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Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 21 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & The Inklings Society Conference 5-31-2012 Father Knows Best: The aN rrator's Oral Performance as Paternal Protector in The obbitH Anderson Rearick III Mount Vernon Nazarene University Follow this and additional works at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Rearick, Anderson III (2012) "Father Knows Best: The aN rrator's Oral Performance as Paternal Protector in The oH bbit," Inklings Forever: Vol. 8 , Article 21. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol8/iss1/21 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Pillars at Taylor University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inklings Forever by an authorized editor of Pillars at Taylor University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana Father Knows Best: The Narrator’s Oral Performance as Paternal Protector in The Hobbit Anderson Rearick III Mount Vernon Nazarene University Rearick III, Anderson. “Father Knows Best: The Narrator’s Oral Performance as Paternal Protector in The Hobbit.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1 Father Knows Best: The Narrator’s Oral Performance as Paternal Protector in The Hobbit Anderson Rearick III Mount Vernon Nazarene University The importance of the narrator in narrator on the web forum Tolkien’s Ring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit has been when one thirty five year old reader— recognized for a number of decades. In clearly an adult—writes: “I love the way 1979, Jane Chance-Nitzsche (later just the narrator talks to me. It always makes Jane Chance) in Tolkien’s Art includes me feel like I am sitting right there. I also extensive commentary in a chapter “The think that the way this is done gives the King Under the Mountain” in which she story a Hobbity feeling!” (Desi). Yet there argues for the independent nature of the are many who find the voice which tells narrator, writing that “The narrator, like a the story of The Hobbit problematic-- tale-telling [Canterbury] pilgrim, must be many of them are scholars and one seems regarded as one additional character” to be the author himself. (Chance 60). 1 Later Paul Thomas in Jane Chance says that the “Some of Tolkien’s Narrators” makes a narrator’s practice of “intrusions—direct similar claim: addresses to children, use of the first person singular, foreshadowing of later Thus the narrator is, from one events, joking tone, plot clarifications, and perspective, just as much a sound effects intended for entertain character as Bard, Balin and Bilbo. children—have annoyed readers and And yet the narrator is a special critics” (73). She claims that the narrator character: as a third-person “patronizes his audience. .prides himself narrator, he is merely a voice, and of his superior wisdom and status as an he is in the story but not in the plot. adult. .and behaves more like a critic (Thomas 162-163) when he laughs at or disapproves of his What remains in debate, therefore, is not characters, expressing neither pity nor the narrator’s importance but rather his terror at the plights that he relives qualities. And this is especially vicariously” (74). The “arrogant, important in light of the fact that there unimaginative, and very ‘adult’ narrator are, and will soon be more, versions of assumes this story about little Hobbits The Hobbit in which the narrator must be relegated to an audience of little apparently is absent. creatures—children” (Chance 60). Many find the narrator charming. Chance does not, however, see this as a In a published seminar paper “The Voice flaw in the book since she interprets the of the Narrator in Tolkien’s Hobbit” Nadja narrating voice as belonging to a Litschko concludes by noting that the purposefully flawed figure created by narrator is a “delight to adult readers” Tolkien to stand in contrast to the true (28). This is confirmed within a moral center of the work, Gandalf. Yet it discussion board about The Hobbit’s is clear that she is bothered by the very 2 Father Knows Best · Anderson Rearick III tone in which others have delighted. She Norman, “The Prevalence of Hobbits,” is not alone. Tolkien presents his most withering Litschko writes that “due to his criticism: frequent comments and reader addresses, ‘The Hobbit’ was written in what I he [the Narrator] can be perceived as should now regard as bad style, as rather patronizing” (179). Tolkien’s if one were talking to children. authorized biographer, Humphrey There's nothing my children Carpenter, while presenting the facts of loathed more. They taught me a composition, adds his own The Hobbit’s lesson. Anything that in any way negative opinion about the narrator marked out 'The Hobbit' as for whose purpose he sees as being there to children instead of just for people, address children: they disliked--instinctively. I did Indeed he [Tolkien] did this too too, now that I think about it. All consciously and deliberately at time this 'I won't tell you any more, you in the readers’ remarks such as think about it' stuff. Oh no, they “Now you know quite enough to get loathe it; it's awful. (qtd. in on with” and “as we shall see in the Norman) end.” He later removed many of That would appear to end the these, but some remain in the conversation; not only scholars but the published text—to his regret, for he very author himself seems to see the came to dislike them and even to narrator as a flaw within The Hobbit. believe that any deliberate talking But it isn’t the end—neither of the down to children is a great mistake conversation, nor as the final word on the in a story” (Carpenter 179). nature of the narrator. Carpenter will also later refer to “the First, as important as Tolkien’s patronizing ‘asides’ to juvenile readers” own words are, he had a tendency to which he says Tolkien did not remove speak in sweeping terms with sometimes because he was so busy with the many a less than clear memory. For example, other complications associated with the he gave little credence that the source of initial publication of the book. But clearly the multiple giant spiders that turn up in he sees these elements as problematic, a his work, specifically in The Hobbit, Lord position which, it should be noted, was of the Rings and even The Silmarillion, had later challenged by Thomas in “Some of anything to do with the bite he received Tolkien’s Narrators” (167). from a tarantula as a small child in South Finally The J.R.R. Tolkien Africa—a bite which resulted with him Encyclopedia Scholarship and Assessment running “in terror across the garden until in its “discussion and analysis” portion of the nurse snatched him up and sucked out its entry on “The Hobbit” notes that much the poison” (Carpenter 13). In a letter to “of the novel’s flavor also derives from the Auden he claimed the following: voice of the narrator, which contrasts the If it [the importance of spiders] has grandeur of ancient epic with the cozy, anything to do with my being stung even patronizing asides of the Victorian by a tarantula as a small child, children’s tale. Tolkien regretted this later people are welcome to the notion. I ” feature, yet he never fully edited it out can only say I remember nothing (Scoville 277-278 Emphasis Mine). about it, should not know it if I had As the last two sources indicate, not been told and I do not dislike there is evidence that Tolkien himself spiders particularly and have no regretted the tone of his narrator. In a urge to kill them. I usually rescue New York Times interview by Philip 3 Father Knows Best · Anderson Rearick III those whom I find in the bath narrative voice—is Tolkien’s claim that (Letters 217). The Hobbit is not a children’s story: In fact Tolkien came to blame the “The Hobbit" wasn't written for villainess role of spiders in The Hobbit on children, and it certainly wasn't his first listeners, his children. done just for the amusement of Tolkien's three sons and one I put in the spiders largely because daughter, as is generally reported. this was, you remember, primarily "That's all sob stuff. No, of course, I written for my children (at least I didn't. If you're a youngish man and had them in mind) and one of my you don't want to be made fun of, sons in particular dislikes spiders you say you're writing for children. with a great intensity. I did it to At any rate, children are your thoroughly frighten him, and it did. immediate audience and you write (qtd. in Anderson 169, note 7). or tell them stories, for which they In fairness, Anderson also notes that are mildly grateful: long rambling “throughout his life, Tolkien’s son Michael stories at bedtime. (Norman) had what he called ‘a deep rooted This sounds as if Tolkien, afraid of censor abhorrence to spiders’” (Anderson 169, from peers, hid his own adult enjoyment note 7).

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