[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lorecast.
[SPEAKER_00]: The show that explores the background of Tolkien's amazing world, from the very beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: we are now at the battle of five armies and this has been a moment that I've been waiting to get to for a very long time because it's a really cool moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: The dwarves show up, the men and the elves have to deal with them but then oh no there are goblins here and wargs and so now they have to deal with those and so they band together and then of course there's the scene where Thorin and company come out of the mountain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll get to all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before I get to that, I want to point out something that I've mentioned before.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is the fact that tokens writing changes, depending on the type of scene playing out.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we often think of tokens writing, we either think about the moments with the characters, the really zoomed in moments where we are getting a lot of detail about what is going on with the characters, their dialogue, their internal monologue, their feelings.
[SPEAKER_01]: a very specific detail about a very tight focused in scene like in a movie this would be two cameras panning very closely to the faces of individuals so we can get every little emotion or you get descriptions about every type of plant and whatever is on the side of the road and statues and the way buildings look and and those kinds of things again very zoomed in picture and then you get these transitional moments where
[SPEAKER_01]: Things happen over a longer period of time, and he kind of glosses over stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those are usually to move the story on, to move from one specific moment that he wants to talk about to the next and to talk about, sometimes a journey without as much detail in, you know, the plants and things along the way, but there's another thing he does.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is,
[SPEAKER_01]: describe battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're about to get to that moment in the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way that he describes battle is something that I've wrestled with for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something I noticed a long time ago was in significantly less detail than I had hoped.
[SPEAKER_01]: and I think I felt that way for a few different reasons.
[SPEAKER_01]: One was, some authors will give you a point of view perspective of one character in the battle and you will see every little thing that happens, the arrow that lodges in the wood next to their head, the fear on the person next to them, the pulling the sword out of the scabbard,
[SPEAKER_01]: The, I don't know, the wet ground giving way to the rocks and slipping feet, I don't every little detail.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll get these like zoomed in moments, but Tolkien doesn't tend to do that with his battles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another reason for expecting battles to be like this is because of the way that movies and TV shows are shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get a lot of glimpses of individual moments when you think about the battles that happen in the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit films,
[SPEAKER_01]: They are, again, much more detailed and choreographed, just like movies of this time period would be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, in Tolkien's actual writings, we are missing a lot of details.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I used to struggle with trying to understand why that would be the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've...
[SPEAKER_01]: I've questioned before that maybe it had to do with him actually being in battles and the amount that you actually are able to remember under all of that derress because typically he'll talk more about the movements of troops in the distance and the way that the horn sounded when they raised their banners and that kind of thing and less of the expressions of character spaces standing next to you in the trenches and that sort of thing but you would expect
[SPEAKER_01]: serving in World War I that he would have a lot to say about the expressions of characters faces, standing in trenches, and I know they don't stand in trenches literally in Lord of the Rings or whatever, but you know, side by side with your comrades.
[SPEAKER_01]: But here, I think I may have solved this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it has to do with the way that battles traditionally were written, not in any time period near our own, not in the 1800s.
[SPEAKER_01]: but in the 12th century, the 8th century.
[SPEAKER_01]: Surprise, surprise.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's pulling a lot of inspiration from these older texts, these older books, these myths and legends and histories.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna read you a section of something and I'll tell you what it's from after I read it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And let me know what you think this sounds like.
[SPEAKER_01]: And especially, keep it in mind as we get through this episode today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the blasts of the trumpets mingled, urging them to battle, and the crash of arms rose like the breaking of storms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Brave spirits met in strife, and the front ranks were humed down as if by sives.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fields steamed with the warmth of freshly shed blood, and the sight of the slaughtered stirred the warriors to fiercer onset.
[SPEAKER_01]: The battle swayed, now this way, now that, like a ship tossing upon stormy waves.
[SPEAKER_01]: shield, beat on shield, and startling air rang with the den of clashing steel, and the ground was hewn with bodies as the fallen sink like cut corn beneath the reaper.
[SPEAKER_01]: The lion's wavered, bent, and broke, and again they rallied, gathering like clouds driven in the sky.
[SPEAKER_01]: Each warrior strove to surpass the deeds of his fellows, no breast strength, no foot, faltered, and the more the peril grew the fiercer grew their courage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the shouts of the captain's rose above the tumult, and the champions closed, breast abreast in mortal contest, barely no storm ever burst with more awful fury than that battle, where steel flashed like lightning, and the cries of dying men were as thunder.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, Tolkien did not write this.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a work from the 12th to 13th century, so 11 to 12 hundreds, called Guestadinorum, which translates to the deeds of the Danes.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was written by Saxo-Gramaticus, which could be read as Saxo-the-learned, or the Gremarian.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was a writer and a historian.
[SPEAKER_01]: of sorts.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, some of this is mythological, and was paid by Archbishop Absalon of Lund.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometime between 1128 and 1201 in order to write these mythological, style sort of histories about the Danes, and yet this style of writing feels like Tolkien.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice the descriptions of troop movements, or the use of elemental imagery, like thunder, or lightning, and that sort of thing in the battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, we're not zoomed into any specific character, it's more of a kind of a hand out larger perspective that also still elicits an emotional response to that moment without really zooming in on a specific character.
[SPEAKER_01]: The armies themselves are like characters, if not even something more fundamental or organic, the way that things buckle in flow, like water, almost like
[SPEAKER_01]: two gigantic living beings striving with each other in some sort of strange conflict rather than groups of men or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get something very similar to this in the Battle of Five Armies and also in Tokens other battles.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the answer is that he's not just simplifying battles and pulling things out of perspective and moving away from characters because he'd no longer thinks that is useful for writing, but instead he's writing battles the way he has studied and read battles historically.
[SPEAKER_01]: the way they were written.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this reminds us that battles are not just something that one individual experiences from one location on a battlefield, they are momentous world-changing events that have much further reaching effects than just for the individuals who are there.
[SPEAKER_01]: These battles, these conflicts should feel massive in zoomed out because they have so much
[SPEAKER_01]: of an effect on the cultures, not just the individuals who are there, but the cultures after the fact, the way society works.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are massive creatures.
[SPEAKER_01]: undergoing conflict with each other, that happen to be made up of lots of individuals.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you think of it like that, it makes sense that you have such a zoomed up view and important imagery, like lightning and thunder and those kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So keep all of this in your back pocket as we get through the battle of five armies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second half of this chapter begins with so began a battle that none had expected, and it was called the Battle of Five Armies, and it was very terrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as to not have any confusion here, Tolkien redefines for us what is going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: On one side you have the goblins and the wild wolves, which also means wargs, and then on the other are elves and men and dwarves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And notice right off the bat, we know that the dwarves had to get along with the men in the elves in order to fight back against the goblins because they were the greater threat.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they also, well, historically hate the goblins.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, they're going to band together to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But notice that this is as it should be men and elves and dwarves working together to defend their free societies against evil creatures.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Tolkien uses the sentence here to kind of get us into it and explain what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: But first he says, this is how it fell out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which I thought was so concise and short of a sentence that it seems very rare also the expression fell out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we use that very much anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: At least I haven't heard it much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he gives us a little bit of a description about how all of these goblins organized themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were upset because of the death of the Great Goblin.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they sent messengers back and forth across their different cities, colonies, and strongholds and had decided that it was time for them to win dominion of the north.
[SPEAKER_01]: which seems like something that Orcs and Goblins had been doing for, well, millennia at this point, and they were now re-inspired by the events that had recently happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get little details about how they communicated and traveled through tunnels under dark places under night, and they gathered together at the Great Mountain Goondabad.
[SPEAKER_01]: gunned abad probably in the north and this was their capital this is where they would come marching from and there are echoes of morgoth's capitals in the north and again this sort of thing happening but there is no sauron involved at least directly here sauron is not at that capital we know that he is the necromancer in the forest at this point and is about to return to
[SPEAKER_01]: that isn't to say that he is an influencing some of what's going on here and could be helping to promote to the organization because as we know without smug in the north, he's a lot more worried about the different cultures up there, becoming a problem for him as his plans continue to move forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, by organizing a bunch of
[SPEAKER_01]: That would still be very beneficial, even though there's no more drag in around.
[SPEAKER_01]: So although we don't get direct notes here about Sauron or the necromancer having been involved with this, I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't playing those chess pieces at a distance.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, Tolkien addresses the death of Smell and the perspective of that from the goblins themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, this is the one thing that gave them joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He uses the word joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Joy was in their hearts, and so they came even faster to this mountain.
[SPEAKER_01]: They wanted the treasure as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: They knew they couldn't deal with a dragon in order to get it for themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the fact that the dragon was dead meant that they had a chance.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now would be the chance to attack this location before it is rebuilt as a fully functioning stronghold.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet somehow they did this without anybody knowing, Gandalf.
[SPEAKER_01]: You would expect if anybody knew what was going on, it would be Gandalf, and yet Gandalf is surprised as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And not even the Ravens knew what was going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: They must have traveled a significant portion of this distance underground and by cover of night.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on top of the, think about what the Ravens were doing, the Ravens were specifically looking for Dines people and keeping a tally of the different forces and where they were, the elves, the men, the dwarves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if they weren't ranging beyond that, then they may not have been able to notice an approaching goblin army.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the plan of what they're going to do, well, token lays that out as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: The goblins were the foes of all, and at their coming, all other quarrels were forgotten.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not forgiven, but forgotten.
[SPEAKER_01]: They knew that they needed to band together against these goblins because their numbers would be huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they absolutely needed to stop the goblins from taking the lonely mountain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because once they were entrenched in there,
[SPEAKER_01]: they would be a problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: The hope was that the goblins weren't in such large numbers that they could just kind of overrun the entire mountain.
[SPEAKER_01]: They needed to be sent into the valley between the two arms because those were the places where the soldiers were the men, the dwarves, and the elves could not only have some form of
[SPEAKER_01]: protection.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's high ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's high ground Anakin, but literally being on the high ground in a battle is advantageous.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are harder to hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can come down on your enemy's heads with your weapons, but also shoot them with arrows or slings or spears from a distance.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's harder to shoot up towards things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, if you wanted to run up the hill or the sides of the mountains to get to those defenders, it's much harder to make your way up.
[SPEAKER_01]: that then it is down, so they were going to try to get all of the goblins down into the valley between those two arms and squish them between the elves, on the western side, and the men and the dwarves on the eastern side.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this would only work if their numbers weren't so much that they could actually climb over sections of the mountains and then come down on the defenders from even higher locations.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the section of the story, we're starting to get these like wide angled shots of everything that's going on, troop movements and those kinds of things with little glimpses of dialogue, pieces like barred, shouting to the mountain, to the mountain, let us take our places while there is yet time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have individuals, but it's not directly written from that one person's perspective, the entire chapter or this entire section.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the camera is panning around giving you a sense of everything that's happening all at once.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just as the men and the dwarves and the elves take up their locations in those arms of the mountain, we get the beginning of the goblins army coming through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Air long the van guards swirled around the mountains and came rushing into Dale.
[SPEAKER_01]: These were the swiftest wolfwriters and already their cries and howls rent the air afar.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are not getting troops marching in rows.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are not getting spearmen and shield bearers.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are getting wolfwriters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you might think that they're just scouting out the area, but they don't seem to be functioning the way that a strategic military would be functioning.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anything, they are in a wild rage and all moving as fast as possible in order to attack the dwarves and their other enemies as they possibly can.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not so much that these wolfwriters were their scouts and at the front of the army and then ran into their, the, the other army and then can attack because, oh, here, here, you are, we found you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more of they were just the fastest ones and so they arrived first.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Gandalf had hoped, the goblin army had gathered behind the resisted vanguard and poured now in rage into the valley, in rage into the valley, driving wildly up between the arms of the mountain, seeking for their foe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their banners were countless, black and red, and they came on like a tide, in fury and disorder.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was a mass of goblins and wolves and anything else all moving all trying to get there as soon as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody wanted to be the first goblin to kill a dwarf and then to kill another dwarf.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was not organization here.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is again like in the intro.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the movement of some sort of wild
[SPEAKER_01]: wanting to absorb and destroy everything in front of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we get a little bit of a perspective from Bilbo.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a terrible battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: The most dreadful of all Bilbo's experiences.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the one at the time he hated most.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then this clever little remark here, which is to say it was the one he was most proud of and most fond of recalling long afterwards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Although he was quite...
[SPEAKER_01]: an important in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This tells us so much, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Bill does not can play a big part in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is not a warrior.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to put keep his head down.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's going to put the ring on and he's going to try to get out of the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he puts it on early and then tries to avoid the dangers.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're reminded that well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a shield that will protect him from everything, you know, a random arrow could still hit him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has to watch out.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just that he won't be targeted directly because he's now invisible.
[SPEAKER_01]: This also gives us expectations for what's going to happen with this battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are not following Bilbo and he's about to do some sort of super important thing and kill Bulg or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, he's going to just try to survive, and then he's going to tell stories about it later, which feels like a very billbow kind of thing to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Tolkien uses the battle to give us even more insight into the different groups and characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: The elves were the first to charge.
[SPEAKER_01]: He tells us this is because their hatred is cold and bitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have hated the goblins for so long now, millennia, that they just can't wait to kill as many as they possibly can.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, think about this from the perspective of the elves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many of these elves have been around since the first age, or maybe longer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they have had conflicts, they have had stories, they have probably known individuals in their long lives who died in goblin wars from previous ages of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we get this wonderful, kind of zoomed out, description of what's going on with their military.
[SPEAKER_01]: Their spears and swords shown in the gloom with a gleam of chill flame, so deadly was the wrath of their hands that held them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then their enemy piles up in this valley, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And they send a bunch of arrows after them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, against it as shower of arrows in each flickered as it fled as if with stinging fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice the fire imagery here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very similar to that first passage, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: These weapons, the attack.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is using elemental imagery.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe those are on fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this is some sort of magic that the elves are using, or maybe it just feels like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not exactly clear.
[SPEAKER_01]: The yells were deafening.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rocks were stained black with goblin blood.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, this feels like that text from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the dwarves on the other side get their chance.
[SPEAKER_01]: They cry out, Maria and Dine, Dine, and they plunge in with their mattyx taking on the goblins.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, we've talked about this a little bit before, but why yell, Maria or why yell, Dine, Dine,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they're not yelling, for example, the names of the Valor, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But they are yelling why they are moving into this conflict in the first place, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They are seeking revenge for the events that happened at Moria.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are supporting and following their leader.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the calls that are motivating them to war.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this first group of goblins that have moved their way into the valley are trapped between these two arms and these two armies, these very capable armies that are now
[SPEAKER_01]: many of them down and so they start to panic and they run back down the river and then they're in such a panic here in the middle that their own wolves start turning upon the goblins and eating them or attacking them because they're in a fright and this feels good.
[SPEAKER_01]: This makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: These two armies are very seasoned at fighting goblins and they have an advantageous location to do it from but yet there's something else that's going to happen that they do not expect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Goblins had scaled the mountain from the other side, and already many were on the slopes above the gate, and others were streaming down recklessly, heedless of those that fell screaming from cliff and precipice to attack the spurs from above.
[SPEAKER_01]: The very thing that they didn't want to happen is happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: The goblins are good at climbing stuff and there are tons of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And forces have now scaled the mountains behind them and are coming down from an even higher location.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, in a frenzy, they're falling down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of them are not making their way down the side of the mountain in one piece, but that's okay because there's so many of them that do.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the doblins now have an advantage on both of these defenders.
[SPEAKER_01]: Victory now vanished from hope.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had only stemmed the first onslaught of the black tide.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice that description, the black tide.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just gonna take a pause here real quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember at the beginning of this book when we were reading something that felt like a children's fairy tale?
[SPEAKER_01]: And here we are, reading texts that feels like it was directly out of the Lord of the Rings.
[SPEAKER_01]: The tone here has completely shifted at this point.
[SPEAKER_01]: The battle goes on for a long period of time, and during battles like this you would have different times that groups would clash with each other and then probably back up reorganize, clash again, that sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're told that the day draws on, the goblins gather again, and there is a host of wargs that come in, the bodyguard of bulk.
[SPEAKER_01]: goblins of huge size, ones that we probably call orcs rather than goblins if you're of the mindset of dividing them according by name and size.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these had simitars of steel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on top of that, the day was coming to a close.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the strongest, most organized section of the goblin army shows up.
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's about to become dark out.
[SPEAKER_01]: That will only benefit the goblins.
[SPEAKER_01]: The forces of men and elves and dwarves are not designed to fight in the dark.
[SPEAKER_01]: The men, the elves and the dwarves are being pushed back.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then we get this moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly there was a great shout, and from the gate came a trumpet call.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had forgotten.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thorin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Part of the wall, moved by levers, fell outward with a crash into the pool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Outlept the king under the mountain, and his companions followed him, hood and cloak were gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were in shining armor, and redlight leapt from their eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a few things to note here, yes, we had kind of forgotten that Thorne was a thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, there's what, 12 of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, okay, they're capable dwarves, they're armored, they're ready to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they aren't like another host of a thousand people in an army, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's something very strong about this idea that the King himself, even though he's been a jerk for the last chapter or two, decides to come out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we get some symbolism here, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The red leaping from their eyes, they are angry at these dwarves.
[SPEAKER_01]: How dare they show up and try to take their treasure, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also get this line at the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the gloom, the great dwarf gleamed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thorn himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like gold in a dying fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not in a raging fire?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like his rage against the goblins.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gold in a dying fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: This feels like foreshadowing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Thorin moves through this force, cuts through it like butter, Thorin wields his axe with mighty strokes, and nothing seemed to harm him.
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, to me, elves and men, to me, oh my kids folk, he cried, and his voice shook like a horn in the valley.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's drawing them to him, notice that just a little while ago, he was ready to murder all of them, and yet things have changed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Down, heedless of order, rushed all the dwarves of dying to his help.
[SPEAKER_01]: Down two came many of the lakemen for Bard could not restrain them, and out upon the other side can many of the spearmen of the elves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody gathers around Thorn.
[SPEAKER_01]: This drives the morale up, and this is an important point.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how battles are lost.
[SPEAKER_01]: Battles are not lost when two armies are pitted against each other and both are committed to continue fighting.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not usually how...
[SPEAKER_01]: The side who loses a fight like this loses, what usually happens is morale breaks and the troops are routed and they start to flee and the vast majority of injuries and deaths happen when the troops are routed because they can be chased down and attacked from behind.
[SPEAKER_01]: But because of this inspiration, they all pull together one more time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So once again, the goblins that says are stricken in the valley, they pile up the heaps of bodies, like hideous dark corpses, the wargs are scattered, and Thorin pushes right up to the bodyguard of bulg, but he cannot pierce their ranks.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're too big, and they're too strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are too many of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the battle begins to turn again, and Tolkien paints this for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He starts to lament the fact that there are so many Elven dead, that should have lived a long time, yet long ages, merrily in the woods.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this implies another thing that the whole receding of the elves into the West wasn't really set up yet when the writing of the Hobbit happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, you could probably argue that some of those elves just disappear into the wild and eventually fade away, they don't go into the West, and so could maybe live long ages into the world and kind of a faded sort of life, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that doesn't feel like what's going on here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels like, well, these are elves, and they're supposed to live a long time, and it's sad that they're dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this group of attackers, Thorin and Company, and the people that have followed him in, are now surrounded.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to shape themselves into a circle, which is the best defensive structure they can possibly do being surrounded by so many of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: The bodyguard of bulk came howling against them and drove in upon their ranks like waves upon cliffs of sand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember the passage from the beginning?
[SPEAKER_01]: It said, the battle swayed now this way, now that like a ship tossed upon stormy waves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Similar imagery here, also, and again they rallied, gathering like clouds driven in the sky.
[SPEAKER_01]: The use of natural imagery here is very similar.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now finally, as the battle is coming to a conclusion, we get a perspective from Bilbo again.
[SPEAKER_01]: He watched all of this in misery, and we also learned something very curious.
[SPEAKER_01]: He decided to stay up with the elves because he preferred on the whole to defend the Elven King.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have to remember, yes, the elves did treat the dwarves poorly and locked them up, and Bilbo had to live with them for a while, but I think he also learned that they weren't just terrible people.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's more to them than that, and Bilbo had always had a love of elves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gandalf II, I may say, was there sitting on the ground as if in deep thought, preparing I suppose some last blast of magic before the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: Notice, everyone expects Gandalf to send fireballs, raining down on the enemies or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he never quite does that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He could set pine cones on fire, but they're on any pine cones here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then finally, we are zoomed back in two Bilbo fully from the perspective of the events of the battlefield, because we get Bilbo's actual thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: That did not seem far off, meaning the end of the battle.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will not be long now, Thought Bilbo, before the goblins win the gate, and we are all slaughtered or driven down and captured.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really, it is enough to make one weep.
[SPEAKER_01]: After all one has gone through, I would rather old-smowg had been left with all the wretched treasure than that these vile creatures should get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And poor old-bomber, bollon, filly, and killy, and all the rest come to a bad end.
[SPEAKER_01]: And barred too, and the Lakeman, and the Mary Elves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Misery me, I have heard songs of many battles and I have always understood that defeat may be glorious.
[SPEAKER_01]: It seems very uncomfortable not to say distressing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish I was out of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tolkien is making a point here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Battle is supposed to be glorious, but it is anything but distressedful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is terrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: He mentions multiple times.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is terrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is uncomfortable and
[SPEAKER_01]: The clouds were torn by the wind, a red sunset slashed the west.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seeing the sudden gleam in the gloom, Bilbo looked around.
[SPEAKER_01]: He gave a great cry.
[SPEAKER_01]: He had seen a sight that made his heart leap, dark shapes small, yet majestic against the distant glow.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Eagles, the Eagles he shouted, the Eagles are coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Milbo's eyes were seldom wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Eagles were coming down from the wind, line after line and such a host as must have gathered from all the earrings of the North.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Eagles, the Eagles' Bilbo cried, dancing and waving his arms.
[SPEAKER_01]: If the elves could not see him, they could hear him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Soon, they too took up the cry, and it echoed across the valley.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many wandering eyes looked up, though as yet nothing could be seen except from the southern shoulders of the mountain.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Eagles cried Bilbo once more, but at that moment, a stone, herdling from above, smoked heavily on his helm.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he fell with a crash.
[SPEAKER_01]: The new no more.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks again for being here and for your continued support.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, I hope you enjoyed checking out the little feed drop I did of the Retro Recal show.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got episodes of that coming out every two weeks and we would love for you to be part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you remember playing Retro games or even curious about that stuff and you want to have some fun recollecting the nostalgia of being back there the way the world was in the like the 80s and 90s.
[SPEAKER_01]: early 2000s.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then come join us for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look up Retro Recall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually there's links in the description and all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys know where to find things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can listen to the audio version and there's also the YouTube version.
[SPEAKER_01]: With lots of fun visual gags that you will miss if you listen to the audio version only.
[SPEAKER_01]: So go check out Retro Recall.
[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you to everyone who supports the show and all sorts of different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's Patreon, Patreon.com slash LOTR, Lorcast, and our newest
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all one word.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that's your actual name.
[SPEAKER_01]: If it is, that's freaking amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so glad that you decided to join us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, I have to shout out all of our VIP patrons.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get through the list.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see if I can not mess it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will definitely mess it up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fulcrum, David S, Daniel Knight, Weaver, Kepenna, Richard J. TJT, A.K.
[SPEAKER_01]: Music lover, Barney D, Asyl Razzle, Laurie B, Mason Weathertop, Jezor, Gimliya Break, Divine Madman, Rosie Rose, Ginger Fury.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who on is my hero, Aldarian,
[SPEAKER_01]: I messed that one up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Aldarian was right, a very old Matt Party Snack single and looking for antwives, Matt Helu.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm messing that up every time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Norway Jenny is Balrogius Hunterus, Bruce W and Brent P. Thank you for your continued support.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, if you'd like to help out in other ways, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts is a wonderful way to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And typically I can only see the ones in the U.S.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we don't have any new ones this week in the U.S.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this wonderful listener, Rickard, think I'm pronouncing that correctly, wrote me in order to say that they left a five stars on Spotify.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what they said.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... that they use the form on the website to just kind of send a message and they said uh... just gave the l of t r l or cast five stars on spotify and just why did i do that well tom robots has been a steady walking partner on my walks in the woods for a couple of years now and therefore it's about time for a shout out to him
[SPEAKER_01]: you with your great insight, soothing voice and great ability to tell a story has brought a lot of smiles and good times to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you and you walking the extra mile and being such good company.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind regards from San Vika Norway, Rick Ricard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ricard, thank you so much for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I wrote you back, but if you'd like to send stuff in, then feel free to send me a note.
[SPEAKER_01]: I tried to respond to everybody or you could join us on the discord and leave a message on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll definitely see that on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But thank you for taking the time to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for being here and I hope
[SPEAKER_01]: And until next time, when you have the opportunity to make friends with Eagles, probably a good idea, they might save you a few times.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, see you next time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening to the Lord of the Rings lorecast.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to learn more about other fantasy worlds, check out my other podcasts.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Elder Scrolls lorecast, the Witcher lorecast, and more at robotsradio.net.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd like to reach out, I'd love to hear from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Send me a note on Twitter at robots underscore radio, or join our amazing community on the robots radio discord.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are links in the show notes, or just search robotsradio discord, or find the link on robotsradio.net.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you next time.