Down to Goblin-Town

“Beat them!  Bite them!  Gnash them!”
- The Great Goblin

 The goblins of The Hobbit are really quite brutal.  They whip prisoners, feast on ponies, and make instruments of torture.  And they even pinch – “unmercifully.”  Tolkien attributes many evils to the malice of goblins, as when he writes, “It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help…”  The narrator does concede that other groups are not blameless: “in some parts wicked dwarves had even made alliances with them.”  Nevertheless, the goblins are particularly violent and corrupt.

Despite the moments of dark comedy and the wry commentary from the narrator, the goblin scenes are quite nasty – perhaps something of a surprise from the amiable, hobbit-loving Tolkien.  Yet, of course, this was a man who had served in World War One, when civilization – with its ingenious weapons and machines – had looked upon the young men of the day and, with goblin cruelty, pronounced:

“Beat them!  Bite them!  Gnash them!  Take them away to dark holes full of snakes, and never let them see the light again!”

 

 

 

 

Image: Sidney Sime, “The Lean, High House of the Gnoles.”