Thank you all for your participation this week.  The variety and depth of your insights is always a pleasure to see.  Leading a discussion is a new thing for me, and I should have known how much more I was going to learn than I thought. It reminded me of teaching graduate courses somehow, but without the nasty exams.

This chapter started off in the suffocating dark of a secret tunnel.  How suffocating? About two to four days worth of air, according to Takeo's calculation.  When the dwarves have about given up and are ready to risk going outside, Bilbo feels a sudden lightening of his heart.  This happens to coincide exactly with the death of Smaug, described in the next chapter.  Bilbo goes down the tunnel, with Thorin at his side.  Thorin sends him out to explore, since that was what Bilbo was hired to do.  Bilbo trips and rolls out, seeing the glow of the Arkenstone (magical, but radioactive would also work nicely).  Bilbo, finding Smaug is out to lunch, screams for light and the dwarves bring it.  He goes on to explore the cavern, and pockets the Arkenstone in the process.  There was a lot of debate on whether this was guided by Providence, whether a morally ambiguous act is a good idea to present to children, whether the resulting plot twist made the ending unsatisfactory, a comment by Puck about underwater burials, another nice one about the protoSilmaril by d_d.  Curious mostly talked about the moral choices involved.  NZS came in with a couple definitions of rationality.  THere was another nice comparison, continuing the discussion from previous chapters, about reusing themes, particularly Bilbo=Beren.  Smaug=Morgoth.  Dwarves=Noldor..  (Curious).  D-D then pointed out the continuity of Sam=Bilbo, and noted his wonderful soliloquy about the story of Beren and Luthien still going on.  There was a whole lot more than this, but you get the idea.

Bilbo drops his torch when startled by a bat (was he attacked, we wonder), and has to be rescued by the dwarves, after several somewhat unkind remarks by THorin.  They fall under the enchantment of the hoard just as we are wondering how much trouble Bilbo will cause.

Thorin becomes King under the Mountain, and gives out armor and weapons to the sound of music.  FIli and Kili seem the least greedy of the bunch, and this may be significant, since they are nephews, and ultimately die defending Thorin.  Blood is thicker than gold. 

Wondering how the dwarves originally lighted the caverns wandered into a discussion of glowworms and beyond.  Nerdanel observed that Bilbo is longing for Beorn's hospitality, not his own home, which was quite a change.  DofN points out the similarity between Sam and Bilbo's attitudes toward all the treasure.

They realize that they need to get out.  They hurry out of the halls, finally encountering a scene of death and destrucition in the Great Hall.  But this does not appear to be intended to give children nightmares.  But at this point, when the party gets to the front gate  at last, Bilbo remembers he is hungry.  They find a secluded spot for a quick meal of cram. 

Cram, wonderful cram.  Errm, maybe not.  Anyway, a lot of nice recipes.  I particularly liked the Logan bread, and plan to try it for my next experiment.  Thanks again to Takeo, we know that each member of the party had to be hauling about 100 lbs of cram.  Too bad about the ponies.

As the chapter closes, none of the dwarves seems especially concerned about how they will defeat Smaug.  For the moment, they are safe in an unusually large guardroom overlooking the ruined town of Dale.

Another question that arose was about whether the success of the Erebor quest led Balin, the most sympathetic dwarf in this chapter, to attempt to retake Moria.  There was evidently some unquieting force at work, stirring up the hearts of the dwarves and making them long for their old empires.

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