The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum


Visit The *EVEN NEWER* Barrow-Downs Photo Page

Go Back   The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum > Middle-Earth Discussions > The Books > Chapter-by-Chapter
User Name
Password
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 08-30-2012, 07:32 AM   #1
Estelyn Telcontar
Princess of Skwerlz
 
Estelyn Telcontar's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: where the Sea is eastwards (WtR: 6060 miles)
Posts: 7,645
Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!Estelyn Telcontar has reached the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring!
Silmaril Hobbit2 - Chapter 10 - A Warm Welcome

The title of this chapter seems rather facetious to me - what with Bilbo's affliction with a cold upon arriving in Laketown, and with the seemingly warm welcome of the townspeople being superficial at best. However, though we get glimpses of the Master's private thoughts, the Dwarves and Hobbit do find aid and recovery at this location.

Aside from a brief glimpse of Gandalf's concern for the group, the only other point of view other than Bilbo's is that of the Master. Why do you think Tolkien uses that in the narration?

One very obvious aspect in this chapter is that of Bilbo's discomfort and unhappiness with their situation. How does that strike you?

There is a brief reference to the remains of an older town sunken near the shore. Do we know anything about it?

Here is Tolkien's drawing of Lake Town - does it look like you imagined it?




Previous discussion here.
__________________
'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...'
Estelyn Telcontar is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-30-2012, 02:23 PM   #2
jallanite
Shade of Carn Dûm
 
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Toronto
Posts: 479
jallanite is a guest of Tom Bombadil.
This is an unusual chapter in which no enemy appears at all. It is a chapter which points back to the past and ahead to the future.

The story of Gandalf is briefly taken up again to make his reappearance as unlikely as it would otherwise seem. The thread of the accommodating and hypocritical Ḿaster of Laketown also looks to future events. The reaction of the Elves also looks to future events.

That Tolkien refers to the Elves who guide the rafts of barrels as “raftmen” is somewhat confusing as the reader might think they are men. The later Tolkien would have called them “raft-Elves”.

Douglas A. Anderson in his The Annotated Hobbit quotes Tolkien’s reference from The Lord of the Rings that Bilbo had arrived at Laketown on his birthday, although it slipped his mind at the time, but that the banquet Bilbo participated in at the time was very splendid, although he had a bad cold at the time and could only say, “thag you very buch.” Anderson then notes in contradiction that The Hobbit actually says for three days Bilbo was too sick to attend banquets and that even after that is cold was so bad that at banquets his words were limited to, “Thag you very buch.″

Anderson is wrong here:
Even Bilbo was given a seat at the high table, and no explanation of where he came in — no songs had alluded to him even in the obscurest way — was asked for in the general bustle.
Following this banquet Bilbo’s cold apparently got worse:
For three days he sneezed and coughed, and he could not go out, and even after that his speeches at banquets were limited to “Thag you very buch.”
It is not at all unlikely that Bilbo’s speech was already impeded when he attended that first banquet, although it is not particularly mentioned in The Hobbit, but his cold is mentioned earlier. There is no contradiction.

That Laketown as a town founded on a wooden platform on planks laid down over the water is a delightful idea. It simply makes the story more interesting. Now of course, the supposed lake-villages recently discovered in Switzerland at the time The Hobbit was written are now known to be villages built on the shores of lakes in marshy areas in which the individual buildings were raised on stilts to prevent damage from spring flooding. Any entire village built over the water is only a fantasy, but a delightful one.
jallanite is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-30-2012, 04:31 PM   #3
Galadriel55
Blossom of Dwimordene
 
Galadriel55's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: The realm of forgotten words
Posts: 10,299
Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.Galadriel55 is lost in the dark paths of Moria.
The picture is exactly how I imagined Lake-town! Except that I always pictured the barrels to be on the other side of the bridge...

One of my favourite parts is Bilbo's thoughts about the Mountain. Perhaps I like it because I love colourful landscape descriptions, or because Bilbo is getting a sombre streak in his character in addition to the "shiny happy-go-lucky hero who gets everything right because he's lucky" type of personality. I don't know, I just like Bilbo's broodings in this part.

I also like the "legend" that Thror and Thrain will return and gold will flow etc. Because I love legends. But Tolkien adds a funny bit to this piece of lore: "But this pleasant legend did not much affect their daily business". I wonder if any of the Lake-town people truly believed in that legend until it actually happened, or if it was more of a children's tale or a fairy tale (for example, I quite believe in Lotr and TH and etc when I'm on the Downs, but in RL it's just a book, maybe true, maybe not, who knows - and who cares? The story's good for telling and it's all that matters). Later on we find out that some youngsters did not even believe in Smaug, so perhaps the legend was something similar. And the Master of Lake-town was pretty doubtful. On the other hand, the guards reacted quite quickly and without disbelief when Thorin announced himself, and the common folk literally flocked to him...

That makes me think...if Smaug did not stick his head out for so many years, he must have been really hungry.

I think it's rather cute that Bilbo insists that it is the Dwarves' adventure, not his. He doesn't realize it, but it's more his adventure than the Dwarves'

I am curious that the Lake-town dwellers did not once question Bilbo. The LOTR characters always had enough time to wonder about hobbits, no matter how grand their companions were. TH is not LOTR, of course, but it's interesting that Thorin's arrival would wipe everything else from the people's head to that extent. In fact, I think they hardly noticed Bilbo at all!

Quote:
One very obvious aspect in this chapter is that of Bilbo's discomfort and unhappiness with their situation. How does that strike you?
I've always thought it shows that Bilbo's common sense and foresightedness trumps that of the Dwarves. He has the better grasp of the situation.
__________________
You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera
Galadriel55 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-30-2012, 05:34 PM   #4
Kath
Everlasting Whiteness
 
Kath's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Perusing the laminated book of dreams
Posts: 4,725
Kath is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Kath is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.Kath is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Send a message via MSN to Kath
The picture of Lake-town pretty much matches how I thought it should look, but for me it's reversed. In my head it looks like a mirror image. I suspect this comes from having the book read aloud to me before I read it myself, and seeing the illustration in the book upside down.

I always wondered just why the town was built out on a lake. There is mention of a previously ruined town that could only be seen by the shores of the river in time of drought. So was the original town flooded? Is that why they decided to build upon a deck in the middle of a river? It seems a dangerous decision to be pretty much as accessible and visible to attack from the air as you can be when your likeliest enemy can breathe fire from the sky. That said it does mean they can leap into the lake once the town is set on fire.

Re-reading this chapter made me realise just how detailed the description of the river and the lake is. I had no real memory of the description, and my mental image of this area is barely there, but there is so much information on how the town is situated to be of great importance. We know that it is a major trading area but the detail does help you think about how and why this trade has grown.

The wood elves continue to be strange folk in this chapter. The King is greedy and desirous of gold and treasures. This is not a normal trait in the elves we see through LotR. When Legolas, Thranduil's son, is offered the chance to see caves full of gold and jewels he declines stating they hold no interest for him. Had he been away from his father for a long time to in order to avoid this same lust for possessions? Or was Thranduil unusual amongst his people?

I love how down-trodden and grumpy Bilbo is throughout this chapter! He has a cold! He has been wet, bedraggled, given no thanks, ignored in favour of the dwarves whose necks he has saved over and over again by now and now he has a stinking cold and can't even go out and enjoy the celebrations. And as he says, it isn't his adventure. It's not his treasure they're after, it isn't his family he has to take revenge for, but still off he goes toward the Mountain he has hated since he first caught sight of it. Poor Bilbo.
__________________
“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”
Kath is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-31-2012, 04:55 AM   #5
skip spence
shadow of a doubt
 
skip spence's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Back on the streets
Posts: 1,143
skip spence is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.skip spence is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kath View Post
I always wondered just why the town was built out on a lake. There is mention of a previously ruined town that could only be seen by the shores of the river in time of drought. So was the original town flooded? Is that why they decided to build upon a deck in the middle of a river? It seems a dangerous decision to be pretty much as accessible and visible to attack from the air as you can be when your likeliest enemy can breathe fire from the sky. That said it does mean they can leap into the lake once the town is set on fire.
Oh dear, I remember a terrible thread that dealt with this some years back....

Anyway, it seems the reasoning here is that great amounts of water is the best protection from a fire-dragon. Later on, when Smaug attacks Laketown, the dragon first makes for the great bridge, but the defenders manage to cut it before he gets there, and since he can't pass through the water and get to Laketown without having his inner fires put out, he proceeds with an all aerial attack instead. But it is implied he would've preferred crossing the bridge and entering the town on foot.
__________________
"You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way" ~ Bob Dylan
skip spence is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:57 PM.



Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9 Beta 4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.