Re-reading the Hobbit, it almost feels like a distinct setting from LotR's Middle-Earth

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Listening to Bilbo taking Smaug's treasure and the dragon's subsequent attack as a result, I also wonder how much of the Hobbit was just JRRT playing around with one of the most underwritten parts of Beowulf, which he was of course intimately familiar with.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Listening to Bilbo taking Smaug's treasure and the dragon's subsequent attack as a result, I also wonder how much of the Hobbit was just JRRT playing around with one of the most underwritten parts of Beowulf, which he was of course intimately familiar with.

I wrote an essay on that a good many years ago - the Hobbit as a retelling of the third part of Beowulf, and the Kipling story Riki Tiki Tavi being the first and second part.

Spoiler: Original text

Why THE HOBBIT is a sequel to a story about a mongoose​

The other day I was studying a comprehension with one of my students based on an extract from Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a story from The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. This was one of my favourite stories as a child, but looking at it as an adult, I realised that it was a retelling of the Anglo Saxon saga Beowulf. Strangely, this presented me with a problem: having made the connection, was there any way in which I could make use of this insight? All I could think of was to write about it, in the hope that someone finds it entertaining.

The first question is, did Kipling intend this, or was it just a coincidence? Well, both stories take the form of the Monomyth, the most common pattern in any narrative. However, several details seem too close for simple coincidence. In both stories, the hero arrives in a location plagued by a male monster, which he defeats in battle. This results in a more terrible female monster swearing vengeance against the hero and his friends. The hero then hunts down and defeats the female monster in her subterranean lair.

If you look into Kipling’s educational background, it seems likely that Beowulf would have been a story he studied at school. So, if we assume that the retelling was intentional, do any of Kipling’s other stories retell traditional tales? Well, the story of Mowgli, also from the Jungle Book, resembles the story of Romulus and Remus. However, whilst the Just So Stories take the form of traditional myths, so far as I can discover, they are entirely of Kipling’s own invention. The novel I studied for my O level English, Kim, certainly takes the form of the Monomyth, but otherwise appears to be original (and is itself an inspiration for many other writers). My knowledge of Kipling tails off after this point.

Anyway, my next step was to search the internet to see what other people have had to say about the subject. And yes, a couple of other sources make the connection between the story of a heroic mongoose and the story of a heroic Geat. However, there seems to be very little critical analysis of Kipling’s work. Is he still so strongly associated with the British Empire that writing about his work is not politically correct? My search of the internet did turn up one extremely valuable clue though. Apparently, Kipling wrote a letter in 1895, published earlier this year, where he admits that, in writing the Jungle Book, “it is extremely possible that I have helped myself promiscuously but at present cannot remember from whose stories I have stolen.” Well, I think I can jog Mr Kipling’s memory there!

So, what is the connection to The Hobbit? Beowulf actually faces three monsters, but only the first two are paralleled in Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. The final monster, who Beowulf encounters in later life, is a dragon. J. R. R. Tolkien was an expert on Beowulf, and he incorporated elements from the third part of the tale into The Hobbit.

 

[Mercurius]

One thing to consider is that The Hobbit wasn't written as "the first Middle-earth story." It was essentially a novelization of a bed-time story he told to his kids, which his friends at Oxford encouraged him to write up and publish. In his telling and writing of it, he wasn't placing it within the context of his passion project: the languages and myths of Middle-earth, and the stories that would become the Silmarillion. He was telling (and writing down) a bed-time story for his kids.

When he wrote it, there was no One Ring, no Sauron - at least not the Sauron that we know and love from LotR, just a hazily described figure called "the Necromancer" who was bad and powerful, but not-yet-known-to-be the servant of Morgoth, and a fallen Maia. The magic ring that Bilbo finds is just a magic ring. Gollum is just a creature that loves that ring. And Gandalf is just a wizard, old and wise - but not Olorin, one of the Istari sent by Manwe to Middle-earth to assist the free peoples in their war against Sauron and his machinations.

After The Hobbit's success, Tolkien's publisher asked him to write a sequel story: "We want more hobbits!" Tolkien essentially replied with, "OK, but only if you also publish my true magnum opus" (the work that would later be compiled as The Silmarillion). Commence a 15-year period in which Tolkien writes LotR, while trying to convince Unwin that The Silmarillion was publishable... after taking a look, they said no, again and again.

As Tolkien wrote LotR, it shifted in tone from being Hobbit-esque to what it became. In fact, you can see this in the narrative of the novel itself: The opening sequence in the Shire starts as very Hobbit-esque, but gradually the story darkens and deepens. They leave the home/the farm/the cozy pastoral landscape. In the larger world, there are Ringwraiths and orcs and Sauron, and a sense of being in a much larger story that has been unfolding for millennia.

That "deepening" part is key. In the process of writing, and placing Bilbo's world within the larger world of the Silmarillion, the lore of the Hobbit was re-contextualized. The Necromancer became Sauron (he wasn't Sauron in 1937), the magic ring of Gollum became the One Ring and, to illustrate the tonal difference, Trotter became Strider, who was really Aragorn.

Tolkien himself said that he wrote The Hobbit for his kids but, early in the process of writing The LotR, it became clear that a larger, darker and more adult tale was coming through him. So if the hobbits are essentially stand-ins for his own children facing a large world, LotR puts those "children" in the context of much bigger world, with dark powers and forces far behind the boundaries of the childhood fantasyland that is the Shire. We see this in the early chapters, especially The Shadow of the Past, as the larger world is introduced to Frodo as more than just a fairy tale.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

That "deepening" part is key. In the process of writing, and placing Bilbo's world within the larger world of the Silmarillion, the lore of the Hobbit was re-contextualized. The Necromancer became Sauron (he wasn't Sauron in 1937), the magic ring of Gollum became the One Ring and, to illustrate the tonal difference, Trotter became Strider, who was really Aragorn.

Tolkien himself said that he wrote The Hobbit for his kids but, early in the process of writing The LotR, it became clear that a larger, darker and more adult tale was coming through him.

I think this process was kind of emergent for Tolkien too - he was, in a sense, both a gardener and an architect.

I remember an account of when the Ringwraiths first appeared in LotR during its initial draft - he didn't actually know who they were, or what their purpose was. They just spontaneously "appeared" to his inner vision (and to his own surprise).

 

[Mercurius]

I think this process was kind of emergent for Tolkien too - he was, in a sense, both a gardener and an architect.

I remember an account of when the Ringwraiths first appeared in LotR during its initial draft - he didn't actually know who they were, or what their purpose was. They just spontaneously "appeared" to his inner vision (and to his own surprise).

Yeah, that is part of the creative process for many, in my opinion and experience. In conceiving a world or story, people, places and things just "appear" and part of the fun is trying to figure out who they are. It is similar to what Jung called Active Imagination: a dialogue with the unconscious.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yeah, reading his letters and The Nature of Middle-Earth, it almost feels like he was a historian or archaeologist discovering events, lands, and peoples, not a writer creating them from the ether.

I think this process was kind of emergent for Tolkien too - he was, in a sense, both a gardener and an architect.

I remember an account of when the Ringwraiths first appeared in LotR during its initial draft - he didn't actually know who they were, or what their purpose was. They just spontaneously "appeared" to his inner vision (and to his own surprise).