Child: You raise some interesting points ... of course (I'd expect no less!). I don't think I've ever had the problem you speak of, regarding reading
The Hobbit through the lens of
LotR and
The Silmarillion. It's not that I ever tried to keep the two separate in my mind, either. Maybe it's that I read
The Hobbit first, and always cherished it for what it was.
Your first post on this thread, Child, cause two separate but linked thoughts for me.
One is the
different geographies of the two stories. It's as if the setting of
The Hobbit is actually Middle Earth (thing "midgeard"), with its Shire, Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Great River of Wilderland, Mount Gundabad, Mirkwood with its Elven King's Halls, Lonely Mountain, Iron Hills, Long Lake, Esgaroth, Dale, Withered Heath, and all the rest. Notice how the names are all non-Elvish? It's only with LotR that we get the Elvish names for these places: Imladris, Hitheiglin, Anduin, Ered Mithrin, Rhovanion, Thranduil's Palace, Erebor, and so forth. And it's with LotR that we discover that Middle Earth (midgeard) has a past that reaches back into the
Silmarillion, making it Arda where there is Valinor, Beleriand, Doriath, and Tol Eressea. Really, I'm only expanding on
Child's theme that
The Hobbit started out having nothing to do with the legendarium. The Maps show it.
The second is the
similar plot structure of the two works. They both start out lighthearted, with a trickster Gandalf, who by the time we're well into the story is revealed as a counsellor and arbitrator between powers. Think of the Battle of Five Armies to get a sense for the Gandalf that seems so familiar to us from LotR. So are there really two Gandalfs? Yes, but not between TH and LotR, I'm thinking. Rather, the Gandalf # 2 is revealed in The Sil and UT, where we learn of him as one of the Istari who is known as Olorin, a Maia. Whereas his resurrection (or whatever you prefer to call it) seems to make of him a virtually messianic figure, we still have no inkling of him as a Maia. But it's clear that once Gandalf was revealed as the White, Tolkien's creative imagination was already at work making the connections.
I'm glad of it.
Aiwendil:
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But to me to say that there are "two Gandalfs" or "two Gondolins" sounds suspiciously mystical.
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Mystical as opposed to what, pray tell? Tangible, perhaps? As usual, I find your closely reasoned logic rather befuddling. I think I figured out what you were really trying to say after I came to (almost) the same conclusion through my own intuitive process. And maybe I'm just kidding myself, and still don't know what you're talking about.
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The claim is that we have different portrayals. But what specific things did Gandalf do in The Hobbit that LotR Gandalf could not have done? Is there really enough there to call the portrayals implicitly contradictory?
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Are you sure that "implicitly contradictory" is actually what we're talking about? Allow me to turn that on its head: Perhaps you are claiming that we do not have different portrayals? Are there not many specific things that Gandalf
did do in LotR that Gandalf in The Hobbit
did not do? Is there really
not enough there to call them two Gandalfs?
