I found this class discution very interesting. Seeing how different people saw different things as natural vs. unnatural was suprising. For this exercise, I chose the eagles as natural and the goblins as unatural.
The eagles in this story, while not natural for our world, act as a focus of nature itself in this story. They are good, but not in the way that many races of Middle Earth are good. They do not muster up an army to fight aginst evil things, but they oppose evil when they encouter it. In this way, they act more as nature itself, uncaring about the outside world, but an unwavering force that stands against the unnatural. The eagles do not have a stake in the gold and treasure of the Lonely Mountain, but their opposition of the unnatural puts them against the enemies of the dwarves at that point in the story.
The goblins, on the flip side of this, are unnatural. Tolkien talks about how they "make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones." (pg 73) He goes on to talk about how they invent things like wheels and engins and explosions. As Dr. Donovan menitioned in class, Tolkien grew up in a town over run with the Industrial Revolution. For him, the blance between natural and unnatural was very much thrown off. Growing up in town surrounded by these things, and then makeing it a staple description for an evil race in his world clearly demonstraits how Tolkien felt about such things. His goblins, while natural to his world, act in a way that is against nature, making them unnatural things.
I also really enjoyed this exercise. Not only is it important for us to understand the purpose behind characters within literature, but it is just as crucial to listen to the perspectives of others to provide more insight. Going over the characters within Tolkien's The Hobbit will always be fun and interesting.
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