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Post by Sparrow on Aug 24, 2004 20:13:38 GMT -6
After the company says farewell to the Eagles, Gandalf announces that he has traveled farther with this quest than he intended and that he has "other pressing business to attend to." The dwarves and Bilbo manifest their distress. Has the expedition become too dependant on Gandalf? Or do the dwarves and Bilbo just think they need Gandalf? How much have the dwarves and Bilbo contributed to their own survival thus far? How much has Gandalf secured their safety?
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Post by Stormrider on Aug 27, 2004 6:42:40 GMT -6
So far, I think Gandalf has been the main savior of this expedition! He was the one who caused the Trolls to argue and stay outside until daylight. He was the one who escaped the Goblins and was able to come back and save the Dwarves. He was the one who led them up the trees and had made a friend of the Eagles. He was the one to bring them to Beorn's home for safety and a rest.
The Dwarves have not done a whole lot to get themselves out of trouble. Bilbo was the only one who was able to save himself in the golbin-tunnels by finding The Ring--and that was luck or fate. No wonder the Dwarves were distressed that Gandalf would be leaving them!
I think they were relying on Gandalf a lot. Now they would be forced to take their fate into their own hands. Dwarves were created to be sturdy, rugged, and capable to take care of themselves and this is a turning point for them to take charge of their well-being and prove their ability!
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Post by Stormrider on Aug 22, 2012 17:10:20 GMT -6
Another point for Gandalf: He led the group to Rivendell and Elrond who was able to help give them more information about their map and the moon writing in the hidden runes.
Gandalf definately was the saving factor in this expedition so far. If he had not been with, the Trolls would have eaten them and the story would have been over! (Well, I suppose Tolkien could have come up with some other escape plan to save them if Gandalf had not been part of the story.)
I did not realize that Dwarves had been made by Aule out of the sturdy stuff of the earth when I read The Hobbit the first time. Therefore, I didn't realize they should have been more adept at taking care of themselves. However, when The Hobbit was first written, Tolkien hadn't made all of The Silmarillion connections either.
In the first version, the Dwarves seem to be less capable than one would expect of a sturdy race. Even in the re-written version, they don't seem to have shown that they were any tougher. Anyway, in both versions, it really is time that the Dwarves need to start showing the kind of "stuff" they were made of!
They should NOT have felt that they could not get on with their Quest without Gandalf's presence. They should have felt confident and secure that they could get to The Lonely Mountain and get it back from Smaug all on their own. But as written, it appears that they have relied on Gandalf through most of their adventure and are very reluctant to let him go and trust themselves. It is time to wean themselves from Gandalf.
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Post by Andorinha on Aug 27, 2012 12:48:51 GMT -6
"Immanuel Kant defines 'enlightenment' as humankind's release from its self-incurred immaturity; 'immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another.' Enlightenment is the process of undertaking to think for oneself, to employ and rely on one's own intellectual capacities in determining what to believe and how to act. ... The faith of the Enlightenment – if one may call it that – is that the process of enlightenment, of becoming progressively self-directed in thought and action through the awakening of one's intellectual powers, leads ultimately to a better, more fulfilled human existence." ( plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/ ) By the end of the quest, Bilbo has become a self-actuating, self-reliant, "enlightened" individual. This book, after all, is advertised as The Hobbit, it is specifically the hobbit Bilbo's tale. But, is it also meant to be, at least somewhat, a dwarven tale as well? Stormrider's emphasis on the dwarves has got me thinking that I never really looked at this adventure as also being their tale. Do they go through a process of "enlightened maturation" right along with Bilbo? Do they become gradually better at making informed, correct choices for themselves, or do they remain children, simply replacing the leadership of Gandalf with the newly developing leadership of Bilbo? I'm going to have to re-read the whole book now, with this thought in mind: do any of the dwarves, through the perils they have faced, ever exhibit an increased awareness of their own responsibilities, an increased ability to become leaders on their own? I think I see some of this sort of "enlightenment" in Balin, and in Thorin -- but Tolkien does not say much about the other 11 dwarves, so it is a bit hard to see the character developments there. Bombur, I think, changes very little over the course of the adventure, merely stumbling along from one feast toward the hope of the next. Dori grows some, maybe, in becoming more accepting of his role as "muscle-man" in the quest; and, as the tale unfolds, he acts more "pro-actively" to assist Bilbo without having to be told? Balin overcomes his natural caution to the point where he even accompanies Bilbo (at least part of the way) into the Dragon's lair. Thorin shows his character growth most, I think, just at his end, when he realizes the sterling worth of Bilbo, and the value of his philosophy: his quiet, caring pragmatism, his open and honest emotionalism, all of which make Bilbo "a true child of the kindly West."
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Post by Stormrider on Aug 29, 2012 6:17:21 GMT -6
Andorinha:
You are right, of course. Ths book is about Bilbo and his (as you said) "becoming a self-actuating, self-reliant, 'enlightened' individual" and is written to introduce the new race of hobbits into the literary world. It is mainly about his development but some of the dwarves change and develop as well, but not as much as Bilbo does.
Gandalf was there to be supportive of the dwarves' quest to get The Lonely Mountain and the treasure hoard back. Gandalf's insistance on adding Bilbo to the mix was well worth it in the long run. If Gandalf hadn't done that, the dwarves never would have thought to include a hobbit as their burglar.
I still do not think Thorin and Company really thought their whole quest out before hand. Sending their little group up against a dragon just had "failrure" written all over it from the start! They didn't have proper weapons to stand up against Smaug in the first place, they didn't think it through as to how long and where they would put the treasures Bilbo would burglarize out of the mountain, or what kind of reaction they would get once they challenged the dragon! How many dwarves were living in The Lonely Mountain when Smaug first took it over? All of those dwarves couldn't stop him back then--so how could this little group do any better?
Even Gandalf would not have been enough to help their little group out. They had a lot of luck that helped them through it. I believe we have another thread started about luck, so I don't want to get into that on this thread.
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Post by Andorinha on Aug 30, 2012 10:27:34 GMT -6
RE Stormrider's: "Gandalf was there to be supportive of the dwarves' quest to get The Lonely Mountain and the treasure hoard back."
Hmm, just from The Hobbit text, not using The Quest of Erebor, what do we know about Gandalf and his "association" with the adventure? He does not seem to be included in the official contract, that instrument is made between Bilbo and the 13 dwarves; nor does Gandalf seem to have been offered a share of the treasure (if the expedition should prove successful), the others get an official one-fourteenth share. Gandalf never really makes plain to the dwarves/ hobbit, just how far he will go with them, how long he will stay. In fact, by the close of the goblin-wargs episode, he reveals that he has already stayed too long with them, and will help them out of their immediate woes (by introducing them to Beorn), and then will be off on his own business.
It does seem sort of careless in the wizard, after seeing how much the company depends on him, to just cut loose and head off south, it does seem that the little band, even with Beorn's help must surely fail, yet off the wizard goes...
Apparently, we the readers, are expected to share in Gandalf's faith that something will work out for the expedition, that Bilbo will mature into a good leader, and that an enormous amount of luck/ good fate must already be attending their efforts. But, LOL, that does bring us to the question of luck, appropriate on its own page as Stormrider suggests. Here I would just add, that even in the original version, Bilbo quickly realized his ring's power as a tool of invisibility, but he also soon learned that it was his ring of good luck, and he was the "luck wearer"...
Gandalf must have sensed some of this, and so felt better about leaving them while he pursued his own adventure southward.
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