Q: Why Didn’t Thorin Want the Elvenking to Know About His Quest?
ANSWER: In The Hobbit, when the narrator explains the situation between Elves and Dwarves (they have had past disputes and the Wood-elves don’t trust strangers), the story says that “consequently Thorin was angry at their treatment of him…and also he was determined that no word of gold or jewels should be dragged out of him.”
Thorin’s determination to keep the purpose of his eastward journey a secret from the Wood-elves is in stark contrast with his apparent openness with Elrond. Elrond, of course, was a half-elf whose kin were High Elves and not Wood-elves. So it may be that Tolkien wanted to create a very different relationship between the Dwarves and Wood-elves for the sake of heightening the drama in the story.
We can speculate that Gandalf may have had something to do with mediating Thorin’s judgment toward Elrond; that is, Thorin may have been more inclined to trust an Elf-lord whom Gandalf knew and trusted. Gandalf, of course, was not available to negotiate on Thorin’s behalf with the Elvenking in Mirkwood.
We can also speculate that, after his long and perilous journey through the forest (having been captured by goblins and spiders, for example) Thorin was not really inclined to believe he had many friends on his road. Wilderland has been portrayed as a dangerous, unfriendly place thanks to the desolation of Smaug and the rise of the goblins.
Even Beorn was not told the full reason for the Dwarves’ journey: Gandalf only said they were visiting the land of their fathers in the east, which was true enough but not the full truth. Thorin only openly disclosed his true purpose — to return to the Lonely Mountain — after reaching the Lake-town.
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
I’ve been intrigued by something you mentioned in an earlier Q&A,
“Within J.R.R. Tolkien’s thought, this is all “mythical” in the sense that these are stories handed down from generation to generation that attempt to explain how things came to be. He struggled to reconcile these myths with his assertions that the Elves were students of the Valar and Maiar, who having been angels serving God would know the truth about the physical universe’s construction — hence, the Elves should have understood that the Earth was a round world floating in space, orbiting the Sun and orbited by the Moon.”
This concept fascinates me, since I had always thought that since Tolkien’s world included forms of magic in LOTR, that that concept extended backward to all of the stories and that they were to be taken literally. Any chance you could expand on the “myth” idea with your thoughts of where to draw a line between what “actually happened” and what was myth in Middle Earth?
Michael: “Any chance you could expand on the ‘myth’ idea with your thoughts of where to draw a line between what ‘actually happened’ and what was myth in Middle Earth?”
Me: It’s really not possible, as Tolkien’s conception changed through the years. You may want to refer to my Legendarium question and my very old essay (it’s in the archive section) “Is Your Canon on the Loose? to see why. Christopher Tolkien tried to explain this in the “Myths Transformed” section in Morgoth’s Ring.
In brief, J.R.R. Tolkien came to believe that his “fantasy” was too fantastic and that everything should be rewritten or re-invented so that the world was more compatible with real history and prehistory (although still following the trials of imaginary peoples). But that was toward the end of his life and he ultimately completed very little work in that mode.