Hobbit Q&A with Sarah Arthur discussion

Whenever someone yells "The Eagles are coming!" anywhere in LOTR and The Hobbit, you know something fantabulous is about to happen. These are moments when we catch glimpses of grace, the "eucatastrophe" as Tolkien called it: the sudden turn of the tide that reveals the good power at work in Middle-earth. What's your favorite scene?

The most triumphant moment for me was when Bilbo rescues the dwarfs from the spiders and finally gains some confidence (even if it's a little excessive.)

But I think the most haunting moment comes after Bilbo's encounter with Gollum, when he is safely away from the mountain, "But all night he dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something he could not find nor remember what it looked like." This identification with Gollum's self-absorption as having lost something and not even being able to comprehend what happened is a powerful object lesson.

Thanks, Amy! I had never made the connection before between Gollum's loss of the ring and Bilbo's dream...beautiful. I'll have to go back and read that scene again with new eyes. It makes me think of C. S. Lewis's comment, "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...I see with a myriad of eyes,but it is still I who see." I would say, in reading AND discussing literature. Thank you!

Wow! I hadn't ever made that connection either -- thank you for sharing, Amy.

For myself, I am quite fond of the end, when Bilbo returns to the Shire and is known to be 'queer' forever after, and then Gandalf and Balin come to visit years later, and they talk of prophecy. I love this bit:

"Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit?"

That is a marvelous quote--thanks! Of course it will be several years before we see how Peter Jackson has interpreted the end of The Hobbit (the downside of a breaking into three parts), but in the meantime, for all of Bilbo's reliance on "luck," we get the sense that there's a larger hand at work, upholding the tale Bilbo finds himself in. As is the case for all of us!

Ooh, I love that part, too, Tessara. And the eagles, Sarah.

I probably only made the dream/Gollum connection because I was leading an adult Sunday School discussion a few years ago, which meant I had to engage more deeply with the story. And yes, we definitely read passages from Walking with Bilbo. :-)

p.s. If you really want to blow your mind, read Glaucon's big speech in Plato's Republic with The Lord of the Rings on your brain.

When everybody is in Bilbo's house and they are planning everything. I like it because I imagine Bilbo's house as a really cool place.