“The Splendor, the Lust, the Glory”

“The glow of Smaug!”

The theme of greed returns when Bilbo enters the lair of the dragon.  Tolkien’s writing here is particularly strong: “There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber.  Beneath him… lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light.”  Upon actually seeing such wealth, “the splendor, the lust, the glory” began to affect the hobbit.

 

After the plucky hobbit manages to steal – or reclaim – a cup, Smaug’s “rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.”

Is Smaug truly, as Bilbo calls him, “the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities”?  At least dragons can be slain with an arrow.  What about the calamities that we make together?

 

Image: Metropolitan Museum of Art