THE END, PART TWO: The Final Battle

There was a big battle between Wood-Elves, Men, and Dwarves versus the Goblins the Wild Wolves. Bilbo was invisible for the whole thing and hid under a rock.  It lasted for two pages, the Bear Man showed up, and then Eagles came by and won the battle for the good guys.  Really, that's it.

These characters died:

• Bombur ¹
• Balin ²
• Thorin ²
  
• Fili ³
• Kili ³
• Bard
• Bolg
• Wargs
• Most of the Lake Men
• A couple of wood-elves

¹  A missed prediction that he will not die.  By my own rules, I declare Tolkien "sizeist".

² A 'Good Possibility' of death was accurate, although I don't have details on how the old man Balin died.  Thorin died a warrior's death but not before making up with Bilbo.   

³ No details; these guys should have already been dead.

The Lake Townies took the Arkenstone home after all, as well as some more goodies from the dead folks' share.  Bilbo parts with a trunk of silver and a trunk of gold, and then Gandalf and Bear Man start the journey with him back to the hobbit hole, since the story is over and Bilbo is hungry and uncomfortable.

...I'm sorry, do you remember this scene differently?  I just wasn't really into it.  I had been gearing up for an adventure with a dragon and unprecedented riches, and when we got to that point in the book and somebody ELSE killed the dragon, I felt tricked.  The fact that the Dragon adventure was really just an excuse to establish a bigger Good Guys army against the Goblins makes Gandalf look not like a hero but power-hungry villain that uses Hobbits and Dwarves as pawns in his wargames.  Did the Fantastic 14 really want to go to war against Goblins?  Or did Gandalf bank on their greedy attachment to the treasure, counting on the high likelihood a fraction of the gold would be bequeathed to the local economy? 

Were the Goblins really that bad?  What had Gandalf been doing this whole time?  I mean, geez, who's the authority in these parts?  LakeTownies are in danger of extinction after 75% of the town's death due to the dragon, and they dwindled further at the hands of the goblins.  Was the Elvenking on board with this spontaneous war?  I'm beginning to think Gandalf should be put on trial.  He's not the hero in later books, is he?   

Comments

[V]

You should read the later books to find out! And please blog about it - I discovered this blog recently and have really enjoyed reading it.

So Gandalf is Machiavellian. But is that a bad thing? Would you rather have the LakeTownies destroyed entirely, along with the Woodies and others?

[nataliepo]

@V, so, the Goblins are definitely evil, then? That contributes to my confusion -- I don't know why this whole war was necessary, and I feel that most of the characters that I almost liked were just collateral damage. :/

[Victor Ganata]

Now that I think about it, by lopping off the head of the Great Goblin, did Gandalf end up delaying the goblins' attack by causing confusion in the chain of command, or did he just provoke them? For some reason, I got the impression that the goblins would've attacked eventually, though.