"Cliff Notes - the hobbit & the lord of rings" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

The fourth and final part of each story serves to wind things down. The hero returns home, looking forward to comfort. He finds instead that his home is threatened. But he has grown through his experiences and is able to regain what is his.

Of course, there are many important differences between the two works. The Hobbit follows the story through Bilbo's eyes and tells of events in a chronological sequence. In other words, you hear about things as they happen, rather than jumping ahead to future events, or flashing back to something that happened in the past. When Tolkien departs from this chronological sequence in The Hobbit, he carefully guides you through the jump in time: "Now if you wish, like the dwarves, to hear news of Smaug, you must go back again to the evening when he smashed the door and flew off in a rage, two days before."

The story line of The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is much more complicated. The Lord of the Rings is a trilogy, consisting of three volumes (Parts One to Three) divided into six sections (Books I through VI). The novel jumps back and forth in time, following the stories of several characters. The various story lines finally converge near the end when all the characters are reunited as Aragorn is crowned king of Gondor. Tolkien uses these shifts in viewpoint to good effect, often ending his scenes as cliff-hangers, slowly building the tension to its climax. But trying to follow the different story lines as he jumps back and forth from one to the other can be very difficult. Tolkien doesn't guide you through them as he did in The Hobbit. But he does give clues to help you put the pieces in order. For example, when Tolkien returns to Sam and Frodo in Book VI, he shows you that he's jumping back in time by telling you what Merry, Pippin, and Aragorn are doing at the same moment.

Many people have commented that The Hobbit is like a simple fairy tale, whereas The Lord of the Rings is more like a great epic poem of the past, such as The Odyssey of Homer or Beowulf, the famous Old English tale of heroism. Like both fairy tales and epics, Tolkien's books are stories of heroism in an imaginary world filled with fantastic people and creatures. But The Hobbit, like many fairy tales, is first and foremost the story of an individual's growth into maturity. It has a fairy-tale ending, with Bilbo smoking happily on his pipe many years later, rich from his adventures and satisfied with his life. An epic, on the other hand, tries to relate the hero's story to a long history and is more concerned with questions of moral choices and the fate of all men, than with its individual hero. In fact, many epics, such as Beowulf, end with the death of their heroes. The Lord of the Rings shares these characteristics of epics. Unlike Bilbo, Frodo doesn't live happily ever after. He's been wounded physically and also psychically by the loss of the Ring. His passage to the Blessed Realm at the end of the book may be interpreted as a symbolic death.

Part of Tolkien's genius lies in the way he combined the forms of fairy tale and epic. The heroes of most epics are larger than life, possessing great strength and ability, like the superheroes of comic books. But people nowadays find it hard to identify with such impossible heroes. Frodo, an ordinary person who has been thrust into a situation beyond his abilities, is a more suitable hero for a modern audience. Aragorn, on the other hand, is a classic epic hero. But he has a fairy-tale ending, winning a kingdom and marrying his lifelong love. So you see, Tolkien didn't just copy the old forms of fairy tale and epic. He reworked them to meet the needs of a modern audience. From the great success of his books, he seems to have achieved his goal.

^^^^^^^^^^THE HOBBIT & THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE STORIES

In this discussion, the chapters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are grouped into sections. The sections in The Hobbit correspond to the series of adventures of Bilbo. Tolkien himself divided The Lord of the Rings into six sections, or books. In our discussion of the story, each of the six books is further divided into two roughly equal parts.

^^^^^^^^^^THE HOBBIT: CHAPTERS 1-3

Bilbo sets out on his adventure with Gandalf and the dwarves. After a near-fatal encounter with three trolls, the travelers arrive in the haven of Rivendell.

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Bilbo Baggins is a well-to-do, respectable hobbit who lives alone in his tidy hobbit-hole. The comfortable order of his life is disrupted one day when Gandalf the wizard and thirteen dwarves arrive at his door. Trying to act as though nothing is out of the ordinary, Bilbo invites them in for tea and cakes. Bilbo's predicament is amusing to many readers, as he runs around red-faced and flustered, answering the doorbell and serving his uninvited guests.

This kind of humor is one aspect of Tolkien's style that some readers dislike, finding it too childish and simple. Others consider it delightful. It serves an important purpose, however. You may find the existence of dwarves, wizards, and hobbits hard to accept. Tolkien anticipates that reaction and gently ridicules his characters, hoping to disarm you. He doesn't yet require you to take them seriously.

NOTE: THE ORIGINS OF HOBBITS The best information on how Tolkien developed his hobbits comes from the author himself: "The Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination--not the small reach of their courage or latent power." He also admitted to what may seem a surprising literary source, the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, an unsympathetic portrayal of an American businessman. How does the main character in that book relate to Tolkien's hobbits? According to Tolkien, "Babbitt has the same bourgeois smugness that hobbits do. His world is the same limited place."

Unlike Sinclair Lewis and Babbitt, Tolkien portrays his hobbits in a sympathetic light. Tolkien often compared himself to hobbits and once said, "[They were] just what I could have liked to have been, but never was." You may wonder why anyone would want to be like Bilbo Baggins. You will have to wait to see what it is that makes hobbits so special to Tolkien and hobbit fans.

Thorin, the dwarves' self-important leader, is the grandson of Thrain, who once ruled a kingdom of dwarves under the Lonely Mountain. One day a dragon named Smaug descended on the mountain, killing most of the dwarves and stealing their treasure. Now Thorin and the other twelve dwarves intend to return to the mountain, avenge their kin, and recover the treasure.

Gandalf has picked Bilbo to be their burglar, but the dwarves aren't too happy with the wizard's choice. Bilbo certainly doesn't seem very qualified for the job. He's a timid little fellow who faints at the talk of danger. But Gandalf says that there's more to Bilbo than even Bilbo realizes. Under Gandalf's fierce gaze, the dwarves relent. But have they really accepted the hobbit?

Bilbo doesn't seem to be too sure that he wants to be a burglar. Part of him longs for adventure, but another part wants to be left alone to enjoy his comfortable life. What do you think makes him decide to join the dwarves?

In the morning, Bilbo and the dwarves get on their way. After a pleasant start, they face the first of many dangers on their journey. As a cold, rainy evening sets in, they discover that Gandalf has left them. Then they see a light among the trees ahead, and Bilbo is sent to investigate, supposedly because he's the burglar. With a hobbit's knack for walking silently, he approaches the fire without being seen. There he finds three huge trolls. Instead of going back to report to the dwarves, he attempts to pick the pocket of one of the trolls and is captured. Soon the dwarves are captured as well.

The scene with the trolls has some good examples of how Tolkien lets his characters describe themselves through their actions and their speech, a commendable element of good fiction writing. Bilbo walks "primly" through the trees and sniffs at the dwarves' noisiness. What kind of person does that bring to mind? And you get a good idea of what the trolls are like by the way they eat and speak.

What do you think of the dwarves so far? They seem to be taking advantage of Bilbo when they send him ahead, but they're also quick to come help him. Thorin is almost heroic when he valiantly takes on all three trolls to save his friends. But he too ends up tied in a sack like the others. The dwarves apparently have bungled the rescue as badly as Bilbo bungled his pickpocket attempt.

Fortunately, Gandalf returns and rescues his friends through a clever bit of ventriloquism. By imitating the voice of first one troll and then another, he manages to keep them arguing until dawn, when they are turned to stone. Before going on, Gandalf and Thorin take swords from the trolls' hoard. Bilbo picks up a dagger that suits him well as a sword.

Gandalf leads the band to Rivendell, where Elrond, chief of the Half-elven, lives. In the ancient tales that Tolkien studied, elves were a race of beautiful and magical people. But since then, elves have come to be thought of as tiny, mischievous creatures who live in flower buds and ride in coaches drawn by insects. Tolkien tried to restore elves to their original stature.

When Bilbo and the dwarves arrive in Rivendell, the elves at first appear foolish, singing silly songs and laughing merrily. But Tolkien warns you that it is unwise to let yourself be deceived by appearances. Through the wise and noble character of Elrond, he reveals the more heroic aspect of elves. You learn that long ago they fought beside men in a great war against the goblins. The swords that Gandalf and Thorin took from the trolls' hoard had been made by the High Elves to be used in that war.

NOTE: THE NAMING OF SWORDS In ancient tales, most heroes named their swords. King Arthur's sword, for example, was called Excalibur. By giving names to Thorin and Gandalf's swords, Tolkien places those warriors in the company of such great heroes. Notice that Bilbo's sword isn't mentioned, and it remains nameless. Do you think there is any significance in this?

^^^^^^^^^^THE HOBBIT: CHAPTERS 4-6