NOTE: Finish the book or come as close as you can for Thursday's class; there are five questions below (couldn't help myself!), but you only need to answer TWO as usual.
ALSO--the Mid-Term Exam assignments are in the post BELOW this one.
Q1: Bilbo exclaims to himself, “Now I am a burglar indeed!”
when he finally steals something—in this case, the Arkenstone. Why does
he take it and say nothing to the dwarves (and is this “heroic”)? Does it
do this because it calls to him, the same way as the Ring did? Or does he
have a larger plan from the beginning?
Q2: In the passage with Smaug, we learn that “there was one smell [Smaug] could not make out at all, hobbit-smell; it was quite outside his experience and puzzled him mightily” (201). Additionally, Bilbo refuses to tell his name, and instead indulges in a series of “kennings,” an Anglo-Saxon poetic form (clue-finder, web-cutter, etc.). What effect does this have on Smaug, and what might be his purpose in doing this? Why taunt an already awake and angry dragon in this manner?
Q3: Why is Bard able to destroy Smaug when no one else could? How might his seemingly "magical" ability to perform a heroic feat mirror some of Bilbo's accomplishments? If you know Star Wars, why might this be a Luke Skywalker/Death Star moment? (consider how Luke does it, and why George Lucas might have had this moment in mind).
Q4: How might Thorin’s final words to Bilbo be a kind of re-writing of Beowulf on Tolkien’s part, and a useful ‘theory’ to read Beowulf and The Hobbit? Related to this, why might it also be Tolkien’s response to people who would dismiss the book as a child’s fantasy, or irrelevant escapism?
Q5: The last chapter of the book plays with the old notion that “you can never go home again.” You can go home again, but there’s a catch: what is that catch for Bilbo? What does he find when he returns home that challenges the old adage? In a way, does Bilbo Baggins ever return to Bag End?
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