The Hobbit - Chapter 02 - Roast Mutton

[Thinlómien]

This has always been one of my favourite chapters in The Hobbit. The trolls are just such nice folk.

Gandald shows his smartness once again and the problem starts because of Bilbo. This emphasizes well their roles at this part of the book.

[Alchisiel]

This is a favorite chapter of mine also. But I have to disagree with Thinlómien regarding that the fix they get in is entirely Bilbo's fault. I know that it was he that tried to pilfer something from the troll's pocket but it was Thorin and Company that grew impatient and didn't check things out before approaching. I know I would have!! I love the cunning of Gandalf in this chapter!! I can just see him lying among some rocks or in a bush near the trolls with one hand next to his mouth throwing his voice.

I don't know if the trolls fit in with Middle-Earth or not but I do enjoy this chapter so I'm inclined to say yes. I always thought that their names were rather common compared to names like Gandalf, Bilbo, Thorin and the like. I think I've actually dated a William or Tom in my day but I wish I hadn't. They seem to me crude, rough, not refined at all. What I get from William's attitude is that he would almost like to make Bilbo a pet.

The next time I'm grabbed by trolls I'll try to remember to keep them busy until the sun comes up as I am very like a hobbit-short, fat in the middle, but no hair on my feet!!

[Lalwendë]

I'm not altogether fond of this chapter because it still leaves me feeling slightly disturbed, even after all these years. Am I alone in finding it truly dark and disturbing?

It begins with Bilbo being rushed from his home against his will, he is bullied by the Dwarves into getting himself into a dangerous situation and ends with him having gone through torment by the trolls. What can be more disturbing than the very real threat od being eaten? The way that the trolls discuss how to cook the Dwarves is horrible, especially when they wonder whether to mince them. Ugh.

Something new about this passage struck me though. When they go to the Trolls' cave to see what they have there, they take away food. Are these the same trolls who have killed and eaten people? What kind of meat might they have stashed away in that cave? They certainly have the spoils they have taken from their victims, but I think I'd avoid the meat!
It reminds me of the gory and probably exaggerated tale of the Scottish cannibal family the Sawney Beans.

I did have to laugh that due to Bilbo's being rushed out of the house he forgot something very important, which Gandalf then brought along for him. His pipe.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Lal, I'd guess that the chapter title gives us a clue as to the kind of meat the trolls had left over. After all, it was all they'd had during the past days:

Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer...

[Formendacil]

Possibly my least favourite chapter in The Hobbit, "Roast Mutton" jarringly takes us from the familiar-feeling comforts of the Hobbit-hole, and deposits us squarely in a bleak adventure-land of rain, ruins, and Trolls...

Although I dislike this chapter in general, finding it somewhat disjointed in connection with the rest of the book- a transition from Bywater to Rivendell would feel a bit better, I can see its purpose as the first episode of Bilbo's life as a burglar, the humourous prelude that makes the first of his real adventures (with Gollum) seem plausible.

That said- and that probably disagreed with as well- this chapter is not without its redeeming qualities. Although the speech and names of the trolls are most jarring different from the style of the Lord of the Rings or the Silmarillion, I've always been able to pass this off in my mind as an "earlier conceit of the translator who later abandoned such attempts as a valid method of conveying the Third Age".

What's more, jarringly wrong though the trolls and their speech may be, it's got some of my favourite lines from The Hobbit:

"Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer... "

Slightly modified, this is a VERY humourous line to think over when confronted with a situation of continuously boring food. World Youth Day and its obiquitous breakfasts come to mind:

"Warm milk and yogurt yesterday, warm milk and yogurt today, and blimey, if it don't look like warm milk and yogurt tomorrer..."

Now, if only there had been someone on hand who would have got it when I was thinking that...

Another classic line is, of course:

"A bur- a hobbit!"

"A Burrahobbit!"

"Burrahobbit" may have been Tolkien playing fun at the trolls' collective stupidity, but the very sound of the word- if a word it may be called- is rather enjoyable. Both the written look and the spoken sound are such that one can actually imagine Burrahobbits as a related species or a subspecies of Hobbit- perhaps an Australian kind. Of course, such a feeling on my part isn't too strange considering the profession of the good professor.

[Findegil]

Two question I will throw in concerning this chapter:

Just then all the others came round the corner of the road from the village. They were on Ponies, and each pony was slung about with all kinds of baggages, packages, parcels, and paraphernalia. ...

What do you make of this? What did the dwarves carry on that way beside their remarkable music-instruments? All this disappeared when the ponies were captured by the goblins in the Mistymountians, before anymore was told about it.

In this chapter we have also one of the points were Tolkien wished to harmonies TH and LotR but failed. He introduce the last bridge, but by doing so he made the pony jump into Mitheithel instead of Bruinen. Thus he created a heavy problem because Bilbo and company reached the troll-fire in not more than a couple of hours while Aragorn with Frodo and friends needed five days to reach the same place.
How is that riddle solved in your interpretation of Middle-Earth? Or did you never consider it at all? And on a greater scale: Bilbo and company needed about 38 days on ponies to reach Rivendell while Frodo and friends managed the same distance in only 28 days on their own feet. Where did the dwarves spend all the day?

Respectfully
Findegil

[Raynor]

There are some really funny moments in the chapter. The first would be the warning the dwarves leave in their note ("funeral expenses to be defrayed by us or our representatives, if occasion arises and the matter is not otherwise arranged for") - yet I don't think our hero has much time to ponder over it, since a most dialogue occurs between him and Gandalf:

- That leaves you just ten minutes. You will have to run, said Gandalf.
- But - said Bilbo.
- No time for it, said the wizard.
- But - said Bilbo again.
- No time for that either! Off you go!


An interesting remark occurs: "They have seldom even heard of the king round here"; however, considering the prologue of Lotr:

"There remained, of course, the ancient tradition concerning the high king at Fornost, or Norbury as they called it, away north of the Shire. But there had been no king for nearly a thousand years, and even the ruins of Kings' Norbury were covered with grass. Yet the Hobbits still said of wild folk and wicked things (such as trolls) that they had not heard of the king. For they attributed to the king of old all their essential laws; and usually they kept the laws of free will, because they were The Rules (as they said), both ancient and just."

we are bound to consider that the king is more of a figurative refference; Doug Anderson also notes that "the mention here of the king is probably not meant to refer to an actual personage but instead to invoke the idea of the king as the theoretical source of justice, law, and order".

The trolls are some most interesting newcomers; in Of the other races, Fotr, we learn that:

"Troll has been used to translate the Sindarin Torog. In their beginning far back in the twilight of the Elder Days, these were creatures of dull and lumpish nature and had no more language than beasts. But Sauron had made use of them, teaching them what little they could learn, and increasing their wits with wickedness. Trolls therefore took such language as they could master from the Orcs; and in the Westlands the Stone-trolls spoke a debased form of the Common Speech."

Tolkien expands more on the troll sujbect in his 1954 letter to Peter Hastings:

"I am not sure about Trolls. I think they are mere 'counterfeits', and hence (though here I am of course only using elements of old barbarous mythmaking that had no 'aware' metaphysic) they return to mere stone images when not in the dark. But there are other sorts of Trolls beside these rather ridiculous, if brutal, Stone-trolls, for which other origins are suggested. Of course (since inevitably my world is highly imperfect even on its own plane nor made wholly coherent - our Real World does not appear to be wholly coherent either; and I am actually not myself convinced that, though in every world on every plane all must ultimately be under the Will of God, even in ours there are not some 'tolerated' sub-creational counterfeits!) when you make Trolls speak you are giving them a power, which in our world (probably) connotes the possession of a 'soul'. But I do not agree (if you admit that fairy-story element) that my trolls show any sign of 'good', strictly and unsentimentally viewed. I do not say William felt pity - a word to me of moral and imaginative worth: it is the Pity of Bilbo and later Frodo that ultimately allows the Quest to be achieved - and I do not think he showed Pity. I might not (if The Hobbit had been more carefully written, and my world so much thought about 20 years ago) have used the expression 'poor little blighter', just as I should not have called the troll William. But I discerned no pity even then, and put in a plain caveat. Pity must restrain one from doing something immediately desirable and seemingly advantageous. There is no more 'pity' here than in a beast of prey yawning, or lazily patting a creature it could eat, but does not want to, since it is not hungry. Or indeed than there is in many of men's actions, whose real roots are in satiety, sloth, or a purely non-moral natural softness, though they may dignify them by 'pity's' name."

It is also noteworthy that in letter #25 he compares the vulgar trollery of calling Bilbo "nassty little rabbit" with the dwarven malice in calling him "descendant of rats" - in refference to his short hands and feet.

The way Gandalf deals with the trolls is in true observance of his mission directives as given in the Istari - to avoid open display of power. Concerning the opening of the treasure door, we see that it is also a hobbit (just as in FotR) that finds the key in. The sharing of the troll loot reminds me of an old proverb: "he may prepare for it, but the just shall put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver".

Finnally, they cover up the treasure, using _magic_. I am lead to believe that dwarves themselves have magic abilities - in the first chapter, the song goes "the dwarves of yore made mighty spells, while hammers fell like ringing bells" - we also have the magic doors of Moria, to which even Celebrimbor testifies that they were made by the dwarves. If this is true, that it would set them apart from Men in this respect too [in letter #155, Tolkien notes that:

"Anyway, a difference in the use of 'magic' in this story is that it is not to be come by by 'lore' or spells; but is in an inherent power not possessed or attainable by Men as such. Aragorn's 'healing' might be regarded as 'magical', or at least a blend of magic with pharmacy and 'hypnotic' processes. But it is (in theory) reported by hobbits who have very little notions of philosophy and science; while Aragorn is not a pure 'Man', but at long remove one of the 'children of Luthien'."

Thus he created a heavy problem because Bilbo and company reached the troll-fire in not more than a couple of hours while Aragorn with Frodo and friends needed five days to reach the same place.

In the Annotated hobbit, Anderson makes a refference to an aborted attempt to revise the Hobbit, in which this "geographical" issue is dealt with.

[deal_with_it]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I'm not altogether fond of this chapter because it still leaves me feeling slightly disturbed, even after all these years. Am I alone in finding it truly dark and disturbing?

It begins with Bilbo being rushed from his home against his will, he is bullied by the Dwarves into getting himself into a dangerous situation and ends with him having gone through torment by the trolls. What can be more disturbing than the very real threat od being eaten? The way that the trolls discuss how to cook the Dwarves is horrible, especially when they wonder whether to mince them. Ugh.

Something new about this passage struck me though. When they go to the Trolls' cave to see what they have there, they take away food. Are these the same trolls who have killed and eaten people? What kind of meat might they have stashed away in that cave? They certainly have the spoils they have taken from their victims, but I think I'd avoid the meat!
It reminds me of the gory and probably exaggerated tale of the Scottish cannibal family the Sawney Beans.

I did have to laugh that due to Bilbo's being rushed out of the house he forgot something very important, which Gandalf then brought along for him. His pipe.

What I always remembered about this chpater was how Thorin orders his dwarves to bury the treasure to fetch upon their return. Well, they don't return, so is the treasure still buried there? Or does someone collect it that we aren't aware of?

I thought the whole point of the Quest was to regain Erebor. Why WOULD they return?

Lastly, why didn't they stay over in Bree rather than camp out in the Wilds? Or were they well passed Bree by this point?