Thursday, July 31, 2014

The Hobbit: Ch7 Queer Lodgings

Folks there it is again in the chapter title and I still haven't seen an explanation. Did it just mean "strange" or something back then? That's kind of unfortunate, considering... anyway, I'm not gonna step in it just because it's a slow week for comments, but if someone could pleeease enlighten me it would be great. Anyway.

BEORN IS AWESOME. :D

I have to give a hugely approving shout-out to Gandalf's clever plan to get everyone in at Beorn's. I was grinning like an idiot every time Beorn twigged to the numbers being wrong, and at how subtle the slow play was. It's all well and good for the wizard to throw about his magic like it's the be-all and end-all of plot resolutions, but here a stellar Int check or two and cunning Diplomacy won the day. This really is the book D&D was born from. :D

Once again I get things wrong; the Carrock is just a rock, and Beorn a person, albeit a good pit stop for travelers. I'm starting to think there are no towns between where Bilbo lives and the lair of the dragon. Here's to Jeremy, Misreader of Maps. Wise and genius is he in no things. I did notice, though, that the chapter claims that the story ends with a five-sided war. So of course I'm incredibly on board with that even though it's confusing as all hell how the tale plans to get from dragons and wizards to war. I can't even think of five sides for there to be.

I wonder if Gandalf is always so irritable or if it's a consequence of traveling with inept and demanding dwarves. He's definitely capable of better moods. And he has relatives! Good heavens. His brother or cousin gets mentioned in this chapter, and I'd dearly like to see the family of a wizard. Mirkwood is on the map, you know, and both the relative and the Necromancer are to the south...

I'm going to pause here and level with you guys: after this chapter, and considering the map and what's been said... I would have expected the Necromancer to be one of the five armies that are mentioned at the start of the chapter, but I'm starting to feel like he's a throwaway sort of detail, nothing more than an excuse for Gandalf to pop in and out as he likes. I was sure we were going to get an evil wizard, but I'm feeling like we're consistently going in the other direction. It doesn't help that I can see where the dragon is (the mountain) and it's in the opposite direction and I know we're going there. Unless there's a magical teleport or something, I don't think the story can do both and have a war (still no idea what that will be) and so it has to go for dragons. Which is fair. I'd go for dragons.

SO YEAH ANYWAY HOW ABOUT THAT BEORN? Most awesome big bearlike type since Fezzik? Could be. I love his home, his food, his animals, the whole thing. Strange lodgings they may be, but the big man is willing to host them for the price of their tale, their enmity of goblins, and a quick promise not to bebother his bebearing. Someone help me on this because I honestly do not know: is Beorn the first example or one of the first of a sort of were-thing? I don't ever remember coming across werewolves in legends and here I have a "skinchanger" popping up in a hugely influential book... I don't know. I'm probably wrong. Still, you tell me.

Anyway, back to business, this man is clearly an inspiration for D&D druids. A shapeshifter who commands squads of animals to tasks - and that was hilariously fanciful, by the way, like getting to reimagine the best parts of fairy tales all over again with animals behaving fantastically - and has low regard for metal things... yeah. Druid. Talks to animals, too. The author paints the man perfectly by throwing in "growled" and "fiercely" to describe his approach to socializing, and I love it. I think Beorn actually means bear in... Coldeuropean. That language. That's a real thing.

So what's coming next? As much as I enjoyed the stay with Beorn, I feel like this might be the last or at most second-last haven we're going to have on the quest. From here on in, it's a spooky sort of monstrous dark forest filled with the stuff of random encounters and that classic warning they're totally going to break almost immediately. Don't go off the path indeed. And guys, I just have to say, don't grumble about being told not to steal. The hell is up with your greed? You have a mountain full of dragon waiting for you. Treasure. Treasure is what I meant. Mountain full of treasure. Since they get to do this part without Gandalf (watch him pop up as soon as they get across, of course) they'll definitely make a really stupid mistake. What remains now is to find out why. This was a much better chapter than that sort of "bridge" chapter we just had, and I'm excited to see the next one :D

Tippet and muff were on the list this time, and I think that was it for vocabulary. All I caught, anyway. Enlighten me, O enlighteners of the Jeremy.

22 comments:

  1. Yes, I know about the definition of "queer" now, but I didn't want to adjust the post from when I originally wrote it. I play fair, even if fucking squirrels don't.

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    1. For some backstory...Tolkien was born in 1896, fought in the thick of WW 1 and a lot of his writing was to deal with the PTSD of what he experienced. IMO WW 1 was the most brutal conflict humans have ever had with each other and that is saying a lot. In this most brutal of conflicts there was a most brutal of battles called the Battle of the Somme. One million men died in four months. One million. Thats 83,000 men a day. Most/many/all of his childhood friends died in this battle. On top of this he had the survivors guilt of barely missing the battle because he contacted trench fever.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#First_World_War
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme_(1916)

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    2. To the history nazi's that fight over every detail no matter how irrelevant to substance.... "He was only there for 18 months! it was only 750k! IMO it wasn't the most brutal!" Bite me.

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  2. I don't think Beorn is the first were-critter ever; I'm pretty sure the werewolf myth is quite old. However, Beorn is absolutely the reason that D&D werebears are classically Lawful Good when most of the rest of the werecritters are some species of Evil.

    I also love Beorn's house, and I love the idea that his "house" is like a whole town in its own right, but only him and his animals live there.

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  3. There are a lot of tidbits of background information that don't get expanded on in The Hobbit, but become big points in other books- remember that this is a prequel of sorts to The Lord of the Rings, a much more "adult" and dense trilogy of books... and movies! I honestly dunno if I would recommend reading the books first, or watching the movies first- they're very well made and put most other fantasy movies to shame, but of course they do cut some material from the books.

    As for were-creatures, what about the myths of Gods who would take the shapes of various animals on their exploits to earth, would that count?

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    1. Aw, I thought someone on the forum said we were supposed to keep it a secret that that was a sequel.

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    2. LOL. You cannot spoil Jeremy. I make sure of it. He doesn't see any comments that I don't personally forward to him, and I'm going to block anything that mentions LotR as a sequel to Hobbit. ^_^

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    3. To be honest the 3rd and 4th words of the first sentence of the book give that away. You'd probably also need to hide the publisher's blurb.

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    4. You mean he can't just... go on here and read comments?

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    5. "You cannot spoil Jeremy. I make sure of it. He doesn't see any comments that I don't personally forward to him, and I'm going to block anything that mentions LotR as a sequel to Hobbit. ^_^"
      O_o
      Why?

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    6. ^To preserve his surprise, I presume.

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    7. Oh he *can* just go here and read comments, but as far as I know he doesn't. He's worried about spoilers

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  4. "Beorn" is the Old English word for "bear". It is related to the Coldeuropean (a.k.a. "Scandinavian") names meaning bear: Björn/Bjørn. Tolkien, being a professor English Language, clearly chose this name carefully (though, to be honest, that's true for most of Tolkien's names).

    As others have said, were-creatures are much older than Tolkien. The word "were" comes from an Old English word for "man", so "were-wolf" once meant, quite literally, "man-wolf".

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    1. I wonder if I should be disappointed that Beowulf isn't a literal bear-wolf.

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    2. He IS a bear, though. Beowulf = bee-wolf = beehive robber = bear.

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  5. Beorn is definitely not the first shapechanger - legends of those stretch back hundreds of years.

    'muff' can have several meanings in English English. Not all of them are really for use in polite company, but I doubt ol' JRR meant it that way. If it was used as a verb, it means to fail or mess something up.

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  6. Indeed, Beorn is surely a big influence on the Druid and especially on the werebear. No, werewolves and the like have been around for centuries, especially in France werewolf hunts kind of hold the place in history that witch hunts do for Americans and English.

    A tippet is a sort of scarf or mantle or short cape made of fur.

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  7. If 'muff' was being used to refer to an article of clothing, then it's a furry tube you put your hands in to keep them warm when its cold.

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    1. As in, ear-muffs.

      (One of these days I'll figure out why this site won't let me sign in with any of my online identity things. I'm Evil Midnight Lurker from RPGnet.)

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  8. Werewolves are at least seen in greek mythology, lycanthropy is named for Lycaon, who was turned into a wolf for killing a child.

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  9. Tolkien meant 'queer' as in 'strange' or 'odd' (you can see how it became a homophobic slur...). It's in reference to Bilbo and co.'s stay at Beorn's, which is definitely the weirdest place they've stayed at so far.

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