The Hobbitis one of those amazing fantasy books that seems to have a plethora of wonderful creatures that permeate the world into a real and living place. From Beorn the wild bear man, to the dark and shady Necromancer, there are lots of beings fromThe Hobbitwho don’t make their way into theLord of the Rings, which takes place 60 years afterBilbo’s own quest for Erebor.
One of these such creatures, who appears in a spectacular scene of dramatic tension, and then is never seen again, is the Stone Giants. So what are these unusual creatures, and what happened to them? Frustratingly, Tolkien never gives a 100% straight answer to these questions, but there are several theories.
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As to where the giants came from, many believe that the idea for the stone giants came to Tolkien out of an old Irish legend.Stones are surprisingly importantin these legends, and according to the story, a giant in Scotland by the name of Ben Andonner and a giant in Ireland known as Finn McCool had exactly this sort of battle, in which they were launching boulders at one another across the Irish sea. Finn McCool launched so many stones that it created a bridge across the water, which Ben Adonner then crossed.
However, Finn then realized that the other giant was far bigger than him, and that if they met face to face, he would almost certainly be killed. He therefore disguised himself as a child, and slept in a small bed, so that when Ben Andonner found him, he believed him to be Finn McCools son. Seeing the size of the ‘child’, the giant then feared for how big the father must be, and fled back to Scotland, destroying the rest of the bridge as he went so that he couldn’t be pursued. The remaining section that was left is known to this day as a famous Irish landmark called the Giant’s Causeway.
Where the stone giants began in Middle Earth is trickier to place, but it has been suggested that they were possibly created by Melkor, the evil dark lord who came into power before Sauron, in the earlier ages of the world. This definitely fits in with their portrayal with Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, in whichBilbo, Gandalf and the dwarvesare caught in the middle of a deadly battle between two giants, who seem intent on beating each other to death. They are hurling stones at one another, and wrestling in time with the crack of thunder, and they fight with such vehemence that Bilbo and his companions are almost killed in the fray, squashed between one of the giants legs and a wall.
However, in the book, the giant’s encounter is far more lighthearted and playful than this. They were ‘hurling rocks at one another for a game’ and catching them’ and the dwarves ‘could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides.’ Without the vicious and aggressive intentions behind these actions, it seems unlikely that they were deviant servants of Melkor.
As for what actually happened to the giants in the interim years beforeFrodo and Sam undertake their questto destroy the Ring of Power, and why they are not seen or mentioned again in the Lord of the Rings, there are also two theories. If the audience is to pay attention to the film version, and believe the stone giants to be cruel and wrathful, it is plausible that the giants may in fact battle so much that they wipe each other out.
In the films, one of the giants can be seen being hit by a rock so hard that its head is literally removed from its shoulders and rolls away down the mountain. Again, this doesn’t apply so well to the book version, where the rock-throwing is a game. Perhaps though, the game got out of hand, and the giants became rougher over the years, and they met the same violent end, even if it started off more accidental.
The second theory is that they simply became redundant, and so passed out of the world naturally in their own time, after disappearing off to some remote corner of it, never to be seen again. This would follow patterns of many of the other creatures, likeShelob the spider demonwho simply crawls away after she is stabbed by Sam, and like the Entwives, who went roaming long ago and were never found by the Ents, who have been searching for them for many long years. Even thehobbits are thought to eventually be lost from the worldcompletely.
The giants, like so many other magical beings in the world may simply have faded out of existence over time. At any rate, they are not around by the time that Sauron has risen to power, which is in many ways a shame, because if they could have become allies, they would have been great guardians of Minas Tirith, and may have been able to block the boulders that were launched at the city by the orcs, thuspreventing the damage and the need to rebuild it.
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