A Hypothetical Timeline for the Hobbit by Douglas Wilhelm Harder July 24, 2018 Version 1.1
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A hypothetical timeline for The Hobbit by Douglas Wilhelm Harder July 24, 2018 Version 1.1 1. Introduction When Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings, he used the 1941 and 1942 Almanacs to ensure that the phases of the moon and other celestial events were internally consistent throughout the story. Years earlier, when he wrote The Hobbit, his purpose was not to create a book that stood up to critical analysis, but rather he was writing a children’s book, and in that he succeeded. Since then, however, there have been attempts to reconcile the celestial events reported in The Hobbit so as to make sense of them. This article will, after describing the terminology to be used, first describe an irreconcilable problem appearing in The Hobbit. This problem cannot be solved with any interpretation no matter how nuanced or subtle or clever, for it requires the moon to shift from an almost new moon to an almost full moon within one day. In order to correct this, this requires changes to the story. Consequently, we will continue by giving criteria by which any amendments or interpretations are to be judged. Following this, we will list three constraints that must be satisfied by any proposed amendments or interpretations. Finally, we propose a solution that requires a minor amendment to the text, and while that amendment is significant, we proceed to show that the amendment does not significantly affect the storyline in any way, that the amendment satisfies the constraints given, and that the amendments do not force an unreasonable interpretation of other events within the storyline. This article then ends with a summary of the problem, the proposed solution and how well the solution satisfies our criteria and constraints. To begin, however, we begin with a disclaimer and then we cover some required some terminology. 2. Disclaimer This author does not suggest in any way that any of this is what Tolkien meant. He meant to write a good children’s novel, and in that he succeeded. He was not interested in more mundane features such as ensuring that, for example, the cycles of the moon were correct. Later, he devoted more time to such nuances in The Lord of the Rings, but The Hobbit was left relatively undisturbed. The only point of this article is to demonstrate that while the text is irreconcilably flawed, and that’s okay. The only objective here is to see whether or not there exist a minimal number of amendments and interpretations that do allow the text to make reasonable sense. This author does not suggest that anything here is actually what Tolkien meant, but rather, it is simply an exercise in observation and imagination. It is no different than reading the book of Revelations or Nostradamus and attempting to retrospectively interpret modern-day events in light of these texts, only this author will also attempt to describe specific weaknesses, as well. Thus, only think of this article as an interesting thought-experiment, and nothing else. It is not meant to present a definitive timeline. 3. Terminology and background This article will refer to three different events throughout the evening: civil twilight, nautical twilight and astronomical twilight. The first ends when the sun sinks sufficiently below the horizon that humans require artificial light to distinguish terrestrial objects1, the second ends when the sun has sunk sufficiently far that navigators can begin to use the stars for navigation, and the third ends when the sun is sufficiently below the horizon that no part of the sky is still lit by the sun. In Oxford, England from approximately May 22 to July 22, astronomical twilight never ends—the sun never sinks sufficiently below the horizon so that at least some component of the sky is not lit by the rays of the sun. In December, however, the astronomical twilight ends not much past six o’clock in the afternoon— 1 See the article Civil Twilight—Civil Dawn & Dusk at www.timeanddate.com. the sun will have already gone down around four o’clock. When writing this article, this author had issues keeping the phases of the moon in the correct order: could an evening crescent moon point to the left, or would an evening crescent moon always point to the right? All of this can be deduced by remembering that looking at the Solar System from the direction of the North Star, both the Earth and the Moon both orbit and rotate counter-clockwise, as is shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. The orbits and the rotations of the Earth and the Moon and the phases of the moon depending on its position relative to the sun; going counter-clockwise: a new, waxing crescent, 1st-quarter, waxing gibbous, full, waning gibbous, 3rd-quarter and waning crescent. This, however, still requires deduction, so this author devised the following aide-mémoire to help. It relies on the game of baseball, and is shown in Figure 2. Unfortunately, it is only valid in the northern hemisphere. Figure 2. The lunar cycle begins at home base where the new moon rises around 6 AM; the earliest time you can reasonably expect to start playing baseball. First base is on the right, and the 1st-quarter moon is lit on the right. It rises six hours later, around noon, and set around midnight. Before the first quarter, waxing crescent moons rise in the morning and set in the evening; and after waxing gibbous moons rise in the afternoon and set at night after midnight. Second base represents the full moon where both halves are lit, and it rises around 6 PM, lights the night sky, and sets in the morning around 6 AM. Third base is on the left, and the 3rd-quarter moon is lit on the left. It rises around midnight and sets around noon, lighting the late night and morning sky. Before the third quarter, waning gibbous moons rise in the evening and set in the morning before noon; and after waning crescent moons rise before the morning and set before evening. Additionally, each night the moon rises on average around 50 minutes later than it did the previous night, and it will be around 12.2° along the arc along which it moves. To visualize this, 12.2° is about 0.213 radians, so you could multiply the length of your arm by 0.213, or if you want a rougher approximation, divide the length of your outstretched arm by five. Speaking in the first person, for this author, the base of my thumb is approximately 70 cm from my eyes when my hand is stretched out, so as a rough estimate, 70 cm ÷ 5 = 14 cm and to be more exact, 70 cm × 0.213 = 14.91 cm or 15 cm. If I hold my thumb and index finger at right angles, the distance from the tip of my index finger to the base of my thumb is around 15 cm. Thus, if I hold my outstretched right arm and place the base of my thumb at the position of the moon today, then tomorrow at the same time the moon will be at approximately the tip of my index finger. This is demonstrated in Figure 3. The purpose of this exercise is for you to get a somewhat intuitive understanding of how the moon travels throughout the sky. As you may deduce, if the moon rises 50 minutes later each day, this is also the distance the moon will travel in approximately 50 minutes. Figure 3. Technique for estimating the position of the Moon at the same time tomorrow. This article will also refer to three different calendars: the Shire Reckoning, the Stewards’ Reckoning and the Gregorian calendar. These will be abbreviated as ShR, StR and GC, respectively. Additionally, this article will restrict its terminology to that of The Hobbit, so, for example, term such as goblins, Wood-elves and Elvenking are used in preference to orcs, Silvan elves and Thranduil, respectively. We now proceed to the problem. 4. The problem The most significant problem, and the one that will require an amendment to the text, are two moon phases on two consecutive days. The first is the day that the dwarves and the Hobbit open the secret door. On this day, Bilbo saw a “pale and faint…thin new moon above the rim of Earth.” Thus, the sunset and the moonset will be very close: in one instance, in 2007, a New Moon occurred on October 11 and on the next day the crescent moon set at 6:12 PM, while the sun set on that day at 6:18 PM. The following day, a bare crescent moon set at 6:29 PM, just thirteen minutes after the sunset at 6:16 PM and civil twilight does not end until 6:50 PM. There is, however, not a significant amount of light from a young waxing crescent, as can be seen in Figure 4. Figure 4. A New Moon and the phase of the moon on the two subsequent days. In the chapter Fire and Water, however, the moon that lights up Smaug and reveals the weakness in his armor. First, the thrush says “Wait! Wait! The moon is rising.” Next, “[t]he dragon was circling back, flying low, and as he came the moon rose above the eastern shore and silvered his great wings.” The third moon in Figure 4 gives off only 5% the light of a full moon, unlikely to give off sufficient light to “silver” Smaug’s wings, and indeed, if a portion of the sun is still in the sky (for civil twilight has not yet ended), it is unlikely that the moon would have any effect on the lighting of Smaug what-so-ever.