The First Great Tolkien Epic - Analyzing the Greatest Fairy-Story Ever Written - Thorin, the Most Stubborn Dwarf in Fiction

Yep I said it

Now that them dinner conversations and songs are out of the way, we now move to the real meat and potatoes of this first chapter of the book. Sorry, couldn’t resist the puns, they’re part and parcel to these essays, or one might say the ‘appetizers’ (I could not resist).

Anyways, what we come next to is the conversation concerning Smaug. Now this was hinted at before with the song about the Lonely Mountain, yet it is here that the plot is revealed at long last, along with a little bit of lore about the Dwarves, Gandalf and of course our all-important narcisstic villain.

““We are met to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy and devices. We shall soon before the break of day start on our long journey, a journey from which some of us, or perhaps all of us (except our friend and counsellor, the ingenious wizard Gandalf) may never return. It is a solemn moment. Our object is, I take it, well known to us all. To the estimable Mr. Baggins, and perhaps to one or two of the younger dwarves (I think I should be right in naming Kili and Fili, for instance), the exact situation at the moment may require a little brief explanation—””

This is how Thorin begins his speech in earnest, about the challenges that his Company will be made to endure. The Dwarves having journeyed far from the Blue Mountains to be present to plan out an attack against the Lonely Mountain.

It is with more than a little determination that he goes to throw himself into an extended explanation of what he intends to have them do. What’s so humorous about this is that not only is Bilbo entirely clueless about the purpose of his stay with him, but also of any and all other details as Gandalf neglected to explain the slightest thing.

Now on the other hand Gandalf is keen to assure the Dwarves that Bilbo could be of some use to them, foreseeing how clever and resourceful he’ll prove himself later on.

““Excitable little fellow,” said Gandalf, as they sat down again. “Gets funny queer fits, but he is one of the best, one of the best—as fierce as a dragon in a pinch.””

This is one of the funniest lines in the whole of the novel, with it demonstrating Gandalf’s skill at the poetical and hyperbolic. His goal here is not to lie so much as it is to put the best possible spin on Bilbo’s potential after the Hobbit just made a pitiful show of himself and lost consciousness.

It is pretty hilarious how skeptical the Dwarves are rapidly becoming of the Istari’s attempts to defend the Hobbit, and how unfit Bilbo is at this time for questing.

What is also interesting to note is that Gandalf would make a great press secretary for any government, though Thorin doubts his words. And when Bilbo slips back into the main room after regaining consciousness he hears Gloin speaking dismissively of him.

“This is what he heard, Gloin speaking: “Humph!” (or some snort more or less like that). “Will he do, do you think? It is all very well for Gandalf to talk about this hobbit being fierce, but one shriek like that in a moment of excitement would be enough to wake the dragon and all his relatives, and kill the lot of us. I think it sounded more like fright than excitement!”

So what we can discern here is that Gandalf’s been lying and trying to sell to the Dwarves that Bilbo didn’t pass out after shrieking from fright but rather yelled out in gung-ho excitement and then passed out.

Honestly the level of idiocy he expects from the Dwarves to believe this is ridiculous, but it is also pretty hilarious as it is Tolkien at his most exaggerated. He could have written Abbott & Costello shorts.

That said, Bilbo’s ancestor Bullroarer apparently fought Were-Worms in the Last Desert far off to the East, or ‘East of East’, with Bilbo speaking of Bullroarer’s feats with considerable reverence.

It happens that Bullroarer invented golf (rubbish ‘sport that it is, we won’t hold this against him too much), he fought Were-Worms so men who transformed likely into Wyrms or dragons and he did this in the Last Desert.

This last detail is the hardest to unpack, as it likely means if we consider Mordor ‘East of East’ a land past it, with this possibly being Rhun or near it. If its East of Gondor but not Mordor it must be Harad. Either way it is one of the few truly vague lore details in Tolkien’s entire Legendarium.

““Yes, yes, but that was long ago,” said Gloin. “I was talking about you. And I assure you there is a mark on this door—the usual one in the trade, or used to be. Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward, that’s how it is usually read. You can say Expert Treasure-hunter instead of Burglar if you like. Some of them do. It’s all the same to us. Gandalf told us that there was a man of the sort in these parts looking for a Job at once, and that he had arranged for a meeting here this Wednesday tea-time.””

Gloin continues to doubt and double down on his doubt, with the Dwarf challenging Gandalf’s claims about Baggins, only for the wizard to intervene and challenging the Dwarf in turn.

In all, one can only conclude that the matter of Bilbo’s worthiness is worth the question at this stage. Gandalf for his part admits to defacing Bag End’s door (for shame!) and as mentioned challenges Gloin.

Gandalf glares so fiercely at him that he subdues the Dwarf (no mean feat considering how stalwart Gimli was later shown to be in LOTR), spreads a man and begins to dig into the lore surrounding it. It was that of Thorin’s grandfather, with each of the Dwarves taking a great deal of interest in it.

Thorin of course remembers the mountain quite well, and something of the nearby forest’s location, and the future cadaverific Lord of Moria, Balin points out that it will be easy to find the dragon, to which Gandalf responds by pointing to one detail they’ve all been ignoring.

““There is one point that you haven’t noticed,” said the wizard, “and that is the secret entrance. You see that rune on the West side, and the hand pointing to it from the other runes? That marks a hidden passage to the Lower Halls.””

Bilbo gets excited about the door, asking about it with Gandalf pointing out that it is the Dwarvish way to make hidden exits likely to escape should the fortress-kingdom ever be seized as it was. That or in the event of a fire-emergency, with the Istari trying to point out to Thorin the road could prove dangerous but the rightful King Under the Mountain pays him no mind.

This reveals a certain strain of pig-headedness in the Dwarf, as he was previously shown as a person of great dignity and respect, one whom carries himself with a great degree of importance. Now we see the depths of it, as he ignores Gandalf’s warnings at first about how the east road isn’t safe, so that we can tell that when he puts his mind to something he doesn’t listen to others.

It is when he gets to the bit about the dragon that Gandalf interjects, ““That would be no good,” said the wizard, “not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply not to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish-covers; and dragons are comfortably far-off (and therefore legendary). That is why I settled on burglary—especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door. And here is our little Bilbo Baggins, the burglar, the chosen and selected burglar. So now let’s get on and make some plans.””

Basically what Gandalf is trying to tell Thorin is; don’t go trying to challenge Smaug, use your head not your brawns.

What it also tells us readers is that there are no known heroes up and about at present, they’re all too busy smashing each other in the head with their hammers and swords. Rohan will not answer this call, given how it is currently under weak leadership, we have Gondor distracted by the problem of Harad and Mordor and Arnor is broken as a land, full of anarchy, monsters, ghouls and the Rangers heroes that they are have their hands full. As to the Elves they are weakened, and hardly able to mount a proper force against Smaug.

In a word there will be no assistance given from any of the surrounding lands and heroes alive at this time, such as that which might be provided in other days by the likes of Elrond or the line of Elros.

When the issue of money is brought up, the frustrated Thorin explains that Smaug was drawn to the gold that was dug up by the ancestors of the Dwarves.

““Undoubtedly that was what brought the dragon. Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically for ever, unless they are killed), and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the current market value; and they can’t make a thing for themselves, not even mend a little loose scale of their armour. There were lots of dragons in the North in those days, and gold was probably getting scarce up there, with the dwarves flying south or getting killed, and all the general waste and destruction that dragons make going from bad to worse. There was a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm called Smaug. One day he flew up into the air and came south. The first we heard of it was a noise like a hurricane coming from the North, and the pine-trees on the Mountain creaking and cracking in the wind. Some of the dwarves who happened to be outside (I was one luckily—a fine adventurous lad in those days, always wandering about, and it saved my life that day)—well, from a good way off we saw the dragon settle on our mountain in a spout of flame. Then he came down the slopes and when he reached the woods they all went up in fire. By that time all the bells were ringing in Dale and the warriors were arming. The dwarves rushed out of their great gate; but there was the dragon waiting for them. None escaped that way. The river rushed up in steam and a fog fell on Dale, and in the fog the dragon came on them and destroyed most of the warriors—the usual unhappy story, it was only too common in those days. Then he went back and crept in through the Front Gate and routed out all the halls, and lanes, and tunnels, alleys, cellars, mansions and passages. “The few of us that were well outside sat and wept in hiding, and cursed Smaug; and there we were unexpectedly joined by my father and my grandfather with singed beards. They looked very grim but they said very little. When I asked how they had got away, they told me to hold my tongue, and said that one day in the proper time I should know. After that we went away, and we have had to earn our livings as best we could up and down the lands, often enough sinking as low as blacksmith-work or even coalmining. But we have never forgotten our stolen treasure. And even now, when I will allow we have a good bit laid by and are not so badly off”—here Thorin stroked the gold chain round his neck—“we still mean to get it back, and to bring our curses home to Smaug—if we can.”

Quite the exposition dump, one that is fairly well written and conveys a myriad of traits we can now kind of guess at and otherwise assume about the Dwarves.

The first is that they love their shiny rocks, the second is that Thorin didn’t take Bilbo’s desire for proper remunerations all that well, the next detail to take note of is how he among others were absent during the initial attack, and that his father and grandfather barely made it out, same goes for a number of other Dwarves.

Having escaped through the hidden door, father and grandfather remained silent about how they got out, at least for some time and were more concerned about getting their people to some form of safety.

What is more is that Thorin and his fellow Dwarves have had to his horror, get by blacksmithing and doing other such work.

““I have often wondered about my father’s and my grandfather’s escape. I see now they must have had a private Side-door which only they knew about. But apparently they made a map, and I should like to know how Gandalf got hold of it, and why it did not come down to me, the rightful heir.”” Says Thorin, bitterly and resentfully to the old wizard about how he got his heirloom in place of him, as this piece of dialogue shows us that he’s got a chip on his shoulder.

““I did not ‘get hold of it,’ I was given it,” said the wizard. “Your grandfather Thror was killed, you remember, in the mines of Moria by Azog the Goblin.” “Curse his name, yes,” said Thorin. “And Thrain your father went away on the twenty-first of April, a hundred years ago last Thursday, and has never been seen by you since—””

Thror was killed in the mines of Moria, yes that Moria where Balin is destined to meet his end, though in Thror’s case it was not at the hands of Durin’s Bane but the lesser ones of Azog the Goblin so that Thror did not make it as far in as Balin likely did.

That said Thrain went away, and was captured by the Necromancer (Sauron) at which time Gandalf admits to having found him in the Necromancer’s cells, with the question remaining how he found him down there and what he was doing there, to which he snaps.

““Never you mind. I was finding things out, as usual; and a nasty dangerous business it was. Even I, Gandalf, only just escaped. I tried to save your father, but it was too late. He was witless and wandering, and had forgotten almost everything except the map and the key.””

This is one of the most interesting responses or pieces of dialogue in the whole of the Hobbit. One thing to note is that Gandalf was exploring and proding into the forces of evil only to find Thrain, be given the map and then was forced to try to escape.

The truly alarming thing is that he mentions he only just escaped, which means that he was way out of his league and that Sauron very nearly cornered him and nearly killed him. That said that incident was the prelude to the ‘War’ against Smaug, as it seems that Gandalf was acting like a scout for the White Council having decided to flout Saruman’s orders.

What’s interesting is that he was looking to scout and prepare for the attack that the White Council would eventually have to launch and yet he also discovered the map of Thror. Evidently there’s no such things as coincidence here, so that this should be considered the direct hand of destiny so to speak.

It is at this point that Thorin declares that just as they avenged themselves against the Goblins, they must now turn their thoughts and hearts towards vengeance against the Necromancer.

Alarmed Gandalf speaks out against this possible course of action, fearful for his newfound friends and hoping to direct them as far away as possible from this particularly stupid decision. He reminds his friend that though Thrain’s mind was destroyed by Sauron, the elder Dwarf still had a thought for the map and the wish that his son should inherit it.

This part can be summed up by Gandalf who says the following phrase; “The one thing your father wished was for his son to read the map and use the key. The dragon and the Mountain are more than big enough tasks for you!””

Truer words and all. By story’s end each of our heroes would realize just how prophetic and true those words are.