Smaug

Smaug () is a dragon and the main antagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, his treasure and the mountain he lives in being the goal of the quest. Powerful and fearsome, he invaded the Dwarf kingdom of Erebor 171 years prior to the events described in the novel. A group of thirteen dwarves mounted a quest to take the kingdom back, aided by the wizard Gandalf and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. In The Hobbit, Thorin describes Smaug as "a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm".

Critics have identified close parallels with what they presume are sources of Tolkien's inspiration, including the dragon in Beowulf, who is provoked by the stealing of a precious cup, and the speaking dragon Fafnir, who proposes a betrayal to Sigurd.

Gandalf realized that Smaug could pose a serious threat if used by Sauron. He therefore agreed to assist a party of Dwarves, led by Thrór's grandson Thorin Oakenshield, who set out to recapture the mountain and kill the dragon. Assuming that Smaug would not recognize the scent of a Hobbit, Gandalf recruited Bilbo Baggins to join the quest.

Upon reaching Erebor, the Dwarves sent Bilbo into Smaug's lair, and he was initially successful in stealing a beautiful golden cup as Smaug slept. Knowing the contents of the treasure hoard to the ounce, Smaug quickly realized the cup's absence upon awakening and searched for the thief on the Mountain. Unsuccessful, he returned to his hoard to lie in wait. The Dwarves sent Bilbo down the secret tunnel a second time. Smaug sensed Bilbo's presence immediately, even though Bilbo had rendered himself invisible with the One Ring, and accused the Hobbit (correctly) of trying to steal from him. During his discourse with the dragon, Bilbo noticed a small bare patch on Smaug's jewel-encrusted underbelly, and narrowly escaped. A thrush overheard Bilbo's account of the meeting, and learnt of the bare patch on Smaug's underside.

Still enraged, Smaug flew south to Lake-town and set about destroying it. The townsmen's arrows and spears proved useless against the dragon's armoured body. The thrush told Bard the Bowman of Smaug's one weak spot, a bare patch on the dragon's belly. With his last arrow, Bard killed Smaug by shooting into this place.

Analysis

Character

thumb|upright|[[Beowulf (hero)|Beowulf fights his dragon to the death in a 1908 illustration by Joseph Ratcliffe Skelton.]]

Tolkien made Smaug "more villain than monster", writes the author and biographer Lynnette Porter; he is "devious and clever, vain and greedy, overly confident and proud." The fantasy author Sandra Unerman called Smaug "one of the most individual dragons in fiction".

The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes the "bewilderment" that Smaug spreads: he is enchanted by gold and treasure, and those who come into contact with his powerful presence, what Tolkien describes as "the effect that dragon-talk has on the inexperienced", similarly become bewildered by greed.

The Beowulf dragon

From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was a professor of English Literature at Oxford University. He was a prominent scholar of the Old English poem Beowulf, on which he gave a lecture at the British Academy in 1936. He described the poem as one of his "most valued sources" for The Hobbit. Many of Smaug's attributes and behaviour in The Hobbit derive directly from the unnamed "old night-ravager" in Beowulf: great age; winged, fiery, and reptilian form; a stolen barrow within which he lies on his hoard; disturbance by a theft; and violent revenge on the lands all about, flying and attacking at night. Shippey identified several points of similarity between Smaug and Fafnir.

! style="width: 120px;" | Plot element

! style="width: 320px;" | Fáfnismál

! style="width: 320px;" | The Hobbit

!scope="row"| Killing the dragon

| Sigurd stabs Fafnir's belly

| Bard the Bowman shoots Smaug in the belly

!scope="row"| Riddling to the dragon

| Sigurd does not give his name, but replies in a riddle that he has no mother or father

| Bilbo does not give his name, but gives himself riddling names like "clue-finder", "web-cutter", "barrel-rider" Hiawatha shoots in vain, until he has only three arrows left. Mama the woodpecker sings to Hiawatha where Megissogwon's only weak point is, the tuft of hair on his head, just as Tolkien's thrush tells Bard where to shoot at Smaug.

Tolkien's choice of the name "Smaug"

In a letter published in The Observer in 1938, Tolkien wrote, "The dragon bears as name—a pseudonym—the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb smúgan, to squeeze through a hole: a low philological jest." Edward Pettit, interpreting Shippey's comments, draws an explicit link between Lacnunga and Smaug, writing, "Tolkien's knowledge of Old English charms and remedies is also shown by his use of Lacnunga's term smeah wyrm 'penetrating worm.' This contributed to his conception of Smaug in The Hobbit." Noting the dual meaning of smeag, Shippey writes, "All round it is appropriate that Smaug should have the most sophisticated intelligence in The Hobbit." He suggests that Tolkien may have chosen the Norse form of the name because his enemies were dwarves with names from the Norse Völuspá.

{| class="wikitable" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: none;"

! style="width: 180px;" | Old English

! style="width: 180px;" | Old Norse

! style="width: 180px;" | Plain meaning

! style="width: 180px;" | Alternatively<br/>(in Smaug's case)

| smugan (verb) || smjúga (verb)

|style="vertical-align:top;" | (in adjectival form) "crafty, subtle" While neither of these appeared in the original printing of The Hobbit due to cost constraints, both have been included in subsequent editions, particularly Conversation with Smaug. Death of Smaug was used for the cover of a UK paperback edition of The Hobbit.

Adaptations

Animated films

thumb|upright|A somewhat cat-like Smaug as seen in the 1977 [[Rankin/Bass animated film of The Hobbit

Richard Boone voiced Smaug in the 1977 animated film by Rankin/Bass. Austin Gilkeson calls the film's depiction of Smaug "distinctly feline" as he has cat-like eyes and whiskers "and a lush mane".

The Hobbit (film series)

thumb |left |Smaug as depicted in [[Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy, with voice and motion-capture by Benedict Cumberbatch]]

Smaug was voiced and interpreted with performance capture by Benedict Cumberbatch in Peter Jackson's three-part adaptation of The Hobbit. From the motion capture, Smaug's design was created with key frame animation. Weta Digital employed its proprietary "Tissue" software, which was honoured in 2013 with a "Scientific and Engineering Award" from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make the dragon as realistic as possible. In addition, Weta Digital supervisor Joe Letteri said in an interview for USA Today that they used classic European and Asian dragons as inspirations to create Smaug. The Telegraph stated that Cumberbatch had "the authority to make of Smaug a cunning nemesis".

In the first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the audience sees only his legs, wings, and tail, and his eye; the eye is showcased in the final scene of the film. Smaug is a topic of discussion among the White Council as Gandalf's reason to support Thorin Oakenshield's quest.

Smaug appears in the second film, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. In an interview with Joe Letteri, Smaug's design was changed to the wyvern-like form shown in the film after the crew saw how Benedict Cumberbatch performed Smaug while moving around on all four limbs.

In The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Smaug attacks Lake-town. He is killed by Bard with a black arrow and his body falls on the boat carrying the fleeing Master of Lake-town. It is later revealed that Smaug's attack on Erebor was all part of Sauron's design, meaning that Smaug and Sauron were in league with each other.

Smaug was considered one of the highlights of the second film of the series; several critics hailed him as cinema's greatest dragon. Critics also praised the visual effects company Weta Digital and Cumberbatch's vocal and motion-capture performance for giving Smaug a fully realized personality, "hiss[ing] out his words with cold-blooded vitriol".

Other

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In the 2003 video game release, Smaug, voiced by James Horan, appears as a non-player character, based closely on the book.--->

In the 2014 video game Lego The Hobbit, the portrayal departs more from the book; rather than ever more closely simulating the book's characters, the scholar Carol L. Robinson notes, the technology has allowed new fiction to be created.

Francis de Wolff voiced the red dragon in the long-lost 1968 BBC radio dramatization.

The Scottish character actor Nicol Williamson voiced Smaug in the 1974 Argo Records abridged reading of The Hobbit.

In popular culture

thumb|upright=1.1|An [[Air New Zealand aircraft in Smaug livery]]

In 2012, Smaug's wealth was estimated at $61 billion, placing him in the Forbes Fictional 15.

In 2014, Wellington International Airport installed a Wētā Workshop statue of Smaug in their check-in hall to promote The Hobbit film series.

Notes

References

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