Bilbo cheated?

[Mithadan]

<font face="Verdana"><table><TR><TD><FONT SIZE="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Shade of Carn Dûm
Posts: 369</TD><TD></TD></TR></TABLE>
<img src="http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/posticons/onering.jpg" align=absmiddle> Re: Bilbo cheated?

Interesting that this discussion was triggered by the offhand comment of a seven year old. I first read The Hobbit at age 11 and the question of Bilbo cheating never occurred to me, at least until I read the prologue of LoTR.

Saulotus, you have a first edition too or are you working off the Annotated Hobbit? Regarding &quot;revision direction&quot;, clearly JRRT's revisions cast Gollum and the Ring in a more sinister light. But the riddle itself did not change between the original text and the revised. To me this indicates that Bilbo's &quot;pocket&quot; question was not itself influenced by the Ring. When written, the One Ring (as opposed to the &quot;ring&quot; Bilbo found) did not exist. Bilbo ran out of questions and was scared by Gollum. He merely voiced his curiosity about what he had found in an innocent manner. When Gollum responded, Bilbo did take advantage of the situation, but Gollum did agree to guess even though it wasn't a proper riddle.

You can look at it two ways. Bilbo didn't intend to cheat and had run out of resources, or Bilbo knew it wasn't a real riddle and cheated by pushing Gollum to answer the question. Its a little of both in my opinion. Bilbo knew nothing of Gollum's honor and clearly believed that Gollum would try to kill him anyway.

--Mithadan--
"The Silmarils with living light
were kindled clear, and waxing bright
shone like stars that in the North
above the reek of earth leap forth." </p>