Master of Middle Earth Read Online Free PDF

tries to break the deadlock by setting a moral
example, but one which, oddly, requires an initial act of theft. After hiding
in his pocket the great jeweled Arkenstone he steals from the recovered
treasure, on the theory that it represents the one-fourteenth share promised
him by the dwarves, Bilbo carries it secretly to Bard's camp by night, gives it
to him freely to use as a bargaining counter against Thorin, and returns to the
dwarves inside the mountain to face the music. For all this he is highly
praised by Gandalf, surely a spokesman for Tolkien. Bilbo's self-sacrifice does
not work out as planned, however, and open war between the contestants for
Smaug's gold is averted only by the unforeseen attack of an army of goblins,
which unites them against the common enemy. Tolkien's solution of the complex
problem of ownership is finally moral. It comes about through the dying
Thorin's repentance for his greed, which leads his followers to a generous
sharing of the hoard with their new friends. This strongly fortifies the moral
tone of the adventure, which began sordidly enough from motives of profit and
revenge. But a good deal of rather adult territory has to be traversed to reach
this consummation. One wonders what most child auditors would get out of it
beyond the general impression that it is wrong to fight over who owns what. In
this climactic spot the story really operates at two separate levels of
maturity.
    A similar double
track seems to run through that other critical episode of Bilbo's encounter
with Gollum in the tunnels under the goblin mountain. 4 The riddle
game the two play would be fun for audiences of any age, as its prototype was
in Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature. But the case may well be otherwise when it
comes to the portrayal of Gollum's character, with its mixture of cruelty,
greed, and miserable loneliness, and Bilbo's response of horror, fear, and
pity. Taken alone, any one of these emotions is as familiar to a child as to
his parents, but their skillful blending as achieved by Tolkien requires some
sophistication of understanding, which comes only with years. Particularly the
pity that causes Bilbo to spare the life of a vile creature whom he hates and
fears seems a high moral quality of which Tolkien writes, over the heads of all
save a mature audience: "A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror,
welled up in Bilbo's heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or
hope of betterment ..."
    Tolkien is already
looking ahead to that scene of revelation in The Lord of the Rings in
which Gandalf tells Frodo that Bilbo's compassion in sparing Gollum would later
save the world. However that may be, in The Hobbit the whole episode is
one more example of Tolkien's writing at the same time both for children and
for the parents who will often be reading them the tale. A fair enough
practice, provided it can be so managed as not to confuse or irritate both
parties.
    Plenty of other
passages of the same double character come readily to mind, frequently in the
form of sly hits by Tolkien at some favorite targets in modern life. He pokes
fun, for instance, at the stodgy respectability of hobbit (or human) society
which brands as "queer" any hobbit who travels to foreign parts or
has even mildly unusual experiences. The family of such a black sheep always
hastens to hush up the offense. Finding himself "no longer quite
respectable" on his return from his adventure, Bilbo "took to writing
poetry and visiting the elves." Whereupon his neighbors thought him mad.
Tolkien laughs at this same rationalistic rejection of fantasy again in the
Lake-town episode when he writes that "some young people in the town
openly doubted the existence of any dragon in the mountain, and laughed at the
greybeards and gammers who said that they had seen him flying in the sky in
their younger days"—this despite the fact that Smaug is snoring on his
hoard not many miles to the north. Or, another shaft at modern