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Copywork
About This Passage
From Thorin's account of the dragons. Tolkien blends wry humor ('never enjoy a brass ring of it') with a sharp portrait of greed that hoards but cannot create. Copying it rewards close attention to long, balanced sentences, semicolons, and parenthetical asides.
Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically for ever, unless they are ...
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Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then identify the moment you think the author most wants us to notice. What technique, whether the songs, the narrator's asides, or the slow build of guests, does Tolkien use to make that moment land?
Discussion Questions
- The narrator blames Bilbo's contradictions on two ancestries, the staid Bagginses and the adventurous Tooks, and says the Tookish part 'only waited for a chance to come out.' Does the chapter present Bilbo's change as something genuinely new, or as something always latent in him? Use the narrator's words and Bilbo's actions to argue which reading is stronger.
- Tolkien's narrator constantly interrupts with jokes, asides, and direct address, even pausing to call us 'the Big People.' How does this playful, intrusive voice shape the way we experience a tale that is, underneath, about the dwarves' exile and Bilbo's peril? Use specific words and asides from the narrator to explain why this voice matters even to a dark story.
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Vocabulary
Item 1
a person who secretly plots or schemes together with others
Item 2
an organized journey undertaken for a particular purpose
Item 3
payment given in return for work or services
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Critical Thinking
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