One piece of meta I’ve really wanted to write is that Thorin may actually be an “odd” dwarf in much the same way that Bilbo is an odd hobbit, and for many of the same reasons.
I mean, look at the other dwarves. They’re so boisterous and out there and loud and uncomplicated. Look at Dain, Thorin’s closest equal in rank as well as family. Look at Gimli. Heck, look at any member of the family. Even the ones who are slightly less craggy and “dwarvish” like Fili and Kili are uncomplicated, straightforward, and not really given to such melancholy or solemnity. Even more “rational” dwarves like Balin are stubborn against outsiders and don’t really have this air of tragedy about them. You never really see a “tragic” dwarf. They experience tragedy, and they weep long and loud and unashamed, but they don’t carry their grief with them.
I think Thorin may have been changed by Erebor’s fall and by his responsibilities before and after in a very profound way. Balin was old enough to be his own person, to maybe have a more realistic view of Erebor as just a place, a wonderful place, but still not any more worthy than the Blue Mountains as far as a good life. Thorin was young enough to idealize it, to this day.
Thorin was young when he was thrust into the world on the most difficult of terms. He is experienced in the world of Men and experienced with the treachery of elves. He lost so much of his family. He has no brothers to turn to, or father figures like the other dwarves do. He is very self contained.
So I guess I’m wondering… to the other dwarves, is Thorin ‘odd’? He fights well, but does he glory in fighting the way Dwalin does? It seems to me he approaches battle with a grim sort of fatalism. He shares quiet moments with his kin, even triumphant moments, but he has no one he really casually confides in. He has Dwalin, I don’t want to take that away, but in a moment of peak stress Dwalin still refers to Thorin as his king, when in my opinion Thorin most needed a friend and an equal at that point, someone who allowed him to step down from the figurative dais and be “Thorin Oakenshield”, when being king was destroying him on every level.
Bilbo is considered odd because of his interest in the outside world. He goes away, and is changed by it. I’ve always believed that Thorin and Bilbo have almost all the same qualities, they just approach them from completely opposite directions due to the circumstances of their lives. Matters of home, of adventure, of the expectations of society on them are both huge parts of them, but Bilbo has what Thorin does not and vice versa in almost every respect on those points. Bilbo is odd in his drive to leave home, Thorin is odd in his single-minded drive to return home, even to other dwarves. In short, Bilbo is a bit of a wild hobbit by the end. Thorin is a bit of a quiet dwarf, intense in totally different ways than his kin. I feel like his kin would notice this, they would know this about him, hence Balin’s attempt to reassure him in Bag End about Ered Luin. Or his assertion of Thorin’s bravery at Azanulbizar. Or the fact they can’t really reach him in the dragon sickness, or really understand how to be a “true friend” to him.
I don’t know, I don’t know if we have enough material to go on, as such. But it’s just this lingering sense I have. That maybe to Bilbo, at least at first, he doesn’t pick up on the fact that Thorin is perhaps as out of place amongst his own people, though he still loves them, as Bilbo is amongst hobbits once he comes home.
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