February 15, 2014
“William choked. ‘Shut yer mouth!’ he said as soon as he
could. ‘Yer can’t expect folk to stop here forever just to be et by you Bert.
You’ve et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the
mountains. How much more do you want?’”—J.RR. Tolkien, The Annotated Hobbit, pg. 71
“Trolls speak a kind of colloquial English that was
considered characteristic of English people of low status and poor education in
the 1930s. It is ungrammatical at times, uses frequent abbreviations, and
colloquialisms such as calling Bilbo a
blighter.”— The Tolkien Society
By the end of chapter 2 in The Hobbit, the reader will find that the fantasy of the text is
not entirely independent of the primary world, i.e.-ours. There have been
regular references thus far to how human beings would relate in such a world,
with Tolkien telling us on one occasion that hobbits are quite shy around us “Big
People.” Therefore, Tolkien does not entirely give us, his readership the
option to opt out our home world.
This then presents us with a few tears, if you may, to the
story’s veil of separation between the imagined and the physical thing we call
reality. With the trolls, the narrator and/or Tolkien introduce social class
into this fantasy land. Upon critical glance they present with all the typical signifiers
of a stereotypical underclass: their speech and grammar are poor, they are not
hesitant to use violence to meet their essential needs and they spend more time
bickering amongst one another than improving their stations in life.
In addition, the trolls are a nomadic lot, as some of the
underclass tend to be, dependent on specific instances of fruitfulness for
sustained prosperity. During the time of Tolkien’s writing, it would not have
been uncommon for a poor citizen of the British Empire to ship off to another
of its territories for a chance at prosperity.
As mentioned in class by Dr. Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien cannot
help the fact that he’s a “middle-aged white guy at Oxford.”
I'm really interested in this issue, and I think we'll see it come up again as we read further. It's also interesting that Tolkien uses such average, primary-world names. In a world where every name is fantastically crafted, we find a Tom, a Bill, and a Bert, no doubt adding to their "lower-classness."
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post, Jean-Marc! I'm curious to see what else you find.