Ok, I do have bad dial-up internet at the hotel, so here's a quick question
that's not on my list:
--Evaluate Bilbo's plan of packing Dwarves into barrels. Isn't there
danger that they will drown, or suffocate, or something? Is it just luck
that causes them to avoid death during the escape, or is there some higher
power (providence or whaterver the Hobbit equivalent may be) safeguarding
them?
Off to dinner, I'll post one if I am not too exhausted tomorrow, and my final
prepapred questions on
Friday.
Men do go, and have in history gone on journeys and quests,
without any intention of acting out allegories of life. . .
Most men make some journeys. Whether long or short, with an
errand or simply to go 'there and back again', is not of primary
importance. As I tried to express it in Bilbo's Walking Song,
even an afternoon-to-evening walk may have important effects.
When Sam had got no further than the Woody End he had already
had an 'eye-opener'. For if there is anything in a journey of
any length, to me it is this: a deliverance from the plantlike
state of helpless passive sufferer, an exercise however small of
will, and mobility -- and of curiosity, without which a rational
mind becomes stultified. Tolkien's Notes on W.H. Auden's Review of
The Return of the King, Letter #183
