Re-reading The Hobbit: Ch. 13 - Not at Home
In which Bilbo pockets a priceless jewel, Thorin puts the cart before the horse, and Smaug is dead, but no one knows it.
What happens
The dwarves’ hasty retreat inside the Mountain has left them trapped in the entrance tunnel. A tentative reconnoitre to assess the Smaug situation reveals the dragon gone and a vast pile of treasure unguarded. Bilbo goes ahead to scout and discovers the Arkenstone, the most treasured jewel of Erebor’s hoard, but cannily hides it from the dwarves. After a few tense moments in which the light is lost entirely, the dwarves abandon their caution and merrily trawl through the vast treasure. Thorin makes a gift to Bilbo of a beautiful mithril mail coat. Thorin and Company explore through the Mountain’s inner chambers until they come upon the Gate, from whence they trek to the South-West lookout and make a new base. Smaug, still, is nowhere to be found.
Commentary
(Onward! I said two months ago. Well. Since no one is reading these anyway, I figure I can take as much time as I want.)
I’ve been beginning a lot of these re-read posts with thoughts about Thorin, so I’ll continue the trend here. He’s still doing a great job as leader here, guiding the party to the front Gate and, in a truly generous gesture, presenting Bilbo with the mithril coat. But the seeds are sown for what’s to come: he spends a lot of time searching in vain for the Arkenstone, and he’s already calling the Mountain his “palace” when no one knows what has happened to Smaug, highlighting Thorin’s dwarvish tendency to get ahead of himself. Generally in past re-reads I’ve been fairly contemptuous of Thorin from hereon out, but now I can see in a sense the inevitability of what happens given his basic nature. Thorin still thinks of himself as King under the Mountain, and while I’ve written before about the dwarves not really expecting to win, this chapter leads me to the conclusion that Thorin always did. It’s his job as a leader, after all, to be certain. It’s everyone else’s job to handle the logistics.
So despite my respect for him and the fact that I think he’s done himself proud leading the group since Gandalf left them at the edge of Mirkwood, I think there’s a deep delusion at the heart of Thorin’s personality. He views all of this as rightfully his - which, of course, it is - and for him, that’s that. And this basic and fundamental belief will lead directly to his intransigence later on.
I had forgotten the number of small chapters leading up to the final battle, but I actually think they’re quite effective; this one, for example, is really quite tense, especially since at this point the reader has no idea what’s going on with Smaug. Where on earth is he? Re-reading this chapter is quite different when one realises that Smaug is actually already dead for almost all of it. Tolkien will use this tactic again to great effect in The Lord of the Rings, so it’s nice to see an embryonic version here.
The Arkenstone is something else worth talking about, because I don’t think we ever find out much about it beyond the basics. It’s a great jewel, yes, but in Middle-earth there tends to be more than that. It’s not a silmaril, obviously, and in fact it’s almost certainly just a jewel, but I wonder if it’s an example of the Silmarillion leaking through into The Hobbit once again, just as Thranduil seemed to be Thingol. It certainly has a similar disastrous effect on Thorin to the silmarils’ various conquests. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
What happens
The dwarves’ hasty retreat inside the Mountain has left them trapped in the entrance tunnel. A tentative reconnoitre to assess the Smaug situation reveals the dragon gone and a vast pile of treasure unguarded. Bilbo goes ahead to scout and discovers the Arkenstone, the most treasured jewel of Erebor’s hoard, but cannily hides it from the dwarves. After a few tense moments in which the light is lost entirely, the dwarves abandon their caution and merrily trawl through the vast treasure. Thorin makes a gift to Bilbo of a beautiful mithril mail coat. Thorin and Company explore through the Mountain’s inner chambers until they come upon the Gate, from whence they trek to the South-West lookout and make a new base. Smaug, still, is nowhere to be found.
Commentary
(Onward! I said two months ago. Well. Since no one is reading these anyway, I figure I can take as much time as I want.)
I’ve been beginning a lot of these re-read posts with thoughts about Thorin, so I’ll continue the trend here. He’s still doing a great job as leader here, guiding the party to the front Gate and, in a truly generous gesture, presenting Bilbo with the mithril coat. But the seeds are sown for what’s to come: he spends a lot of time searching in vain for the Arkenstone, and he’s already calling the Mountain his “palace” when no one knows what has happened to Smaug, highlighting Thorin’s dwarvish tendency to get ahead of himself. Generally in past re-reads I’ve been fairly contemptuous of Thorin from hereon out, but now I can see in a sense the inevitability of what happens given his basic nature. Thorin still thinks of himself as King under the Mountain, and while I’ve written before about the dwarves not really expecting to win, this chapter leads me to the conclusion that Thorin always did. It’s his job as a leader, after all, to be certain. It’s everyone else’s job to handle the logistics.
So despite my respect for him and the fact that I think he’s done himself proud leading the group since Gandalf left them at the edge of Mirkwood, I think there’s a deep delusion at the heart of Thorin’s personality. He views all of this as rightfully his - which, of course, it is - and for him, that’s that. And this basic and fundamental belief will lead directly to his intransigence later on.
I had forgotten the number of small chapters leading up to the final battle, but I actually think they’re quite effective; this one, for example, is really quite tense, especially since at this point the reader has no idea what’s going on with Smaug. Where on earth is he? Re-reading this chapter is quite different when one realises that Smaug is actually already dead for almost all of it. Tolkien will use this tactic again to great effect in The Lord of the Rings, so it’s nice to see an embryonic version here.
The Arkenstone is something else worth talking about, because I don’t think we ever find out much about it beyond the basics. It’s a great jewel, yes, but in Middle-earth there tends to be more than that. It’s not a silmaril, obviously, and in fact it’s almost certainly just a jewel, but I wonder if it’s an example of the Silmarillion leaking through into The Hobbit once again, just as Thranduil seemed to be Thingol. It certainly has a similar disastrous effect on Thorin to the silmarils’ various conquests. But I’m getting ahead of myself.