I know what you’re thinking, but this is post is not a rant about the changes that (one assumes) are being made in the new The Hobbit movie. Frankly, I’m looking forward to the movie. I looked at the web site today, and checked out the photo gallery, and there was one where the dwarfs were wearing hoods. Frankly, that was my main problem with the previews I saw. Tolkien was always consistent in putting dwarfs in hoods. Gimli’s lack of a hood in the trilogy troubled me. But this time they’ve got hoods, at least part of the time. So good.
No, I want to share with you this YouTube video, which was sent to me by Dale Nelson. It’s part of a lecture by Prof. John D. Rateliff, telling what he learned about Tolkien’s writing process through examining his original Hobbit manuscripts at Marquette University, where they are stored. I enjoyed it.
I read The Hobbit, in one of the first Mass Market Paperback editions in the fall of 1969, during my first semester at Waldorf College. I soon read the Lord of Rings trilogy sometime shortly afterward and the trilogy filtered my initial perspective of The Hobbit. I got so caught up with the etymology, and its integration with the old sagas, and the subtle and not so subtle Christian imagery; and then the influences of the friendship between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and comparing and contrasting their styles that I lost my initial perspective of the Hobbit.
It was my niece, who became an English major like myself and did graduate work in English literature, that brought back my focus to The Hobbit. Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows (1908)was a dominant influence for children’s literature written afterwards, during the 20th century, in Britain. Unlike Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland(1865), Grahame was writing primarily for children and adults secondarily. Tolkien wrote and read the original Hobbit to children and then developed it from there. Grahame did the very same thing and Wind in the Willows is a masterpiece in children’s literature in introducing the child to cross-cultural communication and cross-cultural prejudice in a very humorous and non-threatening way that even adults could appreciate and enjoy. Tolkien has taken the cross-cultural theme to a much more sophisticated level, but Grahame’s basic influence is reflected in The Hobbit, which I now clearly see and appreciate.
I told my niece about Wind in the Willows when she was a very young child because she was a bookworm in the making. Her mother told me that when she was reading it, she laughed so hard she was rolling on the floor periodically as she read through it again and again. Later, my niece told me it was a decisive influence in her understanding and appreciation of literature that only grew as she got older.
I have discovered that many American readers, who are acquainted with Wind in the Willows, have not actually read it themselves. I strongly recommend that they should take the time to read it and share it with children. A precious gift of memory for them to cherish as adults. It is a primer for The Hobbit when they are ready for it.
As a postscript comment, Wind in the Willows is also a good primer for C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, which also clearly reflects cross-cultural themes on a more sophisticated level, depending on your point of view.
For an excellent exploration of Tolkein’s influence and edits, Douglas Anderson’s annotated version of The Hobbit is well worth the price.
The large-format binding and illustrations (both from various versions of The Hobbit and from influential works) make it ideal for reading aloud with the kids curled up next to you.