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The Hobbit: Chapter 3 A Short Rest

The TVClubHouse: Archives: Movies & Library 2003 -2004: Library: June 2003 - April 2004: TVCH Book Club (ARCHIVES): The Hobbit: Chapter 3 A Short Rest users admin

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Reiki
Member

08-12-2000

Sunday, February 29, 2004 - 11:29 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Discussion area of Chapter 3 - A Short Rest.

Rivendell by JRRT

Rivendell by J.R.R. Tolkien


Timeline for Chapter 3:

June 4 – They ford the Bruinen and reach Rivendell at dusk

1 Lithe – Midsummer’s eve. Elrond discovers the moon-letters on Thror’s map.
MidYear’s Day – The company leaves Rivendell

Link to Pictures for this chapter: Pictures for Chapter 3


Seamonkey
Member

09-07-2000

Monday, March 01, 2004 - 2:30 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I was taken by a passage in this chapter:


quote:

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even guresome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.




I kind of like to hear about good stuff myself :-)

Reiki
Member

08-12-2000

Monday, March 01, 2004 - 5:32 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Related timeline:

1697 Second Age - Elrond founds the refuge of Imladris (Rivendell).
(1,853 years later)
109 Third Age - Elrond weds Celebrian
241 Third Age - Birth of Arwen
2931 Third Age - Birth of Aragorn
2941 Third Age - Bilbo in Rivendell
3018 Third Age - Frodo in Rivendell


LOTR Note: Aragorn would have been about 10 years old when Bilbo was first in Rivendell. Do you think he and Bilbo could have met?

Reiki
Member

08-12-2000

Monday, March 01, 2004 - 5:57 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Bilbo upon entering the valley of Rivendell comments "Hmmmm! it smells like elves!" Which makes me wonder - what do elves smell like? And how would Bilbo know?

These elves seem much sillier than the elves in LOTR. I can't see Elrond or Arwen singing and such silly songs to visitors.

Almost like he can't help himself, Tolkien lets his older stories of elves creep in here. In borrowing the name Elrond from those tales he makes this story a part of the larger one. Elrond in those old stories is of mixed elf and human parentage. Tolkien later called it a fortunate accident that would tie all the stories together. Even the swords Gandalf and Thorin claimed from the trolls horde hint of the earlier stories as we hear for the first time of the destroyed city of Gondolin.

Reiki
Member

08-12-2000

Wednesday, March 03, 2004 - 4:57 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I find it interesting that the Dwarves needed Elrond to tell them about the Moon Runes and that they have forgotten when Durin's Day is. What do you think this says about the current state of dwarf culture?

In LOTR there is a clear animosity between the elves and the dwarves. I'm not sure that we see too much of that here - it could be that the tension was there but Bilbo didn't pick up on the signals and so left them out of his telling.

Wargod
Member

07-16-2001

Friday, March 05, 2004 - 11:09 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Even Gandalf didn't know what the Moon Runes said. I thought at the time I read it that it was probably very old knowledge, something the dwarves knew so long ago that they have forgotten. Thorin did know when Durin's Day was, so they haven't lost all old knowledge, I guess.

I like the Last Homely House. Gives our heros a chance to rest and revitalize themselves after a journey that has been long and hard and before starting out on a tougher leg of it.

If I had to guess, I'd say that elves smell foresty, lol. Everything I've read has usually had elves in forest settings, intune with nature and the land around them, great trackers, and tend to blend with the forest around them.

Secretsmile
Member

08-19-2002

Friday, March 05, 2004 - 11:16 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I was taken with the fact that it took Elrond to see the moon runes also. Now we may take it to be coincidence that he viewed the map under the very moon that it was written, and the dwarves had not.

Thinking that the dwarves suffered a break in their history and lost a lot of knowledge due to the prior wars and the dragon damage may explain that.


Wargod
Member

07-16-2001

Friday, March 05, 2004 - 11:31 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Good points, SS, wars and other hardships would work against them and the knowledge they have.

Reiki, about these elves being silly. I know in alot of the fantasy I read elves are often shown as being flighty and silly, yet other books have them being very serious and fierce. Maybe the elves in the Hobbit are younger than the ones in LOTR and that accounts for them being much sillier?

Reiki
Member

08-12-2000

Friday, March 05, 2004 - 11:52 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
They are "younger" only in that the Hobbit proceeds the LOTR by 77 years.

Arwen is supposed to be about the youngest elf in Middle Earth and she was born 241 Third Age, making her a youthful 2700 years old during the time of The Hobbit.

I suppose one explanation for the lighter spirit of the elves in Rivendell in The Hobbit could be attributed to the fact that Sauron was still thought as having been defeated in the War of Last Alliance. While things were beginning to darker there was still some time left for the elves in Middle Earth. By the LOTRs most elves are realizing that their time in that world was coming to and end. I guess that could be depressing.

Wargod
Member

07-16-2001

Friday, March 05, 2004 - 12:11 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
True. More innocent times then, rather than being younger.

Twiggyish
Member

08-14-2000

Friday, March 05, 2004 - 4:53 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Good point Reiki. There is almost an innocence to these elves.

Yankee_in_ca
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, March 08, 2004 - 5:37 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I'm sorry I haven't posted much here. I have been very busy and am trying to catch up with you guys. I just finished Chapter 3 -- and Reiki, you might be pleased to hear that I got a copy of the Annotated Hobbit and have been reading that one!

One thing I found very interesting... In the Annotated Hobbit it says that perhaps Rivendell was based on Tolkien's own adventures in Switzerland, specifically the Lauterbrunnen region. I was in Lauterbrunnen in 2001... and it really DOES look like the illustrations of Rivendell (see above)!

I tried to find a picture that I took from that trip, but this one was the best I could come up with -- this was a photo I took of Lauterbrunnen that sort of shows you how it looks like Rivendell... The steep rock walls with waterfalls are on both sides of the valley, which you drive through.

lauterbrunnen

I promise I'll catch up with you guys in just a few days...

Reiki
Member

08-12-2000

Monday, March 08, 2004 - 8:21 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Yankee that is sooo cool. Is that the Last Homely House?

Its on that same trip to Switzerland that Tolkien got the post card with a picture of an old bearded man on it that became his basis for how Gandalf looked. Yah Switzerland!

Here I found a picture of the valley that looks very much like Tolkien's artwork:

Lauterbrunnental


Here is a link to a site that gives more information regarding Lauterbrunnental as Rivendell: Rivendell in Switzerland

Reiki
Member

08-12-2000

Monday, March 08, 2004 - 8:37 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I found a copy of that postcard picture Tolkien brought home from Switzerland. Tolkien was only 19 years old when he went on that trip in 1911. It would be almost 20 years before he wrote The Hobbit, but that trip must have made some impression on him. Not only did he find Rivendell and Gandalf there, but his hiking experiences were used in Bilbo's journey through the the wild lands and the Misty Mountains.

Der Berggeist by Josef Madlener

Der Berggeist by Josef Madlener


Yankee_in_ca
Member

08-01-2000

Monday, March 08, 2004 - 9:07 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
This is definitely off-topic, but Switzerland is absolutely breathtaking -- and certainly the stuff life-long impressions are made of.

The photo I posted earlier was one that I took from down in the valley -- I should have thought to do an internet search to find a better one! But trust me, if you've been there you can definitely see the resemblance between the Lauterbrunnen valley and Rivendell -- I'm surprised I never made the connection before reading it the other night.

Ocean_islands
Member

09-07-2000

Tuesday, March 09, 2004 - 7:47 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
I've seen a different postcard than that of the inspiration for Gandalf.

This chapter is interesting because it is really the first time, it seems to me, that the idea of 'good magic' appears to the reader.

Dwarves are very earthy and not (to my knowledge) magical at all. They are in opposition to Elves. So we have not seen any lyrical magic until the moon letters come out.

JRRT was very fond of Elrond as some of his most enchanting images in all his writing turn around him and Rivendell.

I've always that Orcrist and Glamdring were incredibly cool names.

Let me add that the approach to Rivendell here is quite different from that of the movie. While I understand that it is a cleft in the mountains, the movie made it seem like it was at the end of a plain and rose up from there, whereas the book here plainly shows that the party descends into the valley.