The Hobbit is the story of a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who lives in a place called the Shire. One day, Bilbo meets an old friend, Gandalf the wizard. Later that night Gandalf brings 14 dwarves, whose names are "Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and Thorin" and they attempt to convince Bilbo to go with them in the function of a burglar to help them get their treasure back from a dragon who had taken it from them. After being attacked by orcs the company is forced to detour to Rivendell (one of the last elven houses on the continent) to recuperate and get help with a coded map of their destination, the mountain Arabor. As the group continues on from Rivendell and begins to climb the Misty Mountains, the mountain range that divides the continent in half, they stop in a cave and are captured by goblins and taken deep into their tunnels. The dwarves are again rescued by Gandalf but in their flight from the goblins they drop Bilbo who hits his head on a rock and falls unconscious and the dwarves accidentally leave him behind. Bilbo finds a cavern in which a creature, Gollum, lives and he finds a magic ring that causes the wearer to turn invisible. Bilbo then uses the ring to avoid capture and escape the goblins. The group is beset by many problems in the forest of Mirkwood but eventually they make it out and arrive at Arabor. Smaug, the dragon, still lives in the mountain guarding his treasure, so they eventually find a back door into the mountain and send Bilbo to sneak in and bring back a piece of treasure. Smaug notices when Bilbo takes a golden jug though, and sends Bilbo scurrying back out the back door with a burned bum. When Smaug flies out to burn down a nearby town he is killed and the dwarves claim his treasure. Many other groups in the book also want the treasure and eventually there is a battle in front of the mountain in which Thorin is killed. Bilbo survives the battle and is able to return home to the Shire with a bit of treasure.
Bilbo
undergoes a metamorphosis throughout the book from a reluctant adventurer to a
daring burglar. In the beginning of the book Bilbo could not think of doing
anything more adventurous than crossing the Water (a river that runs through
the middle of the Shire) and by the end he is burglarizing a dragons lair.
There is one part in the book where Bilbo wishes to end a siege on the dwarves'
mountain so he takes their most prized possession, the Arkenstone that belonged
to Thorin's father. Bilbo steals the gem and takes it to the besiegers who uses
it as a bargaining chip to get Thorin to negotiate. Even though Bilbo learns to
love adventure he is a hobbit, who loves home most of all and there are
numerous passages where he just expresses his wish to be home "Bother
burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was at home in my nice hole by
the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!". Since Bilbo Baggins is
a hobbit he is very short individual, with large hairy feet that negate his
need to wear shoes. The dwarves he go adventuring with hold him in very high
regard as a burglar after he escapes the goblin's tunnels "It is a fact
that Bilbo's reputation went up a very great deal with the dwarves after this.
If they had still doubted he was really a first class burglar, they doubted no
longer."
The
theme of the Hobbit is that there can
be the most potential in the most remarkable of people. In the book, Bilbo is tiny, about 3.5' tall,
yet he becomes a master burglar who escapes from the most dangerous of
situations. The hobbits play an important role in all of the Lord of the Rings books, as if Mr.
Tolkien wished to reinforce this idea for good measure. I think that J.R.R
Tolkien might have imposed that as one of the themes because he was a rather
short individual in real life, just 5' 5" and wanted to prove to the world
that what matters most is your mind. Stephen Hawking is an example of this idea
as well, because even though he is a paraplegic he still has written many books
and greatly contributed to the field of astrophysics. Gandalf reinforces this
as well by saying in the book "Mr. Baggins has more to him than you can
guess."
The Hobbit's
narrator explains the book in a sort of whimsical tone and this passage from
the book illustrates that perfectly "In a hole in the ground there lived a
hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the end of worms and an oozy
smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to
eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." The Hobbit was written as a children's book
and so it carries a much brighter tone than the rest of the Lord of the Rings series. That tone can
make the darkest passages of the book grate that much more strongly, with huge amounts of contrast between the beginning of the book, where they are
setting out on a happy adventure, and the chapter where Bilbo meets Gollum,
with him lost in the pitch black, desperately riddling with a creature that
wishes to eat him.
This
book is one of my favorite stories of all time and it has spawned an entire
universe of books, literature, and movies based off of it. I would recommend this
book to anyone who can read, and I would then attempt to persuade them to read
the rest of the Lord of the Rings
books after that. The Hobbit is the
book that introduced Middle Earth to the world, and me
to my favorite series of all time.
I got the other picture from here.
