon-gold; I think he pocketed it primarily because even our stolid Hobbit got a touch of the dragon-sickness, nothing more.

Certainly Tolkien in 1930 or so wasn't thinking of the malign influence of the One Ring!

[Faramir Jones]

I've been interested in the recent comments about whether the Ring induced Bilbo to take the Arkenstone and give it to Bard and the Elvenking. I think it quite unlikely; because Gandalf did not mention it in his later conversation with Frodo about the Ring and Bilbo.

When that happened, Gandalf discussed the Ring's influence on Bilbo in terms of the latter not telling the truth about how he got it, i.e. his initial explanation was that Gollum gave it to him due to the former having lost the riddle-game, and him later behaving like Gollum, saying that the ring was his 'precious'.

Nowhere did Gandalf refer to Bilbo taking the Arkenstone as an example of the Ring's influence. As I have mentioned before, Bilbo had an arguable case that the stone was the fourteenth share of the hoard he had been promised by Thorin and Company, and that he was entitled to pick and chose his own fourteenth, which he had done, giving the stone to others.

[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.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Ivriniel, your argument might have more force had Tolkien in any way revised that section of The Hobbit during or after the writing of The Lord of the Rings, as he did with Chapter 5, but he didn't. We're supposed to assume, what, that Tolkien unconsciously was writing a description of the Ring's influence on Bilbo years before he "discovered" that the Ring had any influence at all?

[Ivriniel]

I'd rather steer away from 'forcing' the reader and instead enjoy some unorthodox positioning of arguments.

So - the points about dates of authorship are well and truly attended to in materials upstream (I'll re-post the summary URL and highlight the post where I address the idem about dates of authorship.

Yes, the dreaded chapter 5 was the revised text, which is the point about back-editing the Hobbit after LotR was begun (but recall, Tolkien also had a first draft of LotR going in the Fellowship for Unwin and Allen to read, that retained the original Hobbit unedited).

However, in accordance with what Tolkien actually did to himself with his own works, my arguments do much the same. Why is it allowable for the author to vary interpretation of his very own text (as he certainly did in the prelude of the 19 sixty something edition), and yet others may not.

Of course, Tolkien has interpreted the very same text in two streams of meaning, pre and post Hobbit revisions.

So - I am not arguing that which has been posited. I have a distinct position.

Kind Regards

Edit: with regards to my use of the term '...interpreted...' I refer to text outside of chapter IV.