I'm reading The Hobbit again, as I roleplay as a Tolkien scholar in an attempt to understand Middle Earth, its lore, and its effect on modern gaming. I'm reviewing each chapter of the book as I read, and this is my review of Chapter 14: Fire and water.
This review contains spoilers.
This chapter goes back a few days in time to show us what happened over in Laketown whilst Bilbo and the dwarves hid in the back entrance of Smaug's lair.
Smaug, believes Bilbo is from Laketown, due to some of the words the burglar used to obfuscate his identity. The dragon decides to punish the people of Laketown, and flies down to attack the settlement.
Luckily for pretty much everyone but Smaug, the thrush that was hanging around the exteriour of Smaug's lair decides to investigate all the commotion. The thrush manages to locate a bowman named Bard and tells him there's a missing scale in Smaug's chest armour. From his quiver, Bard draws a black arrow, passed down through his family over the years, and waits for the shot. Smaug passes overhead, and Bard releases. The black arrow speeds toward the flying dragon, and kills him instantly, sending him plunging into the lake.
After all is settled, the people of Laketown are upset with the Master of Laketown for not being part of the solution. They go so far as to nominate Bard as the new Master of the town. The Master's nothing if not diplomatic though, and so he manages to keep his office, at least during reconstruction. Most importantly, attention quickly turns to the dwarves that recently passed through the town, talking of defeating the dragon.
Once again, Tolkien takes us completely by surprise and reveals that in his world, the language of thrushes can be understood by some men. The details, as usual, are important here.
None of this causes any alarm in the chapter. The thrush doesn't seem surprised that Bard understands it, and Bard doesn't seem surprised that a bird is giving him tactical advice. Maybe the thrush knows Bard personally already, or maybe the thrush has seen him around enough to know his skill and his linguistic talent. Maybe the thrush just sensed kinship with Bard. We don't know, it doesn't matter, it's basically old magic.
There's a lot of that old magic in Tolkien's writing, which fascinates me. To us, Tolkien's world is old magic, with its dragons and castles and kings and wizards. But within that world, there is yet older magic. There was a world before Tolkien's world, where animals and men could speak to one another, and maybe magic was even more common? There's mystery there. We don't exactly know what the old world was like, but we get hints of its wonder through our brief encounters with elves, magic items, and sometimes a talking bird.
I'm tracking Bilbo's reputation with the dwarves, and the dwarves' reputation with Bilbo, as the book progresses. They aren't in this chapter at all, so no change.
As a kid, this was always the most exciting chapter to me. Reading it now, I'm suprised at how brief the encounter with Smaug actually is. In my memory, the whole chapter is a battle between dragon and man, with Bard managing a victory at the last minute, mostly because of his near-magical black arrow.
As written, it doesn't come across as exciting as all that. It feels factual, like a formal battle report. But if you read it slowly and take time between paragraphs to ponder what's happening, you can fill in some of the gaps during the battle. And then when Bard takes out his black arrow and invokes its steadfast power, and kills Smaug, it's a truly great moment. It's one of the most underwritten epic battles I've read from Tolkien.
Next up is Chapter 15: The gathering of the clouds.