The Great Goblin was the chief of the goblins who lived in the tunnels under the Misty Mountains near the High Pass. Tolkien describes him as a tremendous goblin with a huge head, sitting on a flat stone in a great cavern lit by a red fire.1
When Thorin's company sheltered from a storm in a cave on the High Pass, a crack opened in the back of it in the night, and the goblins seized the Dwarves and Bilbo and their ponies and dragged them down to their chief. The Great Goblin would not believe Thorin's account of their journey. When he saw the sword Thorin carried, he knew it at once as Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver, which his people called Biter and hated, and in his fury he ordered the prisoners killed.1
Before they could be, Gandalf put out the fire with a flash of light, and in the dark he ran the Great Goblin through with his own sword, Glamdring, the Foe-hammer, which the goblins called Beater. The company fled down the tunnels with the goblins in pursuit.1
His death was not forgotten. It was one of the causes of the goblins' great muster that came to the Lonely Mountain, under Bolg of the North, in the Battle of Five Armies.2
Sources
Citations name the chapter rather than the page, so they work in any edition. The colour of each note shows what kind of source it is.
- Published story The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as Tolkien published them.
- Published story The Hobbit, ch. 4, “Over Hill and Under Hill”
- Published story The Hobbit, ch. 17, “The Clouds Burst”