[sindohte]

Discussion on the chapter - Queer Lodgings will officially begin on Monday 10/18.

Andreth will begin the discussion of this chapter.

Anyone wandering by this thread should feel free to raise questions or make comments.

Please try to keep the comments on this thread strictly related to discussion of the Hobbit.

[Andreth]

Geesh, I had to pick one of the longest chapters in the book. Of course, it's my favorite because Beorn is introduced. Just as a side note, I have a personal theory that Radagast and Beorn were the same person. Okay, Tolkien said something in Letters of Tolkien that completely disproves that theory, but I'm just going to act like that quote doesn't exist so that it doesn't screw things up.

Now we have the Eagles dropping off Gandalf, Bilbo and the Dwarves at a giant rock called the Carrock. Gandalf is his usual cryptic self, telling Bilbo that the rock was so named by the Somebody, who is a very great person. And that somebody is a skin-changer who can change from a big hairy man into a big hairy black bear. Nobody knows exactly where he came from or what he is, but I suspect that Gandalf knew more than he let on.

The group travels on to Beorn's house, through flower gardens and 'bee pastures' filled with giant bees, and some horses see the group and take off to tell their master. One thing I always noted here - it says the horses were 'very sleek and well groomed.....and looked at them intently with very intelligent faces..." I wonder if these horses were some other descendants of Orome's horses, similar to the Mearas in Rohan? Just a thought.

Then they finally see Beorn, who from his description reminds me of Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies, and Beorn seems to know what a Hobbit is when he sees Bilbo with Gandalf, but he's not very happy to see the Dwarves. Gandalf tells Beorn their tale and Beorn invites them to dinner.

The group has a very surreal dinner, with dogs and sheep serving them, but a very happy one. Tolkien drew a picture of Beorn's house and it reminds me of the ancient Viking Longhouses, I think they called them? Over dinner Beorn tells them tales and after dinner they all drink mead, after which Bilbo passes out. When he wakes up Beorn is gone and the Dwarves are singing - again - but Gandalf sends them all to bed. During the night Bilbo hears a large animal snuffling outside the door.

The next morning Gandalf takes a walk and doesn't return until that evening. He tells the group about all the bear tracks he's seen, more than Beorn could have made by himself, and one set of tracks led back over the Carrock. Gandalf sends them all to bed again and the next morning they're awakened by Beorn who invites them to breakfast. There he tells them that he went back to the glade and found a warg and a goblin patrolling, and they confirmed the Dwarves' story. Beorn is in good spirits because he not only found out that the Great Gobling had been killed by the group, but also that he had two nice trophies outside, a goblin head stuck on the gate and a warg skin nailed to the tree.

Beorn sends them off with food supplies and advice about traveling through Mirkwood. They traveled through the forest, taking the path that Beorn told them of. One night Bilbo awakened to see a bear prowling along after them. When they reach the dark, gnarled trees of Mirkwood they sent back the ponies that Beorn had loaned them.

They camp there for the night and the next morning Gandalf has business in the south that he has to take care of, so he tells them. I don't remember off hand without checking a timeline, but I believe this is one of the many meetings he attends with the White Council. So he leaves a grumbling group of Dwarves and one very unhappy Hobbit to make their way through Mirkwood alone.

[NancyBrooke]

A very interesting and enjoyable chapter; again raising many more questions than it answers.

Beorn is one of those really interesting but essentially irrelevant characters. Besides appearing critically toward the end of this book, we never hear of him or his kind again, bringing me to wonder again how fully JRRT had conceived his world when he wrote the Hobbit.

Still, a delightful chapter whatever - Gandalf's capricious sneakiness in introducing the dwarves in pairs, the animal waiters (just how was the food prepared and plated, I always wonder?), the mead, the singing, all wonderful. Plus the interesting element of the wild bear cadre - the idea that there is something unpredictable and wild out there - largely on the side of good but mostly with its own agenda (like the Eagles).

I wonder if Beorn doesn't like the Dwarves so much because they mine the mountains Gandalf supposes his people may have once come from?