I'm reading The Hobbit again, as I live-action 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 9: Barrels out of bond.
This review contains spoilers.
The dwarves are captured by wood elves, and are thrown in prison. Bilbo uses his ring to escape, but accompanies them into the elven halls. Through exploration, Bilbo discovers that Thorin is also imprisoned there.
After discovering the barrel recycling system used by the elves to send empty wine caskets back to the wine vendors of Laketown, Bilbo devises a plan to smuggle the dwarves out of bondage. He steals the prison keys, frees the dwarves, packs them up into empty barrels, and waits for the elves to dump the barrels into the river.
This chapter mostly reinforces the distrust between the dwarves and the elves, which itself is established in the previous chapter. It's a historical political feud that few actually care about, but by now it's a comfortable habit for the two kingdoms to be suspicious of one another. The elven king and Balin have a brief argument, and then the dwarves are thrown in jail.
Whilst in jail, Thorin gives Bilbo some orders to convey to the rest of the dwarves. The conversation is mostly described to us rather than written out, just as is the conversation between Balin and the elf king.
In a way, much of The Hobbit comes across as Tolkien summarising a story for us rather than telling a story to us. I'm used to books that transcribe a whole conversation, sometimes to the extent that almost an entire chapter is a single conversation. With Tolkien, though, many conversations are only referenced, with maybe an exact quotation or two provided to hint at the general mood of the discussion.
Balin and the elf king, for instance, are each given but a single quote or two. Balin takes a jab at the king for treating the dwarves as criminals, implying that he's in league with the spiders. The king reminds Balin that the dwarves are trespassers no matter what.
Thorin and Bilbo get similar treatment, and they're arguably two of the main characters of the book. It's hard to feel a warm personal connection to characters you've hardly "heard" speak, and I think the only reason we sympathise with Bilbo is that Tolkien has often conveyed Bilbo's thoughts to us. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to call Tolkien an impersonal narrator. Even in the small story of The Hobbit, Tolkien comes across as someone who hasn't got the time to provide all the details, and when he does it's often detail about the world rather than the characters. That isn't necessarily a criticism, but when somebody says it's hard to get through a Tolkien book, I do think this is why. Tolkien's writing, even at its most whimsical, doesn't feel terribly welcoming, and many readers sense that even though they may not be able to identify it.
Tolkien's world is relatively low-magic, at least compared to a place like the Forgotten Realms or Eberron. For that reason, I'm tracking how much magic The Hobbit actually identifies.
In this chapter, the elven king specifically says that the gates into the prison are magical. Details aren't provided on what kind of magic this involves. Bilbo manages to steal keys for the gate, which I assume disables the magical component because Bilbo encounters no resistance. Either that, or Bilbo's ring is powerful enough to nullify or counteract the magic (but then, why doesn't the magic work on the dwarves passing through the gate?)
The only other magic in the chapter is Bilbo's ring, and it's notable that Tolkien reminds us gently that the ring cloaks its wearer only visually. Bilbo is betrayed by his own damp clothes and sneezing after he emerges from the river to explore the countryside. The ring is powerful, but its power is pretty focused (except that it also acts, as we learn later, as a homing beacon for Sauron, and dominates the mind of its wearer).
I'm tracking Bilbo's reputation with the dwarves, and the dwarves' reputation with Bilbo, as the book progresses. This one again tips the scales in Bilbo's favour. He rescues the dwarves from the elves, and they thank him profusely promise their allegiance to him.
The new score is:
This is a good chapter, both as development for Bilbo, his shifting moral compass, and for exploration and world expansion. It's subtle, but this chapter is a gateway into the wider world for both Bilbo and the reader. Prior to this chapter, there's hardly been a mention of humans in this world. Gandalf is the closest thing to a human we've encountered so far. Otherwise, it's been hobbits and dwarves and elves and goblins. The discovery that there's a human settlement up the river is a little bit of a revelation.
Bilbo also is becoming more comfortable as a burglar. He steals keys from an elven guard, but he's sure to return them so the guard doesn't get into trouble. He steals food as he journeys toward Laketown, but Tolkien doesn't mention him giving any recompensation. This feels like new territory, but not in a crossing-over-to-the-other-side way. It feels, instead, like Bilbo is seeing the world as it actually is. It's bigger than the Shire, it's harsher than missing second breakfast, and it forces you to make choices that you don't even want to have to make sometimes.