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70-563: Bilbo Baggins ( Westron : Bilba Labingi ) is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien 's 1937 novel The Hobbit , a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings , and the fictional narrator (along with Frodo Baggins ) of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by

140-954: A Common Speech that spread thence along the coasts among all that had dealings with Westernesse. Tolkien gives a few names in Westron, saying that Karningul was the translation of Elvish Imladris , Rivendell , while Sûza was Westron for the Shire . Hobbit surnames Took and Boffin were "anglicize[d]" from Westron Tûk and Bophîn . The original form of Brandybuck was Zaragamba , "Oldbuck", from Westron zara , "old", and gamba , "buck". He explains, too, that Sam[wise] and Ham[fast] "were really called Ban and Ran ", shortened from Westron Banazîr and Ranugad . Tolkien states that these had been nicknames, meaning "halfwise, simple" and "stay-at-home", which he had chosen to render by English names, from Old English samwís and hámfoest with equivalent meanings. Nick Groom states that Sûza , Banazîr , and

210-481: A clever solution, as it allowed him to explain the book's use of Modern English as representing Westron. Because of this, Tolkien did not need to work out the details of Westron grammar or vocabulary in any detail. Tolkien went further, using Gothic names for the early leaders of the Northmen of Rhovanion , ancestors of Rohan, and for the first Kings of Rohan. Gothic was an East Germanic language , and as such

280-468: A higher level—but they still had no fëar [souls]." The Tolkien scholars Paul Kocher and Tom Shippey note that in The Hobbit , the narrator provides a firm moral framework, with good elves, evil goblins, and the other peoples like dwarves and eagles somewhere in between. Shippey remarks that the eagles are in the narrator's "euphemistic" words, "not kindly birds". Marjorie Burns comments that

350-529: A mark of their bourgeois status. The journalist Matthew Dennison, writing for St Martin's Press , calls Lobelia Sackville-Baggins "Tolken's unmistakable nod to Vita Sackville-West ", an aristocratic novelist and gardening columnist as passionately attached to her family home, Knole House , which she was unable to inherit, as Lobelia was to Bag End. The opposite of a bourgeois is a burglar who breaks into bourgeois houses, and in The Hobbit Bilbo

420-569: A plump rabbit . Burns notes that Morris was "relatively short, a little rotund, and affectionately called 'Topsy', for his curly mop of hair", all somewhat hobbit-like characteristics. Further, she writes, "Morris in Iceland often chooses to place himself in a comic light and to exaggerate his own ineptitude", just as Morris's companion, the painter Edward Burne-Jones , gently teased his friend by depicting him as very fat in his Iceland cartoons. Burns suggests that these images "make excellent models" for

490-553: A rage to destroy the town. The Dwarves and Bilbo hear that Smaug has been killed in the attack. The Dwarves reclaim the Lonely Mountain, and horrify Bilbo by refusing to share the dragon's treasure with the lake-men or the wood- elves . Bilbo finds the Arkenstone of Thrain, the most precious heirloom of Thorin's family, but hides it. Thorin calls his relative Dáin to bring an army of Dwarves. Thorin and his dwarves fortify

560-557: A substantial meal eaten between main meals, most particularly at teatime in the afternoon ; and Mr Baggins is definitely, Shippey writes, "partial to ... his tea". Tolkien worked in Yorkshire early in his career, at the University of Leeds ; from 1920 he was a reader in the school of English studies, and he rose to become a full professor there. More specifically, he wrote the foreword to Walter E. Haigh's 1928 A new glossary of

630-525: Is a hobbit in comfortable middle age. He is hired as a "burglar", despite his initial objections, on the recommendation of the wizard Gandalf and 13 Dwarves led by their king in exile, Thorin Oakenshield . The company of dwarves are on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its treasures from the dragon Smaug . The adventure takes Bilbo and his companions through the wilderness, to

700-522: Is a forerunner of Old English, not a direct ancestor. Christopher Tolkien suggests that his father intended the correspondence between the language families to extend back to the ancestral language of the Northmen. Westron (also called Adûni) supposedly developed from Adûnaic , the ancient language of Númenor . It became the lingua franca for all the peoples of Middle-earth : Tolkien gives some examples of Westron words in Appendix F to The Lord of

770-667: Is asked to become a burglar (of Smaug the dragon's lair), Shippey writes, showing that the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses are "connected opposites". He comments that the name Sackville-Baggins, for the snobbish branch of the Baggins family, is "an anomaly in Middle-earth and a failure of tone". Bilbo's distinctly anachronistic period , compared to the characters he meets, can be defined, Shippey notes, by

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840-575: Is invisible, but Smaug at once smells him. Bilbo has a riddling conversation with Smaug, and notices that the dragon's armour does indeed have a gap. He escapes the dragon's flames as he runs up the passage, and tells the Dwarves about the gap in Smaug's armour. An old thrush hears what he says, and flies off to tell Bard in Lake-town. Smaug realizes that Lake-town must have helped Bilbo, and flies off in

910-544: Is said to have been the greatest of all birds, with a wingspan of 30 fathoms (55 m; 180 ft). Elsewhere, the Eagles have varied in nature and size both within Tolkien's writings and in later adaptations. Scholars have noticed that the Eagles appear as agents of eucatastrophe or deus ex machina throughout Tolkien's writings, from The Silmarillion and the accounts of Númenor to The Hobbit and The Lord of

980-574: Is specifically in the style of Psalm 24 in the King James Version of the Bible, with its phrases "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, for the King of glory shall come in". E. L. Risden, making a different connection with Christianity, describes the Eagles' rescue of Frodo and Sam as a "ritual rebirth", and the rescuing bird as "a symbol of the spirit", John

1050-559: The Baggins and other hobbit family trees in Lord of the Rings gives the book, in Fisher's view, a strongly "hobbitish perspective". The tree also, he notes, serves to show Bilbo's and Frodo's connections and familial characteristics, including that Bilbo was both "a Baggins and a Took". Fisher observes that Bilbo is, like Aragorn : a "distillation of the best of two families"; he notes that in

1120-697: The One Ring had been destroyed. Tolkien's painting of an eagle on a crag appears in some editions of The Hobbit . According to Christopher Tolkien , the author based this picture on a painting by the Scottish ornithological artist Archibald Thorburn of an immature golden eagle , which Christopher found for him in Thomas Coward 's 1919 book The Birds of the British Isles and Their Eggs . The Great Eagles appeared in "The Fall of Gondolin",

1190-483: The One Ring . The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance describes these interventions as a deus ex machina , a sudden and unexpected mechanism to bring about a eucatastrophe . The screenwriter Brad Johnson, writing in Script , argues that this last deus ex machina instance is a complete surprise to the audience, and undesirable as the sudden appearance of the Eagles "takes the audience out of the scene emotionally". Tolkien

1260-600: The downfall of the island; they appear, too, in his abandoned time-travel stories , The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers . Tolkien faced the question of the Great Eagles' nature with apparent hesitation. In early writings there was no need to define it precisely, since he imagined that, beside the Valar, "many lesser spirits... both great and small" had entered the Eä upon its creation; and such sapient creatures as

1330-530: The elves haven, Rivendell , across the Misty Mountains where, escaping from goblins , he meets Gollum and acquires a magic ring . His journey continues via a lucky escape from wargs , goblins, and fire, to the house of Beorn the shapeshifter, through the black forest of Mirkwood , to Lake-town in the middle of Long Lake, and eventually to the Mountain itself. As burglar, Bilbo is sent down

1400-597: The "Eagles of the Lords of the West", to try to reason with or threaten them. By the end of the Third Age , a colony of Eagles lived in the north of the Misty Mountains , as described in The Hobbit . These Eagles opposed the goblins; however, their relationship with the local Woodmen was only cool, as the eagles often hunted their sheep. They rescued Thorin's company from a band of goblins and Wargs , ultimately carrying

1470-616: The "threat of being eaten [by the Eagle] is so dominant" that the Hobbit Bilbo, who the Eagle described as being rather like a rabbit , is afraid of being torn up and eaten; he is relieved that he is not to become their supper, "but rabbit is precisely what the eagles do bring them for supper". In Norse mythology , eagles were associated with the god Odin ; for example, he escapes from Jotunheim back to Asgard as an eagle. Burns remarks

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1540-541: The 1993 television miniseries Hobitit by Finnish broadcaster Yle , Bilbo is portrayed by Martti Suosalo . In Peter Jackson 's films The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Return of the King (2003), Bilbo is played by Ian Holm , who had played Frodo in the BBC radio series 20 years earlier. Throughout the 2003 video game The Hobbit , the players control Bilbo, voiced by Michael Beattie . The game follows

1610-496: The BBC's long-running children's programme Jackanory was The Hobbit , in 1979. Four narrators told the story with Bilbo's part being played by Bernard Cribbins . In the BBC's 1981 radio serialization of The Lord of the Rings , Bilbo is played by John Le Mesurier . In the unlicensed 1985 Soviet version on the Leningrad TV channel, Хоббита ("The Hobbit"), Bilbo was played by Mikhail Danilov  [ ru ] . In

1680-808: The Bilbo who runs puffing to the Green Dragon inn or "jogs along behind Gandalf and the dwarves" on his quest. Another definite resemblance is the emphasis on home comforts: Morris enjoyed a pipe, a bath, and "regular, well-cooked meals"; Morris looked as out of place in Iceland as Bilbo did "over the Edge of the Wild"; both are afraid of dark caves; and both grow through their adventures. The Christian writer Joseph Pearce describes The Hobbit as "a pilgrimage of grace , in which its protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, becomes grown up ... in wisdom and virtue". Dorothy Matthews sees

1750-542: The Eagle-messenger sings of the final victory to Faramir in phrases reminiscent of Psalm 24 . J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author and philologist of ancient Germanic languages , specialising in Old English ; he spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Oxford . He is best known for his novels about his invented Middle-earth , The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , and for

1820-609: The Eagles are associated with Manwë , the ruler of the sky and Lord of the Valar . It is stated that "spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles" brought news from Middle-earth to his halls upon Taniquetil, the highest mountain in Valinor , and in the Valaquenta of "all swift birds, strong of wing". Upon their first appearance in the main narrative, it is stated that the Eagles had been "sent forth" to Middle-earth by Manwë, to live in

1890-578: The Eagles or Huan the Hound, in Tolkien's own words, "have been rather lightly adopted from less 'serious' mythologies". The phrase "spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles" in The Silmarillion derives from that stage of writing. After completing The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien moved toward a more carefully defined "system" of creatures. At the top were incarnates or Children of Ilúvatar: Elves and Men, those who possessed fëar or souls, with

1960-507: The Evangelist 's traditional symbol. Different adaptations of Tolkien's books treated both the nature of the Eagles and their role in the plots with varying level of faithfulness to originals. The first scenario for an animated motion-picture of The Lord of the Rings proposed to Tolkien in 1957 was turned down because of several cardinal deviations, among which Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter recorded that "virtually all walking

2030-538: The Five Armies (2014). Westron When writing The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), a sequel to The Hobbit (1937), Tolkien came up with the literary device of using real languages to "translate" fictional languages. He pretended that he had not composed the book himself but translated it from Westron (named Adûni in Westron) or Common Speech ( Sôval Phârë , in Westron) into English. The purpose of this

2100-604: The Holy Mountain and upon all the land". Another eyrie upon the tower of the King's House in the capital Armenelos was always inhabited by a pair of eagles, until the days of Tar-Ancalimon and the coming of Shadow to Númenor. Many eagles lived upon the hills around Sorontil in the north of the island. When the Númenóreans began to speak openly against the Ban of the Valar , Manwë appeared as eagle-shaped storm clouds, called

2170-476: The King . The 1976 Russian translation of The Hobbit was illustrated with drawings by Mikhail Belomlinsky; he based his Bilbo character on the actor Yevgeny Leonov , who he described as "good-natured, plump, with hairy legs". In Ralph Bakshi 's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings , Bilbo was voiced by Norman Bird . Billy Barty was the model for Bilbo in the live-action recordings Bakshi used for rotoscoping . The 3000th story to be broadcast in

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2240-664: The One Ring: Sing now, ye people in the Tower of Anor for the realm of Sauron is ended for ever,    and the Dark Tower is thrown down. Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard, for your watch hath not been in vain, and the Black Gate is broken, and your King hath passed through,    and he is victorious. Shippey writes that this is certainly Biblical, indeed that it

2310-419: The Rings begins with Bilbo's "eleventy-first" (111th) birthday, 60 years after the beginning of The Hobbit . The main character of the novel is Frodo Baggins , Bilbo's cousin, who celebrates his 33rd birthday and legally comes of age on the same day. Bilbo has kept the magic ring, with no idea of its significance, all that time; it has prolonged his life, leaving him feeling "thin and stretched". At

2380-418: The Rings "Appendix F". One category was the names that meant nothing to the hobbits "in their daily language", like Bilbo and Bungo; a few of these, like Otho and Drogo in the family tree, were "by accident, the same as modern English names". In the 1955–1956 BBC Radio serialization of The Lord of the Rings , Bilbo was played by Felix Felton . In the 1968 BBC Radio serialization of The Hobbit , Bilbo

2450-551: The Rings . Where Elves are good, and fully sentient, and Orcs bad, Eagles amongst other races are in between; the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins fears he will become their supper, torn up like a rabbit , and is indeed served rabbit for supper. The scholar Marjorie Burns notes, too, that Gandalf 's association with Eagles is reminiscent of the god Odin in Norse mythology . Others have seen Biblical echoes , especially when

2520-660: The Rings , where he summarizes Westron's origin and role as lingua franca in Middle-earth: The language represented in this history by English was the Westron or 'Common Speech' of the West-lands of Middle-earth in the Third Age. In the course of that age it had become the native language of nearly all the speaking-peoples (save the Elves) who dwelt within the bounds of the old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor ... At

2590-474: The Shire, which the narrator supposes was probably a worn form of the word kûd-dûkan , of the same meaning, stating that Merry had heard King Théoden of Rohan use this name for Hobbit. Eagle (Middle-earth) In J. R. R. Tolkien 's Middle-earth , the Eagles or Great Eagles , are immense birds that are sapient and can speak. The Great Eagles resemble actual eagles , but are much larger. Thorondor

2660-531: The Westron for Sam's surname "Gamgee", Galbasi , are all derived from Gothic , a precursor of Old English , adding yet another layer of linguistic complexity to the pseudotranslation. The word Hobbit , which the narrator admits "is an invention", could, he explains, easily be a much-worn form of the Old English holbytla , "hole-dweller". This corresponds to the Westron dialect form kuduk , used in Bree and

2730-472: The account of his escape". Shippey notes that throughout The Lord of the Rings Tolkien carefully avoided direct reference to Christianity, so as not to make the story an allegory . He comments however that in one place "Revelation seems very close and allegory does all but break through", namely the eucatastrophic moment when the Eagle-messenger sings to Faramir about Frodo and Sam's destruction of

2800-401: The defining characteristic of being able to speak; next were self-incarnates, the Valar and Maiar , "angelic" spirits that "arrayed" themselves in bodily forms of the incarnates or of animals, and were able to communicate both by thought and speech; and finally animals, mere beasts, unable to speak. For some time Tolkien considered the Eagles as bird-shaped Maiar; however, he realised that

2870-470: The designer William Morris 's travels in Iceland; Morris liked his home comforts but grew through his adventurous journeying. Bilbo's quest has been interpreted as a pilgrimage of grace , in which he grows in wisdom and virtue, and as a psychological journey towards wholeness. Bilbo has appeared in numerous radio and film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , and video games based on them. The protagonist of The Hobbit , Bilbo Baggins,

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2940-526: The dialect of the Huddersfield district , which included these spoken words. In addition, "Baggins", while not a name by etymology, sounds very much like one of a class of English surnames such as Dickens, Jenkins, and Huggins. These names, Shippey notes, are formed from personal names, in the diminutive form; and Tolkien uses Huggins as the name of one of the Trolls in The Hobbit . Tolkien's choice of

3010-587: The dragon Smaug . Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving and, through his adventures, grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest . Bilbo's way of life in the Shire , defined by features like the availability of tobacco and postal service, recalls that of the English middle class during the Victorian to Edwardian eras . This is not compatible with the much older world of Dwarves and Elves . Tolkien appears to have based Bilbo on

3080-852: The dwarves to the Carrock. Later, having seen the mustering of goblins in the Mountains, a great flock of Eagles participated in the Battle of the Five Armies. In The Lord of the Rings , the Eagles of the Misty Mountains helped the Elves of Rivendell and the Wizard Radagast to gather news of the Orcs. Gwaihir the Windlord carries news to Isengard , rescues the wizard Gandalf from

3150-496: The entrance to the mountain hall, and are besieged by the Wood-elves and Lake-men. Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone to prevent fighting, but Thorin sees his action as betrayal, and banishes Bilbo. Dain arrives, and the army of Dwarves faces off against the armies of Elves and Men. As battle is joined, a host of goblins and wargs arrive to take over the mountain, now that Smaug is dead. The armies of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, with

3220-510: The fantasy writer and designer William Morris 's account of his travels in Iceland in the early 1870s in numerous details. Like Bilbo's, Morris's party set off enjoyably into the wild on ponies . He meets a "boisterous" man called "Biorn the boaster" who lives in a hall beside Eyja-fell, and who tells Morris, tapping him on the belly, "... besides, you know you are so fat", just as Beorn pokes Bilbo "most disrespectfully" and compares him to

3290-531: The first tale about Middle-earth that Tolkien wrote in the late 1910s. In Tolkien's early writings, the eagles were distinguished from other birds: common birds could keep aloft only within the lower layer of the space above the Earth, while the Eagles of Manwë could fly "beyond the lights of heaven to the edge of darkness". The eagle-shaped clouds that appeared in Númenor formed one of Tolkien's recurring images of

3360-485: The game The Quest of Erebor , Gandalf is given the (non-Tolkien) lines "So naturally, thinking over the hobbits that I knew, I said to myself, 'I want a dash of the [adventurous] Took ... and I want a good foundation of the stolider sort, a Baggins perhaps.' That pointed at once to Bilbo". The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey notes that Tolkien was very interested in such names, describing Shire names at length in The Lord of

3430-729: The great birds of heaven" gathered under the leadership of Thorondor to Eärendil , and destroyed the majority of the dragons in an aerial battle. On the island of Númenor in the Second Age , three Eagles guarded the summit of the holy mountain Meneltarma, appearing whenever anyone approached it, and staying in the sky during the Númenórean "Three Prayers" religious ceremony. The Númenóreans called them "the Witnesses of Manwë", believing he had sent them from Aman "to keep watch upon

3500-420: The help of Eagles and Beorn, defeat the goblins and wargs. Thorin is fatally wounded, but has time to make peace with Bilbo. Bilbo accepts only a little of the treasure which was his share, though it still represents great wealth for a Shire hobbit. Bilbo returns to his home in the Shire to find that several of his relatives, believing him to be dead, are trying to claim his home and possessions. The Lord of

3570-411: The mountains north of the land of Beleriand , to "watch upon" Morgoth , and to help the exiled Noldorin Elves "in extreme cases". The Eagles were ruled by Thorondor, "Lord of the Eagles", and "mightiest of all birds that have ever been". When Turgon built the Hidden City of Gondolin , the eagles of Thorondor became his allies, bringing him news and keeping spies and Orcs away. The eagles' watch

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3640-405: The party, Bilbo tries to leave with the ring, but Gandalf persuades him to leave it behind for Frodo. Bilbo travels to Rivendell and visits the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain before returning to retire at Rivendell and write books. Gandalf discovers that Bilbo's magic ring is the One Ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron , and sets in motion the quest to destroy it. Frodo and his friends set off on

3710-503: The plot of the book, but adds the elements of platform gameplay and various side-objectives along the main quests. In The Lord of the Rings Online (2007) Bilbo resides in Rivendell, mostly playing riddle games with the Elf Lindir in the Hall of Fire. In Peter Jackson's The Hobbit film series , a prequel to The Lord of the Rings , the young Bilbo is portrayed by Martin Freeman while Ian Holm reprises his role as an older Bilbo in An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Battle of

3780-422: The posthumously published The Silmarillion which provides a more mythical narrative about earlier ages. He invented several peoples for Middle-earth, including Elves , Dwarves , Hobbits , Orcs , Trolls , and Eagles, among others. A devout Roman Catholic , he described The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work", rich in Christian symbolism . Throughout The Silmarillion ,

3850-413: The presence of tobacco , brought to Europe in 1559, and a postal service, introduced in England in 1840 . Like Tolkien himself, Bilbo was "English, middle class ; and roughly Victorian to Edwardian " , something that as Shippey observes, does not belong to the much older world of elves , dwarves , and wizards . Marjorie Burns , a medievalist , writes that Bilbo's character and adventures match

3920-405: The quest, finding Bilbo, now obviously old, but spry, in Rivendell. When they have destroyed the Ring, they return to the Shire, via Rivendell, where Bilbo looks "very old, but peaceful, and sleepy". Two years later Bilbo accompanies Gandalf, Elrond , Galadriel , and Frodo to the Grey Havens, there to board ship bound for Tol Eressëa across the sea. In Tolkien's narrative conceit , in which all

3990-450: The secret passage to the dragon's lair. He steals a golden cup and takes it back to the Dwarves. Smaug awakes and instantly notices the theft and a draught of cold air from the opened passage. He flies out, nearly catches the Dwarves outside the door, and eats their ponies. Bilbo and the Dwarves hide inside the passage. Bilbo goes down to Smaug's lair again to steal some more, but the dragon is now only half-asleep. Wearing his magic ring, Bilbo

4060-616: The self, the ring; the escape from the dark underground imprisoning chambers of the wood-elves and Bilbo's symbolic rebirth into the sunlight and the waters of the woodland river; and the dragon guarding the contested treasure, itself "an archetype of the self, of psychic wholeness". Later research has extended Matthews' analysis using alternative psychological frameworks such as Erik Erikson 's theory of development. The Tolkien scholar Jason Fisher notes that Tolkien stated that hobbits were extremely "clannish" and had strong "predilections for genealogy ". Accordingly, Tolkien's decision to include

4130-469: The similarity with Gandalf, who repeatedly escapes by riding on an eagle. She comments that Tolkien's Eagles, like his Dwarves, Dragons, and Trolls, all signal Norse influence on his stories. Burns notes that Tolkien uses the Eagles three times to save his protagonists: to rescue Bilbo and company in The Hobbit ; to lift Gandalf from imprisonment by Saruman in the tower of Orthanc ; and finally, to save Frodo and Sam from Mount Doom when they have destroyed

4200-419: The statement about Gwaihir and Landroval's descent from Thorondor had already appeared in print in The Lord of the Rings , while he had long before rejected the notion of their being "Children" of the Valar and Maiar. In the last of his notes on this topic, dated by his son Christopher to the late 1950s, Tolkien decided that the Great Eagles were animals that had been "taught language by the Valar, and raised to

4270-399: The story rather as a psychological journey, the anti-heroic Bilbo being willing to face challenges while firmly continuing to love home and discovering himself. Along the way, Matthews sees Jungian archetypes , talismans, and symbols at every turn: the Jungian wise old man Gandalf; the devouring mother of the giant spider, not to mention Gollum's "long grasping fingers"; the Jungian circle of

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4340-474: The surname Baggins may be connected to the name of Bilbo's house, Bag End, also the actual name of Tolkien's aunt's farmhouse, which Shippey notes was at the bottom of a lane with no exit. This is called a " cul-de-sac " in England; Shippey describes this as "a silly phrase", a piece of "French-oriented snobbery". Shippey observes that the socially aspiring Sackville-Bagginses have similarly attempted to "Frenchify" their family name, Sac[k]-ville = "Bag Town", as

4410-409: The time of the War of the Ring at the end of the age these were still its bounds as a native tongue. He explains further that the Númenóreans had maintained ... havens upon the western coasts of Middle-earth for the help of their ships; and one of the chief of these was at Pelargir near the Mouths of Anduin. There Adûnaic was spoken, and mingled with many words of the languages of lesser men it became

4480-424: The top of the tower there, and again rescues Gandalf from the top of Celebdil after searching for him at Galadriel 's request. Gwaihir and his Eagles appear in great numbers towards the end of the book. The Eagles similarly arrive at the Battle of the Morannon , helping the Host of the West against the Nazgûl , while Gwaihir, Landroval, and Meneldor rescue Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee from Mount Doom after

4550-429: The writings of Middle-earth are translations from the fictitious volume of the Red Book of Westmarch , Bilbo is the author of The Hobbit , translator of various "works from the elvish ", and the author of the following poems and songs : The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that "Baggins" is close to the spoken words bæggin , bægginz in the dialect of Huddersfield, Yorkshire . where it means

4620-405: Was aware of this problem, recognising the risky nature of the mechanism; in one of his letters , he wrote: The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in the Shire is absurd; it also makes the later capture of G[andalf] by Saruman incredible, and spoils

4690-403: Was dispensed with in the story and the Company of the Ring were transported everywhere on the backs of eagles". According to the fantasy artist Larry Dixon , the digitally animated eagles in Peter Jackson 's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy were based on a stuffed golden eagle he had provided to Weta Workshop . A genus of Diapriid wasps in Australia was named Gwaihiria after

4760-401: Was played by Paul Daneman . The 1969 parody Bored of the Rings by " Harvard Lampoon " (i.e. its co-founders Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard ) modifies the hobbit's name to "Dildo Bugger". In the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit , Bilbo was voiced by Orson Bean . Bean also voiced both the aged Bilbo and Frodo in the same company's 1980 adaptation of The Return of

4830-424: Was redoubled after the coming of Tuor , enabling Gondolin to remain undiscovered longer than any other Elvish kingdom in Beleriand. When the city fell, the eagles protected the fugitives from ambushing orcs. The Eagles fought alongside the army of the Valar, Elves, and Men during the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age . In The Silmarillion it is recounted that after the appearance of winged dragons , "all

4900-439: Was to provide an explanation for why the Common Speech is almost entirely rendered as English in the novel. This device of rendering an imaginary language with a real one was carried further by rendering: The whole device of linguistic mapping was essentially a fix for the problems Tolkien had created for himself by using real Norse names for the Dwarves in The Hobbit , rather than inventing new names in Khuzdul. This seemed

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