Contradictions between the hobbit and LOTR?

[Morsul the Dark]

Gandalf was always working to fortify the West and North from Mordor. That’s a big reason he moved to put Thorin and company back into the lonely mountain. The biggest reason I can think of about the difference is Gandalf before Bilbo is working against a hypothetical threat. In LoTR it’s no longer hypothetical and a full blown crisis

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

Gandalf was always working to fortify the West and North from Mordor. That’s a big reason he moved to put Thorin and company back into the lonely mountain. The biggest reason I can think of about the difference is Gandalf before Bilbo is working against a hypothetical threat. In LoTR it’s no longer hypothetical and a full blown crisis

At the time of the The Hobbit, Gandalf had known for nearly a hundred years that the Necromancer was Sauron. It took the latter reoccupying Mordor, and, even more so, the knowledge that the ring Bilbo had found was the One, to convince him that the last throw was almost at hand.

[Legolas]

When looking at the style and character development change across The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, it may go without saying that you should keep in mind that they were not originally devised as direct volumes in series. The Hobbit was a child’s tale that included allusions to a wider world only intended to emphasize one of the themes of the book, embodied best in Gandalf’s famous closing line: “You are a very fine fellow, Mr Baggins, and I am very fond of you. But you are really just a little fellow, in a wide world.” Tolkien never thought he would have to explain the Necromancer and was not sure he would have the chance to publish the story of Gondolin. Enough people asked about the Necromancer to change his mind; indeed, he did not have the chance to publish the Gondolin story in his lifetime in the way he might have liked.

What might be less considered is that, within the story, these smaller stories are written by characters from said stories to be included in the Red Book of Westmarch. They are written by different people - Bilbo and Frodo/Sam - at different times and with different levels of understanding of what was actually going on. I find that to be consistent with Tolkien’s suggestion of “incomplete information.”

Though it was not the original intention at time of writing, the full mythology - what I think of as the story - frames The Hobbit as Bilbo’s own account of his adventure, so we are only hearing his version of the story. It is not a historical account from a omniscient narrator. We only learn of Gandalf what Bilbo remembers of him, which is also limited to what Gandalf chose to reveal of himself at the time. Likewise, there is an obvious necessity as Frodo’s story progresses for Gandalf to put aside his jolly fireworks-and-smoke-rings persona to fulfill his true purpose - to rally the peoples of Middle-earth against the evil threatening them. The immediacy of the Ring situation intensifies Gandalf’s demeanor and behavior, but if we could have seen him away from Bilbo and Frodo, we would have known that he was always like this when he needed to be. There is also the clear unharnessing of Gandalf’s strength when he is rembodied as the White.

As for the elves and dwarves, I do not think it is unreasonable to expect that there were multiple instances of grievance, annoyance, and distrust. Disagreements would not only come historically from grudges, but also perpetually from an inherent difference in nature and values. Again, Bilbo is writing from what he knows; he encountered Thranduil’s wood elves and their obvious distaste for dwarves. Thranduil would have carried the pain of Thingol and his kin’s troubles with the dwarves, but is also presently annoyed by the dwarves’ meddling in his kingdom as Bilbo is looking on.

[Mithalwen]

Yes, I have always thought of The Lord of the Ringss being “ history”, The Hobbit as a fairy story and the Silmarillion as myth /legend at least from the perspective of its supposed translator, Bilbo.

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Yes, I have always thought of The Lord of the Ringss being “ history”, The Hobbit as a fairy story and the Silmarillion as myth /legend at least from the perspective of its supposed translator, Bilbo.

I'd generally agree. I think that Tolkien saw the stories similarly to this: LotR was "true", but Hobbit was coloured by Bilbo's perspective. Taking that position meant he could entirely change chunks of The Hobbit, and even contemplate a full rewrite; I can't imagine him doing the same thing for LotR.

As for the Silmarillion... my impression is that Tolkien wanted the Annals and their associated documents to be "true" accounts. When the Grey Annals say under the year 471 that "In this year Huor wedded Rian daughter of Belegund", that wasn't intended to be "out of the mists of time has come the legend of a wedding in the year four hundred and seventy, yea, and one more year added thereunto"; it was supposed to be "this just happened, and we wrote it down".

The older, long-form stories that grew out of the Lost Tales, I think were more 'mythical'. Obviously originally they were, being explicitly tales told around the fire at suppertime (or, in some instances, by kids in the garden), and I don't feel like Tolkien ever drew away from that. So Ainulindale and Valaquenta, the Fall of Gondolin and the Lay of Leithian - these are all retellings, not records.

Which leaves the Quenta Silmarillion itself. A quick bit of poking around suggests that the Quenta was always meant to be a hybrid text - the 'earliest Silmarillion' verse in HoME IV is described as a history constructed from the Book of Lost Tales. I can imagine Tolkien imagining a scribe - maybe in the Havens of Sirion, maybe in Numenor, maybe even in Rivendell - sitting down with a copy of the Annals and a whole sheaf of random legends (including interview notes from that one time she was able to get Glorfindel to actually talk about his past), and attempting to cobble together a coherent narrative from it all.

(That scribe, though, is probably not Bilbo - compression isn't really one of his known skills, and besides, there's not nearly enough songs in the Silm for him to have put it together himself...)

hS

[Mithalwen]

Yes exactly. There were folk in Rivendell who knew stuff as fact or would at least have had contemporary reports of but as with real life even they can be contradictory or given a spin. Also they would have known things that even Tolkien didn’t. It is inconceivable that Elrond didn’t know who Gil-galad’s father was.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Also they would have known things that even Tolkien didn’t. It is inconceivable that Elrond didn’t know who Gil-galad’s father was.

Well, it's a wise child who knows his own father, let alone Gil-galad's father.

(Sorry, couldn't resist )

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

It is inconceivable that Elrond didn’t know who Gil-galad’s father was.

But would he have told Bilbo?

Yes, yes, 'as kind as summer', but when a short, faintly-Sauron-possessed person shows up uninvited in your house, announces he lives there now, and promptly starts stinking the place up by smoking indoors, eating enough for half a dozen elves, and singing comic songs about your dad at the drop of a hat, would you be inclined to cooperate when he says he's 'going to write a history of the world next'? Nah - you'd just make sure the valuable stuff was on the top shelves and give him the key to the library.

And if he shows up asking questions about some of the wacky fairy tales Celebrian's mum used to read to her, just fob him off with the old 'they will say both no and yes' excuse. It works wonders.

What... you don't think?

hS, not being particularly serious

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

I'd generally agree. I think that Tolkien saw the stories similarly to this: LotR was "true", but Hobbit was coloured by Bilbo's perspective. Taking that position meant he could entirely change chunks of The Hobbit, and even contemplate a full rewrite; I can't imagine him doing the same thing for LotR.

As for the Silmarillion... my impression is that Tolkien wanted the Annals and their associated documents to be "true" accounts. When the Grey Annals say under the year 471 that "In this year Huor wedded Rian daughter of Belegund", that wasn't intended to be "out of the mists of time has come the legend of a wedding in the year four hundred and seventy, yea, and one more year added thereunto"; it was supposed to be "this just happened, and we wrote it down".

The older, long-form stories that grew out of the Lost Tales, I think were more 'mythical'. Obviously originally they were, being explicitly tales told around the fire at suppertime (or, in some instances, by kids in the garden), and I don't feel like Tolkien ever drew away from that. So Ainulindale and Valaquenta, the Fall of Gondolin and the Lay of Leithian - these are all retellings, not records.

Which leaves the Quenta Silmarillion itself. A quick bit of poking around suggests that the Quenta was always meant to be a hybrid text - the 'earliest Silmarillion' verse in HoME IV is described as a history constructed from the Book of Lost Tales. I can imagine Tolkien imagining a scribe - maybe in the Havens of Sirion, maybe in Numenor, maybe even in Rivendell - sitting down with a copy of the Annals and a whole sheaf of random legends (including interview notes from that one time she was able to get Glorfindel to actually talk about his past), and attempting to cobble together a coherent narrative from it all.

(That scribe, though, is probably not Bilbo - compression isn't really one of his known skills, and besides, there's not nearly enough songs in the Silm for him to have put it together himself...)

hS

I think that was his intention, but in execution it didn't really hold up. The earliest versions of the Annals clearly were aiming for something like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle;* but by the time he got to the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals the stylistic distinction completely broke down and he was writing in full Quenta mode, resulting in parallel accounts of the same events at essentially the same focal length.

___

* (although, Tolkien probably knew that much of the Chronicle was written years and centuries after the events described)