[Formendacil]

I seem to continue to lag behind in these discussions... Ah well, perhaps this week I shall catch back up to the current chapter. Meanwhile, I have impressions to record...

This chapter is about Beorn, and as such, I think the effect that it has on the reader is in a large part tied directly to how one feels about Beorn. Personally, although he takes Thorin & Co. in, and although they are well-treated, and kept quite safe, I don't get the same warm feeling from Beorn that I do from Elrond- and it's more than just the whole big bumblebees buzzing around. Tolkien shows, as we move from wholly safe characters to not-so-safe half-bears, the progression of the story as Bilbo moves farther and farther from Hobbiton. No doubt, had he met Beorn before Tom, William, the Great Goblin, Gollum, and the Wargs, he would have seemed a much more malevolent creature than the refuge that he seems here.

The ambivalence surrounding the "goodness" of Beorn is different, it seems to me, than the clearcut "Good And Evil" sides normally associated with simplistic Fairy Tales. We are told that Beorn is good, that his cause is just, and all the evidence says that he's on the good side, but thinking about Beorn, I can't help but think of him as a rather ambiguous character. He's rather too eager to take up the sword (figuratively speaking, since he's not a swordsman) against orks and Wargs- and Dwarves, if they should be aiding the orks. Beorn, it seems to me, has a very rigid, and possibly rather narrow, view of what is Right and what is Wrong, and although he's clearly presented as a Good Guy, I can't help but get shivers from him, and I don't think I'd enjoy a stay in his house...