LMB Book Club, The Hobbit Ch. 17: The Clouds Burst

[Lennidhren]

Topics forthcoming, but here's the date & time poll...

Also, suggestions for a Book Club Band song? No poems in this chapter.

Suggestions for a meeting place will also be entertained. Or we can all be entertained in Horazio's hobbit hole in Oldfurlong. :-)

[Lennidhren]

I think we'll be going with Sunday for the meeting, but I see only two votes so far...so if there are half a dozen people out there wanting to meet on Saturday...er, vote now. :-)

[Lindorieh]

Gaiagil and I have an obligation on Saturday, so we would not be able to make it to the meeting then.

Lindorieh

[gaiagil]

I will actually be away most of the weekend as my father-in-law is dying and I must go see him. If I get back on time on Sunday, I'll pop in, though not necessarily in the best spirits. My father-in-law is a truly great man.

Gaiagil

[Lennidhren]

Sorry to hear that, Gaia! My prayers are with you and your father-in-law.

Here are our discussion topics:

1) Dain's dwarves make a most impressive army, described in greater detail than any of the others in the Battle of Five Armies. How do they compare to Thorin's dwarves, and what do they add to our understanding of dwarves on the whole?

2) In the last chapter we had a glimpse of Gandalf, but he stayed in the shadows, letting Bilbo go on with his plans. In this chapter we see more of the wizard, but still he lets others make the plans and carry them through...until the goblin army arrives. What do you make of his sudden intervention between the armies of Dain and the elves and men?

3) We are told that the battle was "the most dreadful of all Bilbo's experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most - which is to say it was the one he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it." What was Bilbo's actual part in the battle? And how do you envision his retelling of it afterwards, apart from his role as narrator in the book?

4) "The Eagles are coming!" In a letter to his son Christopher in 1944 Tolkien wrote: "I knew I had written a story of worth in 'The Hobbit' when reading it (after it was old enough to be detached from me) I had suddenly in a fairly strong measure the 'eucatastrophic' emotion at Bilbo's exclamation: 'The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!' " (Letters, No. 89) "Eucatastrophe" is a term Tolkien invented or "the sudden, joyous turn of events (the 'good catastrophe') that provides the happy ending to a fairy story." Does this line from the book have the same effect for you? Can you identify other moments in this story (or LOTR...) which produce such eucatastrophe?

[Lindorieh]

We are expecting lots of severe weather this afternoon, so I may not be able to make it. Hopefully it won't materialize, but if it does we are looking at a long afternoon in the basement!