"Descendant of Rats"

[petmoosie]

Emily is using this insult (that Thorin threw at Bilbo) liberally, especially with her toy animals. 

Comments

But...but...

[metageek.livejournal.com]

In the real world, "descendant of rats" pretty much equates to "mammal" (for some approximate value of "rat"). Not much of an insult. :-)

I suppose that's not true in Middle-Earth, though. Dwarves were created by one of the Vala (Illuvatar then made them Real); Elves and Men were created by Illuvatar. We never do find out where hobbits came from; maybe they did evolve naturally. If so, though, they did it pretty quickly; I'm pretty sure Middle-Earth is less than 10,000 years old as of The Hobbit.

Re: But...but...

[petmoosie.livejournal.com]

I think Emily means "son or daughter of rats". We haven't gone into evolution so much with her. Although we have talked about rock formation. See today's post for the continuing adventures of reading "The Hobbit".