Not for the Last Time…

[Alcuin]

A few weeks ago, I was reading The Hobbit, and reread a few lines quite familiar, but that struck me differently this time.

At the end of the chapter “Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”, Bilbo has a dream in which he has lost something, is wandering through Bag End looking for it, but cannot remember what it is. This happens the first time he sleeps after finding the Ring. The relevant passage reads,

Soon Bilbo’s stomach was feeling full and comfortable again, and he felt he could sleep contentedly, though really he would have liked a loaf and butter better than bits of meat toasted on sticks. He slept curled up on the hard rock more soundly than ever he had done on his feather-bed in his own little hole at home. But all night he dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like.

Three items strike me in this passage.

1. Reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings together as one whole story, I think this is a reference to the power of the Ring. Bilbo is under attack from the Ring, which has begun to attempt to enslave him. As Gandalf noted, it had an unwholesome effect on the hobbit from the start. But what has Bilbo lost?
2. Does this passage appear in the original Hobbit? I do not have a copy of the original text.
3. There are at least 14 other references to Bilbo’s wandering through or dreaming about his hobbit-hole in the book. It seemed to me that there should be one in each chapter, and I think I may have missed a few. Is this list complete? What is the theme in the book that it represents?

Here are the 14 other references to Bilbo’s homesickness. (And yes, I spent a good part of the past several weeks looking them up.) Some of them are a wistful desire for home (like the blackberrying reference in V), but

I. An Unexpected Party

The hobbit had to find room for [all the dwarves], and filled all his spare-rooms and made beds on chairs and sofas, before he … went to his own little bed very tired and not altogether happy.

II. Roast Mutton

“Bother burgling…! I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!”

III. A Short Rest

Bilbo ... [upon first seeing the misty Mountains] ... felt more tired than he ever remembered feeling before. He was thinking once again of his comfortable chair before the fire in his favorite sitting-room in his hobbit-hole, and of the kettle singing. Not for the last time!

IV. A Short Rest

Bilbo would gladly have stopped [in Rivendell] for ever and ever-even supposing a wish would have taken him right back to his hobbit-hole without trouble.

V. Over Hill and Under Hill

“The summer is getting on down below,” thought Bilbo, “and haymaking is going on and picnics. They will be harvesting and blackberrying, before we even begin to go down the other side at this rate.”

VI. Over Hill and Under Hill

The goblins were very rough, and pinched unmercifully, and chuckled and laughed in their horrible stony voices; and Bilbo was more unhappy even than when the troll had picked him up by his toes. He wished again and again for his nice bright hobbit-hole. Not for the last time.

VII. Riddles in the Dark

[Bilbo's] hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. ... He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking... He ... sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness... He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home – for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler.

VIII. Flies and Spiders

...he sat himself down with his back to a tree, and not for the last time fell to thinking of his far-distant hobbit-hole with its beautiful pantries. He was deep in thoughts of bacon and eggs and toast and butter when he felt something touch him … like a strong sticky string...

IX. On the Doorstep

“You said sitting on doorstep and thinking would be my job, not to mention getting inside, so I am sitting and thinking.” But I am afraid he was not thinking much of the job, but of what lay beyond the blue distance, the quiet Western Land and the Hill and his hobbit-hole under it.

X. Inside Information

“Now you are in for it at last, Bilbo Baggins,” he said to himself. “You went and put your foot right in it that night of the party, and now you have got to pull it out and pay for it! Dear me, what a fool I was and am!” said the least Tookish part of him. “I have absolutely no use for dragon-guarded treasures, and the whole lot could stay here for ever, if only I could wake up and find this beastly tunnel was my own front-hall at home!”

XI. A Thief in the Night

Bilbo was sitting [with] ... the Elvenking and Bard. A hobbit in elvish armor, partly wrapped in an old blanket, was something new to them. “Really you know,” Bilbo was saying in his best business manner, “things are impossible. Personally I am tired of the whole affair. I wish I was back in the West in my own home, where folk are more reasonable..."

XII. A Thief in the Night

At midnight he woke up Bombur; and then in turn rolled himself up in his corner, without listening to old dwarf’s thanks (which he felt he had hardly earned). He was soon fast asleep forgetting all his worries till the morning. As matter of fact he was dreaming of eggs and bacon.

XIII. The Return Journey

...the gardens of Beorn were in springtime no less marvelous than in high summer. At last [Gandalf and Bilbo] came up the long road, and reached the very pass where the goblins had captured them before. ... Bilbo ... turned his back on his adventure. The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Baggins was daily getting stronger. “I wish now only to be in my own arm-chair!” he said.

XIV. The Last Stage

“A little sleep does a great cure in the house of Elrond,” ... Yet even that place could not long delay him now, and he thought always of his own home.

And of course, the story ends with Bilbo’s returning to Bag End to find Mssrs. Grubb, Grubb & Burrows auctioning off his all his belongings, so that might count for XV other references. Including the one that started my question, I count XVI in all, including Mssrs. Grubb, Grubb & Burrows. Are there any others that I’ve missed? And what do these represent as an underlying theme in the story?

What did Bilbo lose?

Was the passage about losing something he can’t remember part of the original telling of The Hobbit?

And finally, does this tie into Bilbo’s sojourn (or exile) in Eldamar?

 

[baragund]

Alcuin,

I have a copy of The Annotated Hobbit packed away somewhere. I'll dig it out and look up the passage of Bilbo's dream and find out if it was in the 1937 edition.

Regarding the repeated passages about Bilbo missing his home, I see two levels of meaning:

1. Simply homesickness and second-guessing during the uncomfortable stages of the adventure. You don't see him wishing for Bag End during the time spent at Rivendell or at Beorn's house or even the pleasant stages of the journey when the weather is nice and the provisions are well stocked. Think of it as going on a long hike and, during the trip, you might be miserable because it's too hot or too cold or too wet or you're getting bitten by mosquitoes. At the time you may be wondering why you went on the hike but, at the end of the hike, you think about, say, the beautiful vistas you might see or the fellowship you gained with your fellow hikers and realized it was more than worth it.

2. An ongoing tug-of-war between the Baggins influence on Bilbo's character and the "Tookishness". As we all know, the Bagginses are noted for being homebodies and the Tooks are known for having adventures. The story shows Bilbo's character starting out being dominated by the Baggins in him and gradually changing to become more Tookish.

Hope that helps...

 

[Alcuin]

I did not realize that differences between the original version and the post-LOTR version of The Hobbit were catalogued in The Annotated Hobbit. I have glanced through the book at bookstores, but I must have overlooked this. Are both versions printed in the book as well?

 

[baragund]

Yes Alcuin. The main text is the latest edition and wherever there are variations with the earlier editions, there are footnotes that explain what they are and how the earlier text read.

I pulled my copy of The Annotated Hobbit and found that the passage about Bilbo's dream was not changed through the various editions. It appeared in the 1937 edition exactly as it appears in the current edition. That kind of trashes the notion that the dream was a description of the Ring beginning to exert some kind of unwholesome influence on Bilbo. Tolkien did not develop any of that until well after The Hobbit was published.

So what does the dream mean? Good question. Maybe it was just another reference to his homesickness, or maybe second thoughts on what he is doing on this quest.

 

[HLGStrider]

Loss of contentment with the familiar?

Just a wild theory out of the blue, but at the end of the Hobbit Bilbo is already contemplating it would be nice to go on another adventure. At the beginning of the Lord of the Rings he goes on one never to return.

I'm where I should belong but something is not right, something is missing.

That's the real gist of dreams like this. I've had them. It's an attempt to hold on to the familiar but finding it lacking. It means either you are growing away from your environment or your environment is growing away from you, and it is uncomfortable because everything should be all right, but it isn't.

That's how I'd analyze this. But I'm female. I over analyze everything . . .

 

[Melian Le Fay]

HGLStrider, I think you hit it spot on!

Bilbo was growing away from his comfortable, somewhat ignorant life in Bag-End, but he still wasn't ready to let go. Great analysis!!!

And from the perspective of someone reading it after LOTR, it felt like a foreshadowing of things to come - Bilbo having to ultimately leave his home and the world he once belonged to.

 

[Úlairi]

And I see another thread with great potential coming to an unprecedented and abrupt end... Never let the truth get in the way of imagination!

We see Frodo also experiencing dreams after his possession of the Ring as well:

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Chapter V: A Conspiracy Unmasked

Eventually he [Frodo] fell into a vague dream, in which he seemed to be looking out of a high window over a dark sea of tangled trees. Down below the among the roots there was the sound of creatures crawling and snuffling. He felt sure they would smell him out sooner or later.

Then he heard a noise in the distance. At first he thought it was a great wind coming over the leaves of the forest. Then he knew that it was not leaves, but the sound of the Sea far-off; a sound that he had never heard in waking life, though it had often troubled his dreams. Suddenly he found that he was out in the open. There were no trees after all. He was on a dark heath, and there was a strange salt smell in the air. Looking up he saw before him a tall white tower, standing alone on a high ridge. A great desire came over him to climb the tower and see the Sea. He started to struggle up the ridge towards the tower: but suddenly a light came in the sky, and there was a noise of thunder.

How do you suppose the Ring is beginning to exert influence over the mind of Frodo? It seems as though Frodo was standing in a tower to begin with? For some reason I believe it may possibly be referring to Dol Guldur, or perhaps Isengard.

Do you conceive that the white tower may be the tower of Avallonë or the tower in which Elwing dwelt on the border of the Sundering Seas awaiting the return of Eärendil? How is this connected to the power of the Ring?

Just gettin' the ol' ball rollin' Alcuin...

Cheers,

Úlairi.

 

[chrysophalax]

It always seemed to me that Frodo was having a vision of the Havens and the Tower Hills. Possibly the Ring enhanced some latent potential he had naturally? It could be the Ring was giving him a taste of the power he could have as its new master.

 

[Hobbit-GalRosie]

Well, I'd say as to why Bilbo was having these dreams from the point of view of what (if anything) Tolkien was thinking while writing these scenes Baragund and Elgee hit the nail on the head. I think from a writing standpoint it's entirely possible these dreams were simply something Tolkien inserted simply from the experience that such things happen on long journeys and in just naturally sprang from writing of one, with no particular deeper purpose in mind. Tolkien does have a fine talent for realism and writing from experience, among many other things.

However, the fact that Tolkien could not have been thinking of the influence of the One Ring while he wrote does not invalidate the possible in-world application of this concept. After all, Tolkien liked to give readers a good deal of leeway in the realm of "applicability" and the writing process has a way of taking unexpected left turns, as I can personally attest. I have often written something thinking it was strange and not what I intended only to later find it tied together so many things I'd been having trouble with in one brilliant stroke, and made the whole story grow into what I had intended more fully than I could have otherwise. My sub-conscious knew where I was going even if I didn't. The same effect of something coming to have additional, deeper meanings to help a work form a cohesive whole, from the point of view of those who experience another's sub-creation may occur even after the fact, without even any sort of sub-conscious designs by the creator. The fact that it may not have been what Tolkien meant at first does not stop something from being true, or at least possible (and at the very least fun to speculate on).

When I first read this thread not long after it was birthed I felt this connection to the Ring was a bit of a stretch, but at this reading I believe there might just conceivably be something to it. At any rate the subject bears further exploration before the drawing of any conclusions.

Bilbo dreamed of home throughout the book, not only after his acquirement of the Ring, as Alcuin so admirably documented in his very thorough post. However these desires/dreams do seem to become somewhat darker and more vivid in Riddles in the Dark and the next three chapters, including one passage almost immediately after the acquirement of the ring. This however is in the midst of the darkest episodes of the whole book, and one could only expect Bilbo's moods to match his circumstances without any extra help needed, so it seems to me best to not take this too heavily into consideration.

Basically my thought as to the applicability of the One Ring to these quotes is this; the fact that Bilbo was growing up and in some way growing away from his "comfort zone" seems to be shown fairly clearly, and the One Ring became a part of that. As much as his adventures were changing, toughening, enlightening him, his contact with the Ring was making these changes yet more profound and beginning to have it's own ill effects. Now even more Bilbo could go back but he couldn't go home.

What actually crystallized this idea for me was Úllari's quote about Frodo's dream.

And I am nearly certain that is meant to be the Tower Hills, I thought this was made clear somewhere, but with my memory...that counts for almost nothing. I think it was either mentioned in a letter and/or somewhere in UT? I'll look through what I can for it...I really need my own copy of the Letters and HoME. Anyway, interestingly there's a poem or two in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil that seemed to be related to that dream.

[/rambling] Yeah, it never works, but it doesn't hurt to try. My mind refuses to run in straight lines or to work in a logical or heaven forbid succinct and lucid way when faced with these sorts of topics. It's too full of the lovely insane-sauce. XDDDD

The point being, there are elements in that dream and at least one poem (really wish I could find it and post it) that very much remind me of the sea-longing of the Elves. And in these earlier dreams of Bilbo we see this intense longing for home mingled with the idea that this home was lost to him. Being a Ring-bearer becomes so great a burden and such a life-changing experience that there is truly no peace or rest for those that have undertaken it but beyond the boundaries of the world of Men. That becomes their true home. And there is just the tiniest germ of this in some of these passages from The Hobbit (if you choose to interpret it this way). That's pretty freaking epic, huh?

Of course, on a personal note, I wouldn't normally be inclined to interpret it this way...but once I hit on the sea-longing idea it just seemed to fit. Kind of one of those slap my face oh my gosh it makes so much sense all in a flash moments. But really, there are ample explanations about the reasons for and meaning of these passages without looking to all this...and some of it does still strike me as a bit of a reach...but I think it adds something to it that's indefinably Tolkienesque. Longing for home and longing for mystery and longing for the sea, denial of change...always such prominent themes in the Master's writings. I think it's much less of a reach to say there's a nebulous, tangential connection there. As far as I'm concerned I can leave the Ring out of that or drag it in (yes, drag is the operative word) and derive different senses of truth therefrom, to the point that it begins to seem of little import in what sense it really belongs there. There is the poetic perfection and potential real-world application of the Ring-less version, and there is the literary satisfaction of tying everything in and forming endless connections and finding yet a deeper level of reality to the characters in applying the Ring to the situation. That is my actual opinion on the matter.

And if anyone actually took the time to read through all my baloney, I'm gonna learn to bake you some kind of extra-special Hobbit cookies...except I don't have the time. And I'd probably burn them. There's that whole memory thing ya know. Lol.

Btw, apropos of the unexpected turns a story will take during its creation I had to include this quote I found while looking at different editions of The Letters on Amazon for a totally unrelated reason.

I have long ceased to invent (though even patronizing or sneering critics on the side praise my 'inventions'): I wait till I seem to know what really happened. Or till it writes itself. Thus, though I knew for years that Frodo would run into a tree-adventure somewhere far down the Great River, I had no recollection of inventing Ents. I came at last to the point, and wrote the 'Treebeard' chapter without any recollection of any previous thought: just as it is now. And then I saw that, of course, it had not happened to Frodo at all.

Now ain't that the truth?