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Analysis of Tolkien’s The Hobbit

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 18, 2021 • ( 0 )

The origin of The Hobbit (1937) is well known. One day in the late 1920s, Tolkien was grading essays when he came across a blank page and absently wrote the sentence “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” In a letter to W. H. Auden more than 25 years later, he wrote, “I did nothing about it, for a long time, and for some years I got no further than the production of Thror’s Map” ( Letters 215). In the early 1930s, the story of the hobbit became one that he shared with his three sons during what he called their “winter reads.” By 1932, Tolkien had completed a manuscript that he shared with his Oxford friends, but most of those scholars saw the book as merely a children’s story. In 1936, Tolkien’s student Elaine Griffiths showed the manuscript to Susan Dagnall of George Allen & Unwin, who brought it to the attention of Stanley Unwin. Unwin asked his 10-year-old son, Rayner Unwin, to read it, and after Rayner gave it a positive review, Stanley published the book in 1937, with a cover designed by Tolkien himself and decorated with Old English runes. A first edition of 1,500 sold out quickly, and the book was published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin early in 1938. When

Unwin asked for a sequel to The Hobbit but showed no interest in The Silmarillion , Tolkien began work on The Lord of the Rings . In order to make The Hobbit fit more coherently as a “prequel” to the trilogy, Tolkien revised the chapter on Gollum (“Riddles in the Dark”), changing the part played by the ring, so that in the revised version, Gollum blames Bilbo for what he sees as the theft of his ring and curses Bilbo forever. It was this revised chapter that was published in the second edition of The Hobbit in 1951.

Tolkien later worked on another revision of The Hobbit, in which he tried to alter the narrative voice, the avuncular tone of which he, and a number of readers, had come to see as occasionally condescending and intrusive. Certain passages are clearly imagined as narrated by an older figure addressing children; for example, in the chapter “Barrels Out of Bond,” in which Bilbo comes up with the plan of how to save the dwarves, the narrator makes these comments:

It was just at this moment that Bilbo suddenly discovered the weak point in his plan. Most likely you saw it some time ago and have been laughing at him; but I don’t suppose you would have done half so well yourselves in his place. ( Hobbit 177)

This is undoubtedly the kind of passage Tolkien had in mind when he wrote to Auden that the novel “was unhappily really meant, as far as I was conscious, as a ‘children’s story’, and as I had not learned sense then, and my children were not quite old enough to correct me, it has some of the sillinesses of manner caught unthinkingly from the kind of stuff I had had served to me” ( Letters 215). However, when Tolkien sought to revise the book, he was discouraged from doing so by readers who thought that it would simply not be The Hobbit without that narrator.

The second edition, with the revised Gollum chapter, appeared in 1951, and subsequent editions followed in 1966 (to compete with a pirated edition that had been released in the United States by Ace Books), 1978, and 1995. At this point, The Hobbit has sold more than 100 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 different languages, making it not only one of Tolkien’s most popular works, but one of the most popular children’s books of all time. Citations of the text in the following commentary are to the second edition of the text as revised in 1966. An annotated version of the text edited by Douglas Anderson appeared in 1988 and was revised and reprinted in 2002. A two-part film version of the book produced by Peter Jackson (director of The Lord of the Rings ) is projected to appear by 2012, an event that will probably spark a new edition and renewed interest in the book.

The Hobbit may be considered in a number of different ways. It is, as Tolkien intended, a fairy story for children, and Bilbo, as a small person leaving home for the larger world, is in some ways a typical fairy-tale hero. (Bilbo is, however, 50 years old, which is certainly atypical for such a hero.) His career conforms to the conventional structures of folktales and mythic archetypes of the hero as outlined by scholars such as Vladimir Propp and Joseph Campbell, and particularly to the patterns of narrative romance as outlined by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism . The conventional patterns in the novel should not be surprising, since Tolkien was drawing on traditional Old Norse and Old English literature (including, in particular, stories of the dragon slayers Sigurd and Beowulf), as well as medieval chivalric romance as the sources for his narrative. The basic form of the medieval romance involves an initiation (Bilbo’s adventure with the trolls), a quest (Bilbo’s journey to the Lonely Mountain to find the dragon’s treasure), a descent into an underworld (Gollum’s cave, the elven king’s castle, and the dragon’s lair), and a return. More specifically, Bilbo’s adventure recalls romances concerned with the quest for the Grail. Such romances involve a wasteland; the restoration of a king; and a protagonist who, like Bilbo, asks questions.

The novel also can be seen as a bildungsroman, a “novel of education” or “formation novel” that traces the development of a young person from childhood or adolescence into maturity in a kind of quest for identity, in the manner of Dickens’s Great Expectations , Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , or Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship . Of course, Bilbo is only young in experience, but he, too, must mature; in fact, many medieval romances, including Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, the original Grail romance, are stories of a maturing hero on a quest for identity.

Given The Hobbit ’s generic affinity with fairy tales, folktales, myth, romance, and bildungsroman, it seems natural to look at the book in terms of what the psychologist Carl Jung called archetypes; Jung looked particularly at myths, romances, and folktales for examples of archetypes, or universal symbols. The application of Jungian principles of maturation and psychological development to the character of Bilbo began with Dorothy Matthews’s article “The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins” in 1974, and it was developed at greater length in William H. Green’s book-length commentary The Hobbit: A Journey into Maturity in 1995. Both of these studies are referenced in the commentary below.

Chapter 1: “An Unexpected Party”

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit, living in a quite luxurious hole in the ground under the Hill in the village of Hobbiton in the Shire. hobbits, the narrator tells us, are little people, shorter than dwarves, who love to eat and smoke pipes, and have large, hairy feet on which they wear no shoes. They enjoy the comforts of home and tend to be suspicious of anyone engaging in unusual behavior, such as having adventures. Bilbo’s father was a very respectable and ordinary hobbit, but his mother, Belladonna Took, daughter of the Old Took, came from a family that was more irregular by hobbit standards, since some of its members had occasionally had adventures in times past. One of Bilbo’s more distant ancestors, Bullroarer Took, had won the Battle of the Green Fields by riding a horse and cutting off the head of a goblin. Bilbo, however, has succeeded in suppressing this Took side of his nature for 50 years.

One May morning, while Bilbo is enjoying a pipe outside his front door, he greets a stranger who is passing by and smokes with him for a brief time. The stranger reveals himself to be Gandalf the Grey, a powerful wizard and former friend of Bilbo’s mother and grandfather, the Old Took. Bilbo had known Gandalf as a child, and he remembers the fireworks shows the wizard had put on. Gandalf tells Bilbo he is looking for someone to take part in an adventure, but Bilbo wants nothing to do with it, though he does invite Gandalf to tea the next day. When Bilbo goes into his house, Gandalf makes a mark on the door with his staff.

The next morning, when a knock comes on his door, Bilbo assumes Gandalf has come to tea. But the visitor turns out to be a dwarf named Dwalin, who enters his house and sits down to tea. Soon after, another dwarf, Balin, arrives and joins the first. He is followed soon after by Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and finally the dwarves’ leader, Thorin Oakenshield, accompanied by Gandalf himself. At first, Bilbo is kept quite busy as the host, rushing to find food and drink for all of his unexpected guests. But he is also fascinated by the songs the dwarves sing about hidden gold, guarded by a dragon under a faraway mountain.

Finally, Thorin begins to address the company. He speaks of departing the next morning on a dangerous journey from which some may not return, and he refers to Bilbo as a “fellow conspirator.” This shocks Bilbo so much that he screams and leaves the room. The dwarves complain to Gandalf that Bilbo does not seem to be the right kind of person for their adventure, but Gandalf assures them that he is quite fierce. Bilbo, listening from the other room, yields to the Took side of his nature and reenters the room, insisting that, while he is sure they have all come to the wrong house, he is prepared to do whatever it is they want from him.

Gandalf reveals that it was he who recommended Bilbo as a burglar and explains to the dwarves that Bilbo is his choice, reminding them that if they decide not to bring Bilbo, there will be 13 of them, an unlucky number. He then shows them all an old map, obtained, he says, from Thorin’s father, whom Gandalf had met, he says, in the dungeons of the Necromancer. By then the old dwarf was nearly mad, and it has taken Gandalf some time to track Thorin down. Thorin vows to kill the Necromancer, but Gandalf insists that such a task is beyond the strength of all living dwarves together.

The map reveals the Lonely Mountain, which had been Thorin’s home before the dragon Smaug laid waste to the lands around it, including the town of Dale, where men had lived who were friendly to the dwarves. Smaug occupied the Lonely Mountain and killed all the dwarves within, stealing their vast treasure for himself. Thorin had been away from the mountain at the time, and his grandfather and father had escaped, apparently through a secret door. Gandalf’s map reveals the door’s location, and Bilbo’s job will be to find his way into the dragon’s lair through that door. Gandalf also gives Thorin a key, handed down from Thror, Thorin’s grandfather. The long trek to the mountain, including a journey through the dark and dangerous forest of Mirkwood, will be the group’s business for the next several weeks.

As Bilbo, Gandalf, and all the dwarves retire for the night, Bilbo wonders what he has gotten himself into while he falls asleep listening to Thorin singing in the next room.

Chapters 2–3: Trolls

In chapter 2 (“Roast Mutton”), when Bilbo awakens the next morning, the dwarves have gone, and as he cleans up the mess, he is relieved not to have to go on the adventure, though also somewhat insulted that they have left without him. But Gandalf appears and shows Bilbo the note that Thorin and Company have left on his mantelpiece, agreeing to pay him one-fourteenth share of the treasure and all traveling expenses, and directing him to meet them at the Green Dragon at exactly 11 a.m. Bilbo is forced to rush out the door without his hat or walking stick, and he realizes that he has forgotten his pocket handkerchief but has no time to turn back. He arrives at the Green Dragon just in time, borrows a hood from Dwalin, mounts a pony Thorin has provided for him, and sets off eastward with the dwarves. Soon they are joined by Gandalf, who has brought Bilbo a number of pocket handkerchiefs and his pipe.

At first, the journey is pleasant as the group rides through familiar hobbit lands. But by the time they get into the sparsely populated Lone-lands near the end of May, Bilbo begins to grow tired of the journey and wishes he was back in his warm hobbit hole. One night, after riding through a downpour, the group must camp for the night and have supper; however, they realize that Gandalf has left them, and they are unable to start a fire. One of the ponies bolts and is nearly swept away by a river along with Fili and Kili before the two young dwarves can rescue him. As it is, the food the pony was carrying is carried off by the river, leaving the company cold, hungry, and wet.

Just then, they catch sight of a fire in the distance. The dwarves decide that Bilbo, as their designated burglar, should go and investigate. As Bilbo creeps close to the clearing, he finds that there are three trolls—Bert, Tom, and William—sitting around the fire, roasting mutton. Not sure what is expected of him, Bilbo decides to try out his new profession as burglar and pick the pocket of one of the trolls. As it turns out, trolls’ purses have a life of their own, and when Bilbo snatches one from William’s pocket, it cries out, and Bilbo is caught. As they hold him, the trolls begin to argue about whether something as small as Bilbo is worth eating, and they demand to know whether there are any others around. The terrified Bilbo first says, “Yes, lots,” but he then corrects himself, saying, “No, none at all.”

As the trolls begin to fight one another, the battered Bilbo is able to crawl outside the circle of firelight. Just then, however, Balin appears; having heard nothing from Bilbo, the dwarves have decided to investigate. The trolls, realizing that Bilbo had meant there were no more hobbits about, but lots of dwarves, pop Balin into a sack and lie in wait for the other dwarves. One by one, all of the dwarves are captured in this way, until at last Thorin appears. Bilbo, hiding behind a tree, is able to warn Thorin of the trolls, and he puts up a terrific fight, but eventually he, too, is captured and bagged, while Bilbo hides in the top of a bush.

At that point, Gandalf returns, though no one sees him. The trolls begin to argue about how to kill the dwarves and how to prepare them for eating, and Gandalf, disguising his voice to imitate the trolls themselves, keeps the three of them arguing and fighting one another until the dawn breaks. At that point, the trolls turn to stone, for all trolls must be hidden underground before sunrise or they revert to the stone from which they were made.

Gandalf and Bilbo free the dwarves and, with the help of a key Bilbo has found on the ground, they are able to search the trolls’ underground hideout, where they find food as well as some pots of gold coins. Gandalf and Thorin appropriate two well-made swords belonging to some of the trolls’ victims, while Bilbo finds a knife in a leather sheath that he can use as a short sword. After a sound sleep, the company loads their ponies with the new provisions and buries the gold where they hope to find it again on the way back. As they start off, Gandalf explains that he had been scouting out the road ahead, and he had heard from the elves that a trio of trolls was active along the road, which is why he was able to hurry back to save them.

The company continues its trek eastward in chapter 3 (“A Short Rest”), approaching what Gandalf tells them is the edge of the Wild. The weather is better, but the dwarves refrain from the singing they had engaged in earlier in the trip, as danger seems to be all around them. After crossing a river, they come within sight of the distant Misty Mountains. Bilbo mistakes the first mountain for the Lonely Mountain, goal of their quest, but Balin disillusions him, saying they still have a long way to go. Bilbo once again longs for home.

Their goal for the night, however, is Rivendell, home of Elrond and the Last Homely House west of the mountains, where they can rest. Gandalf leads them along a difficult road marked by white stones, until at last they reach the Valley of Rivendell. Here their cares seem lifted from them, and the teasing songs of elves greet them from the woods around them as they descend to the valley. These elves invite them to supper, but the company wants to move on to Elrond’s house. Bilbo has always liked elves and has loved to listen to their songs. The dwarves are traditionally suspicious of elves but suppress their distaste for their company in order to gain much-needed rest.

Elrond, a descendant of elves and heroes of ancient days, proves to be a generous host, and the company stays with him for two weeks. Bilbo eats his fill of cakes and enjoys the elves’ tales and songs so much that he wishes he could stay longer in Rivendell, preferring it even to going back to his own home. But eventually the time comes for the company to resume its journey. Before they leave, Elrond is able to read the inscriptions on the swords that Gandalf and Thorin have brought from the trolls’ hoard. He informs them that both swords were forged by the elves of ancient Gondolin before that city was destroyed in the “goblin wars.” Thorin’s sword is named Orcrist (“Goblin Cleaver”), while Gandalf’s is called Glamdring (“Foehammer”) and was worn by the high king of Gondolin himself.

Elrond also examines their map, and he is surprised to find it inscribed with Moon-letters— runes that may only be seen by the light of the same moon under which they were written. These runes tell how to find the secret door into the Lonely Mountain: “Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks . . . and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole” (62). Thorin explains that Durin’s Day (named for the father of the dwarvish race) is the dwarves’ New Year—the first day of the last moon of autumn. Thorin also reveals that he is himself the heir of Durin.

The next day is Midsummer’s Day, and the company leaves Rivendell refreshed and ready to ride toward the Misty Mountains.

Chapters 4–7: Goblins and Wolves

In chapter 4 (“Over Hill and Under Hill”), the company makes its way up into the mountains, staying on the right path only through Gandalf’s leadership. The dwarves are hopeful that they can reach the Lonely Mountain by Durin’s Day, but Gandalf, who has seen much of these wild regions, is much more cautious and aware of the dangers of their road. The weather is turning colder, and one night, during a terrible thunderstorm, the group is forced to seek shelter. Fili and Kili, the younger dwarves, are sent ahead to find some protected place, and they return with the news that they have found a dry cave large enough to shelter in overnight with the ponies.

Here all the dwarves fall asleep, as does Gandalf. But Bilbo has trouble sleeping and has a nightmare in which a large crack opens in the cave. He awakens to find that the dream is true—all of the company’s ponies have been led through a large crack and from it have issued numerous large goblins. He lets out a cry just in time to warn Gandalf, who disappears in a flash of light and smoke, striking several goblins dead as he does so. But the others grab Bilbo and the dwarves and drive them through the crack into the depths of the mountain, spurring them on with whips and singing that they are to be brought “down to goblin-town.”

They arrive in a great fire-lit cavern, where they are brought before the Great Goblin, who accuses Thorin of spying on them and of being a friend of elves. When the Great Goblin recognizes Thorin’s sword as Orcrist, a legendary goblin-slaying sword that the goblins call “Biter,” he is enraged and rushes at Thorin. Just then the cavern is plunged into darkness, and the shining blade of Glamdring (which the goblins call “Beater”) flashes out, killing the Great Goblin on the spot.

Gandalf’s voice then commands them to “follow me quick,” and Bilbo and the dwarves rush to escape. Gandalf leads them farther and farther into the mountain, and the dwarves take turns carrying Bilbo, who is unable to keep up on his own. With the goblins in hot pursuit, Gandalf and Thorin turn a corner and unsheathe their swords, waiting for the goblins to come. The pursuers are surprised by Beater and Biter, and many are slaughtered before they retreat. Again the dwarves flee, with the goblins now pursuing more stealthily. Finally, they creep up behind Dori while he is carrying Bilbo and seize the dwarf from behind. Bilbo tumbles off into the darkness, where he strikes his head on a rock and passes out.

When Bilbo comes to at the beginning of chapter 5 (“Riddles in the Dark”), he finds himself alone in the darkness and begins groping his way along on all fours. His hand comes across a metal ring, which he absentmindedly puts into his pocket. Again he wishes he were back home, cooking bacon and eggs, and, finding his pipe and tobacco, he thinks about having a smoke but can find no matches. In looking for them, however, he does feel his short sword, which he draws. When it begins to glow, he knows that it, too, is an elvish blade from Gondolin, and with determination he decides to move on, looking for a way out. On he goes through the dark tunnels and deeper into the mountain until he splashes into an underground pool or lake, Not knowing how deep it is or what is in it and being unable to swim, Bilbo hesitates, wondering what to do next.

The water turns out to be the home of a slimy creature called Gollum, who lives on an island and navigates the lake in a small boat. Gollum has large bright eyes that see in the dark, and he has lived alone under the mountain for untold years, surviving on fish and goblin meat. He speaks to himself in a hissing language and calls himself “Precious.” He approaches Bilbo in his boat, wondering what he is and if he will be good to eat. Soon he engages Bilbo in a riddle contest, declaring that if Bilbo wins, he will show the hobbit the way out of the caverns, but if Gollum wins, he will eat Bilbo for dinner.

The riddle contest goes back and forth for some time: In fear for his life, Bilbo is distracted and has difficulty focusing on Gollum’s riddles, while Gollum has a hard time remembering details concerning the outside world, having lived in the gloom of the cave for centuries. Finally, Bilbo, desperately trying to think of a riddle to stump Gollum, puts his hand in his pocket and wonders aloud, “What have I got in my pocket?” Interpreting this as Bilbo’s riddle, Gollum protests that it is unfair and that he must be allowed three guesses. Believing he has the game won, Bilbo asserts that this is indeed his riddle, but he allows Gollum the three guesses. Gollum fails to answer correctly, and Bilbo demands that he keep his word and show him the way out.

Gollum says that before leading Bilbo out of the cave, he must pick up something he needs for the journey, and he goes to his island to look for it. But soon, he begins to panic, crying out that he has lost what he needs, which he calls his “precious” and his “birthday present.” Bilbo asks what he has lost, and Gollum, now suspicious, demands to know what Bilbo does, in fact, have in his pocket. Gollum realizes that Bilbo has his ring, and Bilbo realizes that the ring is what Gollum is seeking. As Gollum rushes to attack him, Bilbo accidentally slips his finger into the ring, and Gollum dashes past him without seeing him. This confuses Bilbo until, following the creature, he learns from Gollum’s incessant whining monologue that the ring makes its wearer invisible.

Now Gollum, believing that Bilbo has lied to him about knowing the way out, makes a dash for the exit in hope of heading off Bilbo and getting his “birthday present” back. The invisible Bilbo follows quietly behind, hoping that Gollum will lead him out. They reach the entry to a passage that Gollum says leads to the exit, but he can smell goblins down the passage and, unprotected by the ring, is afraid to enter. But as he turns, it is clear that he has caught Bilbo’s scent and knows he is near. Now Gollum blocks the passage, poised to attack Bilbo if he can determine just where he is. Bilbo, his sword drawn, is tempted to kill the creature, but a moment of pity stops him. The fight is not fair, he decides, since Gollum is unarmed and Bilbo is invisible, so instead of murder, he opts to leap over Gollum into the passageway. He does this successfully, racing down the passage with Gollum fearing to follow and crying out impotently after him that he “hates Baggins forever.”

Now Bilbo, no longer wearing the ring, emerges into a large, open area, where a great stone door stands ajar. But the area is filled with armed goblins, who start toward him, and he slips on the ring once more. In the confusion, the invisible Bilbo is able to make his way to the door, which is open just enough for him to squeeze through. But the goblins see a shadow in the doorway and come after him, just as he gets stuck in the door, caught by his brass buttons. With one last lurch, he squeezes through, leaving his buttons behind, to the puzzlement of the goblins.

As Bilbo makes his way from the cave at the beginning of chapter 6 (“Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire”), he finds himself alone again and without any notion of where he is or where his friends are. He realizes, looking back, that he has come out on the other side of the Misty Mountains and is at the edge of the Land Beyond. But he also recognizes that his friends are probably still in the caverns under the mountains, prisoners of the goblins. After some soul-searching, he resolves that he must return to the caves and help his friends if he can. But just as he begins making his way back, he hears voices and discovers it is the dwarves and Gandalf discussing whether to go back to look for him. While some of the dwarves are of the opinion that Bilbo has been more trouble than he has been worth so far, Gandalf insists that Bilbo will be a valuable member of the company, and he will not go on without him. Bilbo, wearing the ring, sneaks past Balin, who is standing guard, and appears in the circle, surprising everyone. When he tells them how he managed to escape (keeping to himself the part about the magic ring), he gains the dwarves’ grudging respect.

Gandalf convinces the group that they must set off quickly, since the goblins will be after them to avenge their lost leader. Having come out of the mountains far to the north of their road, they must travel south, and as they do, Bilbo complains of hunger—none of them has eaten for several days, since their ponies have been lost and eaten by the goblins. Now they move ahead, sliding down a rocky slope, until evening falls, when they hear the howling of a pack of wild wolves, called wargs.

Gandalf instructs the company to climb trees, and he and the dwarves immediately do so, though Bilbo needs the help of Dori to get into one of the trees just in time as hundreds of wargs enter the clearing. Gandalf, who understands the language of the wolves, learns that they have come to this clearing to meet with the goblins of the mountains, with whom they have planned a joint raid on the human settlers who have been coming into the region from the south. The goblins are late, however, and Gandalf realizes it is because of the confusion surrounding the death of the Great Goblin and the company’s own escape from the caverns.

The wargs have Bilbo and his friends trapped in the trees, but Gandalf begins to sow confusion among them by tossing fiery acorns at them, setting many of them afire. At that point, the goblins arrive, and the goblins decide to use the fires Gandalf has started against him. They pile fern and brushwood around the trees in which the dwarves are perched, and set fire to the heaps. As the fire spreads to the trees, the goblins taunt the dwarves, asking why the little birds do not fly away. Gandalf climbs to the top of his tree, ready for one final stand, when suddenly he is snatched up in the talons of a great eagle. This is the lord of the eagles, who has noticed the smoke and fire in the woods and who is a natural enemy of the wargs and goblins. Other great eagles snatch up the dwarves, and Bilbo holds on to Dori’s feet and is flown to safety in the eagles’ eyrie.

Gandalf is known to the lord of the eagles and, in fact, had once helped him when he was wounded. Now Gandalf asks that the eagles fly the company far away, across the plains. The eagles cannot fly too close to the homes of men or they will be suspected of trying to steal sheep and be shot with arrows, but the lord of the eagles promises to take the company as far as they can. In the meantime, they bring rabbits, hares, and small sheep for the company to feast on, and after a good meal, they all rest in the eyrie for the night. Bilbo dreams he is back in his home, but that he has lost something important.

Chapter 7 (“Queer Lodgings”) begins the next morning: Bilbo travels on the back of a great bird as 15 eagles fly the travelers to a large rock, the Carrock, standing upon the plain to the south. Here Gandalf tells the company that it is nearly time for him to leave them, since he had only intended to travel with them until they had crossed the Misty Mountains. But he says that they are near the house of Beorn, a skin-changer who routinely changes himself into a great bear, and if they approach him cautiously and do not anger him, Beorn will be able to help them. Gandalf indicates that he and Bilbo will go first to meet the reclusive Beorn in his large wooden house, and the others should follow two by two at five-minute intervals.

Beorn, a huge man with black hair and beard, is initially not particularly welcoming, but when Gandalf explains that they have been beset by goblins and wargs, he invites them in to tell their story. Gandalf tells the tale in such a way that the constant interruptions as the dwarves keep arriving creates a great deal of suspense, and Beorn is less put out by the arrival of so many guests than he is eager to hear the end of the story. Beorn is sympathetic to the company once he finds that they have killed the Great Goblin, and he is angered by the treacherous alliance of the wargs and goblins. He then invites the travelers to stay for supper, where they are waited on by Beorn’s friendly horses and other animals, and entertained by Beorn’s tales of the forest of Mirkwood, which they must pass through to get to the Lonely Mountain. As Bilbo and the dwarves retire for the evening, Gandalf tells them that, for their own protection, they should not venture out of the house during the night. During the night, Bilbo hears the sound of growling and scratching at the door outside the house.

The next morning, Bilbo awakens to a fine breakfast, but neither Gandalf nor Beorn is in the house. Gandalf returns by evening and tells the company that he had gone out in the morning and seen the tracks of many bears outside the house and had followed the tracks back toward the clearing where the travelers had encountered the wargs and goblins a few nights earlier. When Beorn returns the following morning, he is in high spirits and reveals that he had confirmed Gandalf’s story about the death of the Great Goblin; he has also brought back the head of a goblin and the skin of a warg that he killed on his trek the previous night.

Now convinced that the travelers are friends, Beorn offers them large stores of food and ponies to carry it, as well as bows and arrows to help the company through Mirkwood. He directs them to follow a little-known road through the forest that will take them almost directly to the Lonely Mountain. He also warns them not to drink from or bathe in the dark stream that runs through Mirkwood and never to stray from the path. Finally, he instructs them to send his ponies back when they reach the entrance to the forest.

They journey to the edge of the forest, and as they ride, Bilbo notices a large bear that seems to be tracking them at a distance. When they reach the edge of the forest and are hesitant to send the ponies back to Beorn, Gandalf warns them that the skin-changer is close by. He also bids them farewell, saying he must now be about his own business. As Gandalf rides off, he gives the travelers one more important warning: Do not leave the path.

Chapters 8–10: Mirkwood

Chapter 8 (“Flies and Spiders”) opens with the company walking in single file, beginning their long trek through Mirkwood, the largest forest in all of Middle-earth. The trees are so high that they block all sunlight, and the walk is filled with gloom. They sleep on the path and avoid lighting fires because the light attracts beasts on both sides of the road, and the eyes of many looking back out at them are eerily insect-like.

Their supply of food and water is becoming dangerously low, and when the dwarves come to the black stream that crosses their path, they would have been tempted to drink deeply from it if Beorn had not warned them against it. As it is, they are not able to get across because the bridge has long since rotted away. But Bilbo, whose eyes are sharper than any of the dwarves’, sees a small boat on the other bank of the river, some 12 yards away. Following Bilbo’s directions, Fili is able to snag the boat with an iron hook attached to a rope, and he pulls it to their side of the river. Using the rope, they are nearly able to get the entire company across the stream four at a time. But just as the last pair of dwarves are about to cross, a deer comes galloping down the path and leaps across the stream. Thorin, thinking fast, is able to shoot the deer with an arrow, but it falls on the opposite side of the stream. In the meantime, Bombur has fallen in the water, and as the dwarves fish Bombur out of the river, the boat drifts off. Though saved from drowning, Bombur is asleep and cannot be awakened. More deer come running across the path, and the dwarves waste all their arrows shooting at them before Thorin can stop them. Their bows are now useless.

The company keeps moving on, carrying the unconscious Bombur and becoming more hungry, thirsty, and disheartened as the days drag on. At the dwarves’ urging, Bilbo climbs to the top of one of the tallest trees to check whether he can see the end of the forest, but he can see nothing but the tops of trees. The dwarves are disappointed, and that night they eat the last of their food. The next morning, Bombur awakens, but when he realizes there is no food, he wishes he were back asleep. That night, the dwarves see a fire in the woods and hope that whoever has started it can give them some food. They smell roasting meat and rush forward to see a company of elves, but as soon as the elves see the dwarves, they and the fire disappear. Sometime later in the night, the dwarves see a campfire once again, and this time Bilbo goes first into the circle of firelight, but the elves disappear again. By now, the dwarves are far off the path, but they have decided that keeping to the path will do them no good if they starve to death. When the fire appears a third time, Thorin enters the firelight, but once again the elves disappear, and there is a great ruckus as the dwarves run about wildly. Bilbo, alone and under some enchantment, falls asleep and does not awaken until the next morning.

When he awakes, Bilbo realizes that his feet are bound together by some sticky substance, which he soon realizes is the thick web of a giant spider. The spider is attempting to poison him, but Bilbo fights it off, finally managing to draw his sword and kill the beast. He passes out from the struggle but comes to feeling far more confident in his own abilities, and he names his sword Sting. Slipping on his ring to become invisible, he searches for his friends and finds them all bound up by the webs of giant spiders and hanging upside down from large branches, surrounded by huge spiders intent on eating them. The invisible Bilbo throws stones at the spiders and taunts them with insulting songs in order to lure them away from his friends, then doubles back and begins cutting his friends loose. When the spiders return, they surround the dwarves, and Bilbo is forced to let the dwarves in on the secret of his invisibility. Under the cloak of the ring, Bilbo is able to kill many of the spiders with Sting, and the others finally flee.

When Bilbo and the dwarves finally have time to take stock, they realize that everyone is accounted for except for Thorin. Thorin, as it happens, had been taken prisoner by the Wood-elves the night before and was thrown into their dungeon when he would not tell their king why his company is crossing Mirkwood.

As chapter 9 (“Barrels out of Bond”) opens, Bilbo and the dwarves are starving, disgruntled because of the loss of Thorin and desperate to try to find a way out of Mirkwood. As they stagger in what they hope is the direction of the road, they are apprehended by troops of armed Wood-elves. Bilbo is able to slip on his ring in time to avoid capture, and he follows the blindfolded dwarves and their captors over the bridge into the cavern fortress of the elven king. The king interviews them but gets no more information from them than he had gotten from Thorin, and he puts all 12 of them into his dungeon, in separate cells. Bilbo wanders about the halls of the castle for two weeks, knowing that the dwarves’ lives are in his hands but unsure what to do. The only way into the castle is a magical door from which it will be impossible to escape, but in exploring the cavern, Bilbo learns a great deal about the workings of the elven king’s fortress.

One day, Bilbo learns that Thorin is a prisoner and is able to find his cell. Thorin is astounded to hear Bilbo through the keyhole of his cell and gives him a message to take to the rest of the dwarves: Tell the elven king nothing about their quest. Thorin has no wish to share any of his treasure with the elves.

In his exploration of the fortress, Bilbo has discovered that a stream runs under the castle, and that the elves put empty wine barrels through a trapdoor into the stream so that they will float downstream all the way down the river to Laketown on Long Lake, outside of Mirkwood. During a festival one evening, Bilbo is able to steal the keys from a drunken jailer and release all of the dwarves from their cells. His plan is to conceal each of the dwarves in a barrel and float them all to freedom in Lake-town, but the dwarves balk at this, fearful that they will drown or be battered by the current. However, having no alternative, they agree to the plan, and Bilbo seals them up in barrels. He then returns the keys to the stillsleeping jailer and hops atop one of the barrels himself as they are tossed into the stream by a group of elves.

After a rough ride in which he has difficulty keeping his head above the water, Bilbo and the barrels containing the dwarves get free of the castle and float to the point where the stream empties into the river flowing toward Lake-town, where a group of elves binds the barrels together into a kind of raft and sends them downstream. Bilbo rides the raft all the way to Lake-town.

In chapter 10 (“A Warm Welcome”), as Bilbo floats down the river on the raft of barrels, he sees the Lonely Mountain in the distance, but he does not like the looks of it. He listens to the talk of the raftsmen and learns that the landscape has changed a great deal in recent years. It has been desolated since the coming of the dragon and the destruction of the dwarves’ kingdom, so that, despite the instructions of Gandalf and of Beorn, Bilbo and the dwarves have by chance entered the lands east of Mirkwood in the only way that was still available to them—the river. Though Bilbo is unaware of it, Gandalf has heard of this difficulty from far away and is now coming to help.

The barrels containing the dwarves finally come to rest on the shore of Lake-town on Long Lake, and a shivering Bilbo is able to free, first, Thorin, and then the rest of the dwarves, from their hiding places. For the most part, they are battered, wet, and unhappy. Some are unable to move at all, and they all have a difficult time feeling grateful to Bilbo for their escape, but Thorin grudgingly admits that they could not have escaped without the hobbit’s help.

Thorin sets off with Bilbo, Fili, and Kili to find the master of the city. They encounter some of the town guard, who are quite taken aback to have visitors in their midst, and Thorin announces that he is Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King under the Mountain, and insists that they take him to their master. The guards do so. They interrupt the master while he is dining with the elvish raftsmen, and Thorin enters the hall with a loud proclamation that he is the heir of the king and has returned. The elves recognize him as the prisoner of their king, and Thorin agrees that he and his fellows were waylaid unjustly by the elven king but that he could not be held against his will. The master wants to remain on good terms with the elven king, but he is also aware of a prophecy known to all of Lake-town that the dwarf king would return and bring prosperity back to the land.

The Master is spared from a difficult decision when the people, who have heard the news, proclaim Thorin the king who has returned, and they celebrate him and his company as heroes. Meanwhile, the elven king of Mirkwood, having heard that the dwarves are in Lake-town, surmises that they intend to claim the treasure of Thror, but he vows that they will not bring it back through Mirkwood without a price.

After two weeks of adulation among the Lake men, Thorin and his fellows agree that the time has come for them to make their way to the mountain. The master of Lake-town, skeptical about Thorin’s claims and doubtful about the dwarves’ success against the powerful dragon Smaug, is glad to see them go. But he does offer them aid, and when they leave, they leave well-provisioned with horses and supplies. The master also provides them boats to travel the length of the lake, but when they setoff in the cold winds of autumn, Bilbo is deeply unhappy about the coming adventure.

Chapters 11–14: The Dragon in the Mountain

In chapter 11 (“On the Doorstep”), the men of Lake-town spend three days rowing Bilbo and his companions across Long Lake and into the River Running, which flows through the wasteland known as the Desolation of Smaug toward the Lonely Mountain. When they drop the dwarves off near the mountain, the men quickly turn and begin to row back, fearful of being so close to the mountain and the lands ruined by the dragon. The company now makes its way toward the mountain, looking into the Valley of Dale at the remains of the town and the scorched land of the dragon. Thorin and Balin (who was with Thorin on the day the dragon attacked the mountain) remember the beauty and greenness of the valley before the coming of Smaug.

They gaze on the front gate of the mountain, from which the river flows, and it seems clear to Bilbo that the dragon is still alive, since smoke issues from the gate. Balin says that the dragon may have simply filled the mountain with his reek, and may not be there at all, but the travelers trek to the other side of the mountain, to try to find the secret door on Thorin’s map. Although they find the correct place, they cannot make the magical door open with picks, shovels, or any kind of mining tools that they have brought from Lake-town, although they try to do so for some days. Bilbo hears the dwarves grumbling that they should send their burglar, Bilbo, in through the front door, now that he has the ring of invisibility. He wishes for his hobbit hole and hopes that Gandalf will return soon.

Now Thorin comments that autumn is coming to an end and winter will soon be upon them. The following day, Bilbo notices that, as the sun is setting, the sliver of the autumn moon is rising. At that point, his attention is drawn to a thrush knocking a snail against the rock near the magic door. Remembering the runes on Thorin’s map, he realizes it is Durin’s day and calls to the dwarves. As the last ray of the suns hits the door, a crack can be seen in the rock. At Bilbo’s urging, Thorin grabs the key from around his neck and turns it in the door, which the dwarves are now able to shove open. Before them gapes a long, dark tunnel into the heart of the mountain.

When chapter 12 (“Inside Information”) opens, Thorin indicates that the time has now come for the burglar—Bilbo—to perform the function for which he has been employed. Bilbo grumbles that he has already earned the dwarves’ gratitude for saving them twice, but he agrees to enter the tunnel, asking which of the dwarves will come with him. Only Balin volunteers, and he agrees only to go in part of the way, so as to relay any news back to the rest of the company outside the door. The two of them walk down until the door is barely visible, and here Balin stops, letting Bilbo go on alone. As Bilbo draws closer and closer to the center of the mountain, he sees a red glow far in front of him and feels the heat of the dragon. There, alone in the tunnel, Bilbo performs the most courageous act of his life: He decides to go on.

In the great central hall of the mountain, Bilbo finds Smaug asleep on a huge hoard of treasure, his soft underbelly encrusted with precious stones embedded in his flesh through years of lying on them. Quietly and carefully, Bilbo steals a large two-handled cup and quickly makes his way back up the tunnel to report back to the dwarves and show them his find.

Shortly thereafter, however, the dragon awakens and discovers his cup is missing. Enraged, he explodes from the mountain’s front gate and begins to search for the thief. Bilbo convinces the others that they must hide in the tunnel, but Bombur and Bofur, who have been with the ponies in the valley below, must be hauled up on ropes before all the dwarves duck into the tunnel just in time. Smaug sees the horses and begins chasing them, devouring six of them before going back to his cave to rest.

Now the dwarves are at a loss, not knowing what to do next. They turn to Bilbo for leadership, and the hobbit, slipping on his ring, decides to make another venture down the tunnel to see whether he can find the dragon’s weak spot. When he comes near the end of the tunnel, Smaug greets him. The dragon cannot see him but can smell him, and he begins a conversation with Bilbo. When the dragon asks his name, the hobbit answers in riddles, giving himself a number of titles (including “barrelrider” and the one “chosen for the lucky number”). Smaug tries to seduce Bilbo with his hypnotic voice, planting doubts in the hobbit’s mind about the sincerity and loyalty of the dwarves—they are cowards, he says, who want Bilbo to do all the dangerous work and have no intention of giving him his share of the treasure. At the same time, Bilbo tells Smaug that the dwarves intend to regain their treasure and to take revenge, but he also flatters the dragon, admiring his jewel-encrusted belly, at which the arrogant dragon rolls over and unwittingly reveals to Bilbo an unprotected area on his left breast. Foolishly, he taunts the dragon as he leaves, and he must run as fast as he can back along the passageway, though he is still scorched by the dragon’s fiery breath that follows him up the narrow tunnel.

When he has emerged from the tunnel among the dwarves again, Bilbo tells them what he has learned, but he is irritated by a thrush that seems to be listening. Thorin cautions him not to be annoyed, for the thrushes on the mountain are beneficent creatures. Thorin adds that in the old days, the men of Dale had known the secret of deciphering the thrushes’ language. Bilbo tells the dwarves that he made a mistake in calling himself “barrel-rider,” since the dragon would make the connection with the men of Lake-town and may seek to take vengeance on them for helping the dwarves. He also insists that the dwarves all enter the tunnel and close the outside door, since Smaug will certainly be looking for it, knowing that Bilbo had entered his lair through the other end. They come into the tunnel but are hesitant to close the door (having no certain way of opening it again). As they sit in the dark, Bilbo confronts Thorin with the dragon’s accusations, but Thorin assures Bilbo that he can choose his own 14th of the treasure. Carried away by thoughts of the riches, Thorin and Balin speak longingly of some of the treasure’s most storied objects, in particular the great jewel known as the Arkenstone of Thrain, the “Heart of the Mountain.” Bilbo finally persuades them to close the door, which they do just in time, as the frustrated Smaug smashes the entire side of the mountain in which the door stands. Then, his rage boiling, he begins to fly south along the River Running, ready to take revenge on Lake-town.

After what seems days of waiting in the tunnel’s darkness, the companions become anxious in chapter 13 (“Not at Home”). They try to get back out of the tunnel door, but find that the dragon’s violence has caused a cave-in, and there is no way to reach the door. The dwarves are inclined to despair, but Bilbo, quoting maxims of his father, such as “Where there’s life there’s hope,” determines that the only way out is down through the dragon’s lair, and he leads the dwarves in that direction. At the end of the tunnel, Smaug’s hall is so dark that Bilbo tumbles out of the tunnel onto the floor. At first, he looks around and notices a white gleam on top of the shadowy mound of treasure. Once he is certain Smaug is not at home, he calls for light, and Oin and Gloin run back up the tunnel to fetch torches and tinder-boxes. At first, the dwarves hang back in the tunnel, giving Bilbo a torch to search the hall.

Bilbo looks around at the treasure and finds that the white glow at the top is in fact the great Arkenstone, the “Heart of the Mountain.” He needs two hands to lift it but places it in an inner pocket. He has been promised his own choice of the treasure and thinks that this should be his choice. On his way back to the tunnel, a bat startles him and he drops the torch, so that he calls for help. Hesitantly, the dwarves come looking for him. Now that they know the dragon is not here, they begin to look longingly at the great hoard. They wander through it, picking up jewels and arming themselves with the gold-plated armor and weapons in the hoard. Thorin gives Bilbo, as the first installment of his payment, a small elvish coat of mail made of an impenetrable silver material called mithril . Through it all, Thorin keeps searching for something he cannot find—the Arkenstone, as Bilbo realizes.

Bilbo reminds the dwarves that, while they do not know where Smaug has gone, he could well return at any moment. Thorin, remembering the way through his ancestral home, leads the group through the cavern’s chambers, including the great chamber of Thror, and follows the Running River out the front gate of the mountain, where they look out over the ruined town of Dale. Hungry and tired, the company is led by Balin to a rock fortress on the southern spur of the mountain, used as a lookout tower by the dwarves in their days of prosperity. Here the company stops to sleep for the night.

In chapter 14 (“Fire and Water”), the narrator flashes back two days earlier to Smaug after he had vented his rage on the side of the mountain. Having fixed his blame on the people of Lake-town (also called Esgaroth) for their part in aiding the dwarves’ expedition, Smaug begins to travel down the River Running to Long Lake to punish the town. When the men of Esgaroth see the flames of the dragon’s rage from a great distance, many believe that the old tales of the lake running yellow with gold are coming true, but one grim-voiced man, Bard (a descendant of Girion, king of Dale), warns that the dragon is coming, and at his urging the town prepares for the attack, cutting bridges to the mainland to halt Smaug’s advance. Smaug flies over the city breathing fire, setting the town ablaze as the people, including the Master, try to escape in boats. A company of archers remains, led by Bard, and they fire arrows at the swooping dragon, but the arrows only glance off his jewel-encrusted underbelly. Finally, only Bard is left defending the city, and he is down to his last, black arrow—one that he has inherited from his father and his father’s fathers, and one that has never failed him. Suddenly, he feels an old thrush land on his shoulder and is astounded to realize that he can understand the thrush’s language. The thrush—apparently the same one that had listened to Bilbo’s conversation with the dwarves—tells Bard to look for the bare spot in the dragon’s left breast. Bard does, and his arrow flies true, piercing the dragon and killing him. The dragon falls from the sky, crushing the town.

Most of the townspeople have survived the onslaught, and although their town is in ruins, they are grateful to Bard for saving them, and many want to proclaim him king, to the master’s chagrin. But the smooth-tongued master turns the townspeople’s attention to the dwarves, whom he blames for bringing the dragon’s wrath upon them, and reminds the people that there are now mounds of unprotected treasure in the mountain. Bard postpones any notion of becoming king, though he harbors a desire to reestablish the city of Dale near the mountain. Meanwhile, birds bring the news of Smaug’s death to the elven king in Mirkwood, who sends a host of his own people into the east. The elves first help the homeless people of Lake-town build shelters and prepare for the coming winter, but then they turn toward the mountain and its treasure. They begin to make their way to the mountain, along with many of the men of Esgaroth, 11 days after Smaug’s death.

Chapters 15–17: War

As the dwarves are waiting with Bilbo at the mountain in the opening of chapter 15 (“The Gathering of the Clouds”), the thrush returns and tries to communicate with them, but none of the dwarves is able to understand, though Balin comments to Bilbo that in the old days, dwarves were able to communicate with the ravens of the mountain. The thrush flies off and returns with a very old raven, Roäc, the son of Carc, the chief raven from the days of Thror. The raven informs them that Smaug is dead, and the dwarves rejoice, but the bird then warns them that the elven king is coming north with Bard and the men of Esgaroth, believing that they are owed a share of the treasure. Roäc advises them to trust Bard (and not the Master of the city), but Thorin is prepared to trust no one. He asks the raven to get word to his cousin Dain in the Iron Hills to come swiftly with an army of dwarves to defend the treasure. Then Thorin brings all the dwarves back into the mountain to secure it from attack.

The dwarves work quickly, sealing up the main gate into the mountain with a stone wall, and when the elvish army arrives, they find the dwarves holed up in an impenetrable fortress. When Bard comes before the gate with banner bearers from the Forest and Esgaroth, Thorin asks who it is that comes armed for war against Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, King under the Mountain. Bard is surprised to find the dwarves still alive, but he asks to parley, claiming to be owed a part of the treasure as slayer of the dragon. He also reminds Thorin that some of the treasure belonged to the city of Dale, and that Bard is Gilion’s heir. Further, he asks that the dwarves share some of the treasure with the men of Esgaroth because of the hardship they have suffered on account of the dwarves. These strike Bilbo as quite reasonable points, but Thorin dismisses the last argument out of hand and says he will not parley with anyone as long as an armed host is encamped in front of his gates. The heralds return to the elvish host, but when they return, they tell Thorin that Bard is entitled to one-twelfth of the dragon hoard, from which he is willing to contribute to the aid of the people of Esgaroth, but they advise Thorin that, if he desires friendship with his neighbors, he would do well to consider contributing some of his own wealth to the relief of the lake men. Thorin’s only answer is to fire an arrow at the herald that sticks in his shield. At this, the heralds say that Thorin has chosen enmity, and they declare the mountain under siege. The dwarves, they say, can eat their gold.

Bilbo is appalled by this turn of events and has no desire to be besieged in the dwarves’ fortress, particularly when all there is to eat is the tasteless biscuit called cram .

For many days, the siege goes on. As chapter 16 (“A Thief in the Night”) begins, the dwarves have been spending much of this time cataloguing and arranging the huge hoard, but Thorin looks constantly for the Arkenstone, the great jewel of his fathers and the single item worth more to him than all the rest of the treasure. He vows vengeance on anyone who finds the stone and keeps it from him, but Bilbo, with the Arkenstone wrapped in the bundle he uses as a pillow, says nothing.

The old raven brings Thorin news that his kinsman Dain is now within two days’ march of the mountain, with a host of 500 dwarves ready for combat. Roäc advises Thorin that this path is unwise, for even if the dwarves fight off the elven king’s army, he will incur the ill will of all his neighbors, with winter coming on fast and no food. But the stubborn Thorin insists that winter will wear on the besieging army as well, and he refuses to back down.

Now Bilbo hatches a plan by which he hopes to avert bloodshed. In the evening, while Bombur is on watch, Bilbo conceals the Arkenstone in a rag and tells Bombur that he cannot sleep. He offers to take Bombur’s watch, promising to wake him at midnight, when Bombur’s watch is scheduled to end. Now unseen, Bilbo slips on his ring and makes his way to the elven army. He reveals himself to the first elves he meets, insisting that they take him to Bard.

Brought before Bard and the elven king in their tent, Bilbo takes out the Arkenstone, offering it to Bard (in token of his own share of the treasure) as a bargaining tool to make peace with Thorin in exchange for a fair portion of the treasure that Bard has deserved. Astounded, the elven king offers Bilbo sanctuary in his camp, anticipating Thorin’s rage at what he will no doubt consider Bilbo’s betrayal. But Bilbo insists that he must return to his friends, for he feels he cannot desert them after they had been through so much together. Besides, he says, he promised to wake Bombur up before midnight. As Bilbo begins to leave, an old man in a dark cloak who had been sitting at the tent door rises and proclaims, “Well done!” It is Gandalf, who adds that there is always more to Bilbo than anybody expects. There is no time for long discussions, but Gandalf tells Bilbo that things are drawing to a close now, and that there are other surprises in store. Bilbo hurries back to the mountain, awakens Bombur, and falls asleep himself, dreaming of bacon and eggs.

Chapter 17 (“The Clouds Burst”) opens as trumpets blare the next morning, and heralds from the besieging army ask to parley with Thorin because “matters had changed.” Thorin believes that the elven king and Bard have learned of Dain’s approach and so realize that they no longer have the advantage. Bard, the elven king, and an old man wearing a cloak and hood and carrying a wooden casket approach, but instead of backing down, they ask whether Thorin has changed his mind, and whether anything can convince him to part with a portion of his treasure. Thorin scoffs that nothing they can offer will change his mind, at which they open the casket and reveal the Arkenstone of Thrain, which Bard offers in exchange for his fair share of the treasure. Thorin demands to know where they obtained the Heart of the Moun-tain, and Bilbo admits that he gave it to them, adding that, since Thorin had promised him that he might choose his own fourteenth share of the treasure, he had chosen the Arkenstone and had chosen to give it away. Furious, Thorin threatens to throw Bilbo from the mountain, wishing Gandalf were there and cursing the wizard for choosing Bilbo. The old man reveals himself to be Gandalf, telling Thorin that his wish is granted, and he talks Thorin out of this rash threat. Thorin agrees to yield one-fourteenth of the treasure, the portion belonging to Bilbo, in exchange for the Arkenstone, but demands that Bilbo leave his company immediately, promising to send the gold and silver after him. Privately, Thorin still hopes that, with Dain’s arrival, he will be able to regain the Arkenstone and keep the entire treasure as well, so much has the craving for treasure taken hold of his heart.

When Dain and his army arrive, Bard goes to meet him, not wishing to allow the dwarves into the mountain until Thorin has made good on his promise to send out Bilbo’s share of the treasure. Bard wishes to strike at the dwarves to prevent them from going farther, but the elven king wants to delay, hoping still for reconciliation. But seeing this hesitancy, the dwarves strike first, and as the battle threatens to erupt, there is a sudden shift in the weather. The skies grow dark, thunder erupts, and a swarm of what seem to be black birds bears down upon them from above. Gandalf steps forth and warns that an army of goblins and wargs, accompanied by a cloud of bats, is approaching swiftly from the north.

In the face of this threat from a common enemy, the dwarves, men, and elves put aside their differences and strike a hasty alliance. Now begins what will become known as the Battle of Five Armies. The elves assemble on one spur of the mountain, and the men and dwarves on the other. As the host of goblins approaches, the elven king attacks, beating back the first assault. The dwarves and men join the battle, and initially they seem on the edge of victory, until another onslaught of goblins and wolves comes sweeping over the mountain. But now Thorin, King under the Mountain, leads his armed band out from the mountain and rallies the scattered allies to him. Still, this seems not enough to turn the tide of the battle. Bilbo, invisible with his ring, has taken a stand near the elven king, and with his keen vision he is the first to see, approaching from the west against the sunset, an army of great eagles. He cries out that the eagles are coming, but is struck by a stone from above and is knocked unconscious.

Chapters 18–19: The Road Home

In chapter 18 (“The Return Journey”), Bilbo comes to on the battlefield and looks about him, seeing only dead goblins. He understands that the battle has ended in victory, but does not know how. When he sees a man climbing toward him, he calls out, but when the man asks where the voice has come from, Bilbo realizes that he is still wearing his ring. He quickly removes it and greets the man, who had been sent to find him on the battlefield and had nearly given up hope. He tells Bilbo that he must be brought to Thorin Oakenshield at once. When Bilbo enters Thorin’s tent, he finds the dwarf king dying of wounds suffered in battle. Thorin reconciles with Bilbo, taking back the words he spoke at the gate. Bilbo bids Thorin farewell and weeps for him outside his tent.

As Bilbo recovers with Gandalf, he learns how the battle was won. The eagles had been monitoring the mustering of the goblins for some time and had gathered forces to follow them to the mountain. During the battle, they had driven the goblins from their positions on the mountain and into the valley, where they were engaged by the elves and dwarves. Still, the wargs and goblins outnumbered the allies, and the outcome was in doubt until Beorn himself had appeared, in the form of a bear, and swept all before him. Most of the enemy ultimately fled the battle, and the elves, dwarves, and men pursued them, slaughtering the great majority. In the end, three-quarters of the goblins of the North were slain in that battle, and peace returned to the North for many years.

Finally, Thorin is buried in the mountain, with the Arkenstone on his breast and the sword Orcrist restored to him by the elven king. Kili and Fili, who were killed in the battle while defending Thorin, are buried there as well. The other dwarves stay with Dain, who is now King under the Mountain. One-fourteenth of the treasure is given to Bard, as Thorin had agreed. Dain wishes to give Bilbo a great reward as well, but in the end Bilbo will accept only a small chest of gold and one of silver, just as much as a small pony might carry on his way back to his home in the West. Bilbo bids farewell to his companions, and with Gandalf and Beorn, he sets off for home in the company of the elven king and his host.

Bilbo and his two companions part with the elves at the entrance to Mirkwood, preferring to take the long way around the forest to the north rather than the gloomy path through Mirkwood. But before they bid the elven king farewell, Bilbo gives him the gift of a silver and pearl necklace he had received from Dain. It is, he says, in exchange for the meals and lodging the king had unknowingly given the invisible Bilbo when the dwarves were in his dungeons. The elven king accepts the gift and names Bilbo “elf-friend.” Gandalf and Bilbo stay in Beorn’s house through the yuletide and into the spring, when they leave to continue their journey home. Bilbo, weary of his adventures, can only think of his comfortable armchair.

As chapter 19 (“The Last Stage”) opens, Gandalf and Bilbo leave Beorn’s house and move on until, at the beginning of May, they reach Rivendell, where the elves welcome them again with songs from the trees. They stay in Rivendell for a week, telling the stories of their adventures. Here Bilbo learns that after Gandalf left the dwarves, he joined with his fellow wizards, who were able to drive the Necromancer from his stronghold in the south of Mirkwood. Finally, they leave Elrond, and as they make their way home, they take the time to recover the trolls’ gold that the dwarves had buried. Bilbo says he has plenty of wealth and offers this gold to Gandalf, but Gandalf insists that Bilbo should take some of it for himself, saying that he may have more need of it than he knows.

When Bilbo returns to his house on June 22, he is shocked to arrive in the middle of an auction where all of his possessions are being sold. Having been away for more than a year, Bilbo has been presumed dead, and his cousins, the SackvilleBagginses, are measuring his house to see whether their own furniture will fit. They are not particularly happy to see him turn up alive. It takes years for Bilbo to get all of his possessions back, and he is forced to buy back some of his furniture himself just to speed the process along.

The Sackville-Bagginses never believe it is truly Bilbo who has returned, and while Bilbo lives a long life in his old home and remains an elf friend and a companion of dwarves and wizards, he is never able to shake his reputation among his neighbors for being a bit odd. He is a favorite among his nieces and nephews, however, although even they do not completely believe all of the stories he tells of his adventures. But several years after his return, one autumn evening while he is writing his memoirs (“There and Back Again: A Hobbit’s Holiday”), he has a visit from Gandalf and Balin. They chat about old times, and Balin tells him of how Dain’s kingdom is thriving, how Bard has rebuilt Dale, and how the valley is now fertile and there is a great traffic of goods among men, elves, and dwarves. Bilbo marvels that the old legends have indeed come true, and Gandalf asserts that this is not to be wondered at: Ancient prophecies are no less true just because one has had a hand in bringing them about himself.

Tolkien establishes the novel’s tone from the very first sentence. One recognizes that a hobbit is not a creature of the “real” world, and that with these words the reader is entering an imaginary universe, the parameters of which the narrator is about to establish. First, the nature of hobbits themselves must be clarified. While initially the idea of human-like creatures living in well-decorated holes in the ground seems a bit outlandish, it is clear that the other traits of hobbits—their rather smug provincialism, their lack of curiosity, and their fundamental desire for good food and drink and the comforts of home—are those of a large portion of the human population, probably (as Tolkien most likely deemed) of the majority of the citizens of provincial England. Bilbo Baggins, who remains chiefly concerned with his food, his comfort, and the neatness of his house, is in many ways typical of hobbits in general. The name hobbit is relatively close to rabbit, and this may be why Tolkien chose to have hobbits live in holes and give them furry feet. But Tolkien himself vehemently denied the suggestion of any connection between hobbits and rabbits (Shippey, Road 67). In any case, the consciousness of hobbits is essentially that of humans, though their diminutive size may suggest the limitations of their imaginations and aspirations. Tolkien did suggest that the name hobbit might have been partially influenced by Sinclair Lewis’s 1922 novel Babbit, whose characters, like most hobbits, are complacent, self-satisfied, and lack imagination.

Tolkien makes a point of examining Bilbo’s individual character in this chapter, based chiefly on his heredity. On his father’s side, Bilbo is a Baggins, and therefore a very conventional hobbit. On his mother’s side, however, Bilbo is a Took, and the Tooks are less “respectable” from the conventional point of view, but in fact are more adventurous, more inclined to be unconventional and curious about the outside world, as was Bilbo’s glorious ancestor, Bullroarer Took. This inner conflict will play in Bilbo’s psyche throughout the novel.

Although Bilbo is some 50 years old when the story begins, The Hobbit is essentially a bildungsroman—a novel about a young person’s initiation into maturity. The comforts that Bilbo enjoys—his focus on eating and drinking and staying warm and cozy in his protected environment—are the comforts of an infant. The bachelor Bilbo has never experienced anything that has challenged him or made him grow as an individual, and the comfortable home and income he inherited from his father and his Took forebears have made it unnecessary for Bilbo to have to work to provide himself with anything necessary to his life. In some ways he is, essentially, a middle-class Edwardian English gentleman pulled, quite by surprise, into a medieval Norse adventure (Shippey, J. R. R. Tolkien 11)— all of which explains why contemporary readers identify much more readily with Bilbo than with Gandalf, the dwarves, or the elves in the story. But perhaps more important, in symbolic terms, the hole in which Bilbo lives is a yonic symbol, an image of the womb protecting Bilbo but keeping him an infant (Matthews 30). Like many fairy tales, which involve children whose basic virtues enable them to overcome threatening aspects of the larger world (like Jack’s giant or Hansel and Gretel’s witch), Bilbo’s story will be the symbolic representation of what the psychologist Carl Jung called the process of individuation, or maturing, as Bilbo will pass through a number of incidents that will aid in his psychological development into an adult. On another level, one of the story’s major themes is the capability of a relatively unimportant, ordinary person to exhibit great courage and resourcefulness when put into extreme or dangerous circumstances. Bilbo’s maturing process will put him in these kinds of situations, and he will reach within himself for resources that he may not have known he had.

Many of these resources undoubtedly spring from Bilbo’s unconventional Tookish side, and that aspect of his nature is what makes Gandalf choose him for this adventure. Matthews equates Bilbo’s Tookish side with his masculinity, which she notes is being repressed in his womblike hobbit hole (31). Gandalf recognizes that, while Bilbo may appear to be a typical hobbit, no more daring than any other, there is actually “more to him than meets the eye,” as the narrator will remind us repeatedly. As for Gandalf himself, the wizard will, of course, become a major character in The Lord of the Rings , but his importance in this novel is chiefly as a guide and adviser to the hobbit and his companions. In his biography of Tolkien, Humphrey Carpenter traces the conception of Gandalf to a German postcard that Tolkien bought on a trip to Switzerland in 1911. The card was a reproduction of a painting called Der Berggeist (“The Spirit of the Mountain”) by the artist J. Madelener. It depicted a whitebearded man in a dark cloak and a wide-brimmed hat. Years later, Tolkien wrote on the paper cover where he kept the postcard “Origin of Gandalf” (Carpenter 51).

In The Hobbit, Gandalf is the archetypal “wise old man” figure common to romance narratives (as defined by Northrop Frye and others)—“romance” in the sense of a heroic tale in a remote setting dealing with mysterious, adventurous, or supernatural events (rather than in the sense of “a love story”). Typically, such figures are guides and protectors of the protagonist, and they embody wisdom and often benevolent power as well. The fact that Bilbo fondly remembers Gandalf’s fireworks is an indication that his Tookish side is attracted to the kind of supernatural power and wisdom that Gandalf embodies.

With the introduction of the dwarves, Tolkien’s world becomes much more recognizable as having roots in a variety of earlier narratives. In the Old Norse and Germanic folklore with which Tolkien was quite familiar, dwarves were often associated with the accumulation of treasure, and dragons with the hoarding of such treasure. From their actions and their plans, we learn a number of things about these particular dwarves in this chapter: They enjoy feasting and songs, but they are also a clannish and proud folk, whose traditions and heritage mean a great deal to them. They are also motivated by what may be an inordinate lust for riches, and by revenge, for the dragon has killed Thorin’s father and grandfather, the King under the Mountain, and those deaths cry out for vengeance. In this way, the dwarves’ mores are quite similar to those of Old English or Old Norse warriors, for whom the king’s first responsibility was the sharing of treasure with his retainers, and the warrior’s first responsibility was to protect or to avenge his lord in battle. In Germanic legends, though, the greatest heroes—Sigurd or Beowulf— are slayers of dragons, and the irony in this situation is that the dwarves have come seeking Bilbo, the most unlikely such hero imaginable. As it happens, however, the dwarves are not looking for that kind of hero, but rather for a burglar who might be able to steal some of the treasure. This is a role that Bilbo may actually be able to fill.

Other than Balin, all of the names of the dwarves (as well as the name Gandalf ) appear in an Old Norse poem Völuspá, part of the Icelandic collection called the Elder Edda , or Poetic Edda (Shippey, Road 70). As for the plot of The Hobbit , it follows the traditional romance form of the quest, a journey to accomplish a significant task, in this case the recovery of the dwarves’ lost treasure from the dragon who guards it.

It should be noted that one of the things that inspires Bilbo, awakening his “Took side,” and stirring him to accept the dwarves’ proposal, is the song that they sing about the journey and the gold at the end of it. Tolkien is always concerned with the power of language to move and to inspire, and he puts lines like “We must away ere break of day / To seek the pale enchanted gold” (27) into the dwarves’ mouths to motivate Bilbo to agree to the adventure. Admittedly, the other thing that motivates Bilbo is his wounded vanity when he overhears Gloin remark that he “looks more like a grocer than a burglar” (30). If this seems to be a somewhat childish reason to make such an important decision, remember that at this point Bilbo really is not much more than a child, and his maturing process is just starting.

One other element of the opening chapter is worth commenting on, and that is the voice of the narrator. Whereas in Tolkien’s other major works ( The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion ), he uses an omniscient narrator who presents the material objectively and without comment, the narrator of The Hobbit is an intrusive voice that consistently comments on the actions of the story and engages in a kind of conversation with the reader. The narrator’s tone, however, is avuncular, and his relationship to the reader almost condescending, very much like an older adult telling a story to small children. While this, in fact, was certainly Tolkien’s intent as he told the story in its first form to his own children, passages like “And what would you do, if an uninvited dwarf came and hung his things up in your hall without a word of explanation?” (20) or “He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end” (16) begin to sound a little patronizing as the novel goes on, and it is no coincidence that Tolkien abandoned this kind of narrative voice in his later works. In a 1967 interview, Tolkien admitted his mistake in this regard, saying “ The Hobbit was written in what I should now regard as a bad style, as if one were talking to children. There’s nothing my children loathed more” (qtd. in Tolkien , Annotated Hobbit 76).

The scene that initiates Bilbo into the world of adventure is a semicomic one involving conventional monsters of Old Norse mythology, a trio of trolls. William Green notes that on two occasions in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, Thor has traveled to the East to fight trolls (51). Furthermore, Gandalf’s trick of keeping the trolls arguing until dawn, when they must turn to stone at the first light of day, is also a motif seen in Old Norse poetry—although in at least one poem the trick is actually applied to a dwarf named Alvis, who comes to ask for the hand of Thor’s daughter in marriage, and whom Thor keeps talking until sunrise (Green 55). It has also been suggested that this scene owes something to the story of the Cyclops in The Odyssey . As Odysseus used trickery to prevent the Cyclops from eating all of his companions, Gandalf tricks the trolls into arguing until sunlight and so prevents them from eating the dwarves.

The depiction of the trolls in this scene equates them essentially with rather coarse, vulgar humans. They have the curiously common English names of William, Bert, and Tom, and they speak with cockney accents and phrasing, as in “And time’s been up our way, when yer’d have said ‘thank yer, Bill,’ for a nice bit o’ fat valley mutton like what this is” (46). Deborah and Ivor Rogers suggest that the trolls’ speech is modeled on the language of enlisted men or “Tommies” from his regiment whose speech patterns Lieutenant Tolkien may have witnessed during World War I (66).

Essentially, then, the trolls act like low-class oafs. The dwarves act in a manner that readers will come to expect as the story progresses: They hold back and send Bilbo in to test the waters in any dangerous situation. The dwarves need food, and the firelight and smell of mutton are enticing, but they send Bilbo ahead to scout things out. Bilbo, however, proves himself to be quite nearly useless in the ensuing crisis. He does have one special talent: the ability to move very quietly and stealthily. This, of course, will serve him well later on in dealing with the dragon, but at this point it enables him to sneak up on the trolls without detection. However, Bilbo’s first decision is a foolish one. Seeing himself as the hero of a fairy tale, a kind of “Jack and the Beanstalk” character, Bilbo decides to try to pick the pocket of one of the trolls, unaware of the remarkable vocal talents of trolls’ purses. His bad decision nearly gets him killed, and his inability to warn the dwarves nearly does the same for them.

To a large extent, it is Bilbo’s own insignificance that saves him at this point, since he is able to crawl away while the trolls are bickering, and their capture of the 13 dwarves causes them to forget all about Bilbo. It is pure luck that ultimately saves him and the dwarves, since Gandalf happens to show up at precisely the right time. Bilbo has not acquitted himself well in this first adventure. He does discover the trolls’ key while crawling away and so is able to contribute something useful to the company’s progress after all. But the best that can be said about Bilbo at this point is that he is lucky. If the story of The Hobbit is the story of Bilbo’s maturation and the development of his heroic status, it would seem that little progress has been made at this point. But a close examination suggests otherwise: Bilbo has exited his womblike hobbit hole and begun the journey. He has faced a dangerous enemy and survived. He has shown some courage in approaching the trolls alone, and he has demonstrated that he has more than his share of luck. Accordingly, Bilbo receives the elvish blade that he will use as a sword throughout the novel. As Matthews reminds us, the sword is a phallic symbol, and even in its simplest terms, it suggests maturing manhood (29). The episode also recalls scenes from medieval romances (Green compares it to the story of Perceval) in which the young knight takes the arms or armor from the first knight he defeats in his adventures (Green 56). Although here the “defeat” has been a matter of trickery, Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves are following tradition when they arm themselves from the trolls’ cave.

The initial danger overcome, the company is able to rest after the first leg of their journey in Rivendell, where the reader is introduced to elves. One’s first impression of the elves of Rivendell is probably that they are a good-natured but rather flippant people, since they seem to spend a good deal of time laughing and singing in the trees and making fun of their visitors. Tolkien makes the elves’ songs bright and lively, with anapestic rhythms (“O! What are you doing, / And where are you going?” [57]) as opposed to the dwarves’ heavier, longer iambic lines (“Far over the misty mountains cold / To dungeons deep and caverns old” [27]), making the elves seem quite lighthearted, perhaps even frivolous. But one soon comes to realize that this is probably the dwarves’ view of them, and that because of ancient rivalries between the two races, the dwarves’ opinion of elves is not necessarily to be trusted. Bilbo, we are told, loves the elves, and their lord, Elrond, brings a gravity and high seriousness to the society of Rivendell.

It seems apparent that when The Hobbit was first conceived, Tolkien intended it to be an independent children’s story, unconnected to his huge mythological project that was becoming the Quenta Silmarillion . Including Elrond, however, squarely placed the hobbit’s adventures among the greater tales of Middle-earth, for Elrond had been a part of those tales among Tolkien’s unpublished manuscripts since at least 1926. Elrond’s ability to interpret the “moon letters” on Thorin’s treasure map and his knowledge of ancient runes are to be expected of one who is himself so ancient: When he speaks of the swords Orcrist and Glamdring being forged by his elvish kinsmen for the elf and goblin wars, he is speaking of the years before the fall of Gondolin—an epic story of the First Age of Middle-earth that Tolkien had begun crafting as early as 1917. Elrond’s father, Eärendil, had escaped from Gondolin when it fell to the forces of Morgoth, the evil one, near the end of the First Age, and thus Elrond feels a kinship with those who forged these ancient swords.

The naming of the swords places these weapons, and Bilbo’s quest, among the great heroic legends of the past: They recall Arthur’s Excalibur, Roland’s Durendal, or Hrunting, the sword of Unferth that ultimately fails Beowulf—swords through which great deeds were done, and which therefore earned their names. Such names anticipate great deeds to be done in the present story as well. The runes on the swords that must be read by Elrond, ancient in wisdom, also recall the scene in Beowulf when Beowulf brings to the wise king Hrothgar the hilt of the ancient sword that he has found in the den of Grendel’s mother, and the old man examines the ancient runes on the sword hilt.

Rivendell is a paradisal garden of a sanctuary in which Bilbo would love to stay, but from which he must be expelled if he is to continue his development. At the end of the chapter, therefore, he and the dwarves continue their journey toward their first great natural barrier, the Misty Mountains, which they must cross to continue their quest for the Lonely Mountain and the dragon’s treasure.

As scholars have noted (William H. Green especially), this third part of the story repeats many of the same motifs as the previous section, but at greater length. Bilbo and his companions are put in great danger by monstrous foes, but they are saved in the end from an unexpected source. At the same time, Bilbo matures through the experience and comes out of it with a symbolic talisman—this time the magic ring—that symbolizes his growth.

As the section begins, Bilbo and his companions seek shelter in a cave in the Misty Mountains, and Bilbo awakens just in time to see the wall open and a horde of goblins rush in. Bilbo’s cry of alarm warns Gandalf, who is able to save the dwarves from capture temporarily. It is another instance of Bilbo’s luck—a feature that Tolkien emphasizes a number of times in this text. Bilbo’s luck is not simply blind chance happening to work in his favor, but rather luck in the sense one sees it in Old Norse sagas, where luck, as Shippey says, is a kind of possession ( J. R. R. Tolkien 27). In the Vinland sagas (the Greenlanders’ Saga and the Saga of Erik the Red ), Leif Ericksson, known as “Leif the Lucky,” is not simply the recipient of occasional good fortune but, rather, has a kind of supernatural knack for finding wealth or new lands. Bilbo seems to have that same kind of supernatural gift, which protects him in times of danger and enables him to discover important things that others may have missed—the trolls’ key in the previous section, the magic ring in this one.

The scene in chapter 5 in which Bilbo finds the ring and overcomes Gollum is the best known in the novel, since so many subsequent events— chiefly in The Lord of the Rings —depend upon it. It begins simply enough: Bilbo, once again like a child, must be carried on Dori’s shoulders as the dwarves flee from pursuing goblins. Bilbo falls, loses consciousness, and wakes later, alone in the dark. He finds the ring while crawling on his hands and knees in the dark and pockets it absentmindedly. It seems an unremarkable event, but as the narrator says, “it was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it” (76).

Scholars and readers have had a great deal to say about this chapter, in particular with regard to its symbolism. It is fairly easy to recognize that Bilbo’s descent into and reemergence from the underworld follows a pattern familiar in a great many myths and heroic narratives common to a number of cultures: Odysseus’s descent to Hades to confer with the shade of Tiresias, Aeneas’s descent to see the soul of his father in book 6 of the Aeneid, and Dante’s journey through the Inferno come immediately to mind. Such universal patterns or symbols are called archetypes. On one level, this particular archetype suggests death and rebirth—the death of Bilbo’s old, childish self and his rebirth as hero. It is certainly the case that once Bilbo has passed this point (and has obtained the ring), he is no longer a burden to the company and begins to prove himself a valuable companion. And as Matthews points out, the description of Bilbo as he squeezes through the narrow crack that the goblins have left in the open cave door reads like nothing if not a birth narrative (33):

He squeezed and squeezed, and he stuck! It was awful. His buttons had got wedged on the edge of the door and the door-post. . . . He gave a terrific squirm. Buttons burst off in all directions. He was through . . . (95)

But there is more to this symbolic pattern than this. The psychologist Carl Jung called this archetype of darkness the shadow. The Jungian shadow is often personified in myth or legend as a dark being—Darth Vader, for instance, or Satan himself perhaps—that represents the dark part of ourselves that we do not recognize or acknowledge. It may show itself, as Green notes, in traits we dislike in other people but fail to recognize in ourselves. For Jung, coming to terms with the shadow is essential for individuation, or becoming a whole and mature human being. That Gollum represents Bilbo’s shadow is apparent first in the symbolic sense, as Bilbo confronts Gollum here in the dark cave, reminiscent of the darkness of the subconscious mind. But as Green asserts, Gollum is also Bilbo’s double, living as he does, alone in a cave underground, and he tends to be somewhat sneaky, achieving his ends by deception rather than direct confrontation (Green 75). Bilbo does ultimately come to terms with Gollum, pitying the creature and sparing his life rather than killing him when he has the chance. When Bilbo recognizes Gollum as a fellow creature deserving of his pity, he has come to terms with his shadow. As Green concludes, the ring, the perfect circle, becomes a symbol of the wholeness and unity of self that Bilbo achieves (Green 81; Matthews 32). The leap that Bilbo makes over the crouching Gollum at the entrance to the tunnel leading out of the cave is also a symbolic leap forward—an act of courage and daring that mark his maturing personality.

Gollum’s name has no known source and presumably imitates the gulping sound he makes in his throat. But it is possible that Tolkien may have had in mind the creature of Jewish folklore called the golem, a being made of clay but animated, often, in medieval legend, by a rabbi. It was an incomplete and uncultivated being, and in the classic version of the story, the golem becomes violent and uncontrollable. Tolkien’s Gollum displays a number of these characteristics.

The riddle contest is quite appropriate for Bilbo. Even though he holds his elf-blade in readiness, Bilbo’s real talent is in his wits, and the riddle contest with Gollum is a battle of wits. In part, as Christopher L. Couch notes, it prepares Bilbo for a later, more dangerous battle of wits with the dragon (12). Couch points out that Tolkien was familiar with Old English riddles, in particular the nearly 100 riddles at the end of the 10th-century Exeter Book manuscript. Certainly Gollum’s riddles are similar to these Old English ones, although his subjects (all-concealing darkness, all-devouring time) are particularly appropriate for him.

The riddle contest has other sources as well. Since Bilbo’s life depends on his answers, the contest immediately recalls the riddle of the Sphinx in the Oedipus story. But there are closer analogues in Old Norse literature. In the poem Vafthruthnismol from the Poetic Edda, or Elder Edda, Ódin, in a quest for knowledge, visits the home of the giant Vafthruthnil disguised as a traveler named Gagnrath. The giant insists that they have a contest to determine which of the two is more intelligent, and he asks Ódin five questions, all of which Ódin answers. Ódin follows with 12 questions of his own, which the giant answers. Ódin then asks questions he really wants to learn the answers to, concerning the doom of the gods and, specifically, the identity of his own destroyer. In the end, Ódin (rather unfairly) asks Vafthruthnil what Ódin whispered into his son’s ear before his death. Recognizing Ódin at last, the giant admits that the god is wiser and lets him leave. The later Saga of King Heidrek, surely based largely on Vafthruthnismol, involves a question-game with the lives of the participants on the line, and it ends with Ódin asking the same question of Heidrek that ended the earlier text. In both these Norse texts, Ódin, like Bilbo, wins by asking a personal question, the answer to which his adversary has no way of knowing. In Bilbo’s case, once again, it is purely a matter of luck that he asks, “What have I got in my pocket?” His supernatural luck this time saves his life.

It is important to note that the “Riddles in the Dark” chapter that most readers know and that is summarized here is the revised chapter that appears in the second edition of The Hobbit, published in 1951. In the original 1937 version, Gollum promises Bilbo a present (i.e., the ring) if Bilbo wins the contest, and when he cannot find the ring, he shows Bilbo the way out of the cave instead. In the revised version, Gollum is presented more negatively, since he searches for the ring, intending to use it to disappear so that he can secretly kill Bilbo. But the invisible Bilbo follows Gollum to the exit while Gollum actually converses with himself (the text of the first version is available in The Annotated Hobbit 128–135). Tolkien explained the discrepancy by saying that the original version had been taken from Bilbo’s own story as presented in his manuscript (“There and Back Again”), and that Bilbo had at first tried to whitewash his actions in obtaining the ring (Rogers 70). Because of the way Tolkien’s conception of the ring had developed, he was able to use his revision of this chapter to better prepare readers for Gollum’s dual personality in The Lord of the Rings, and the negative effects that the ring has on its owners—both Gollum and, in the deceptive nature of Bilbo’s “first version” of the story, the hobbit himself.

Bilbo’s first decision once he has escaped from the cave is a clear indication of his maturing ethical judgment: Believing that Gandalf and the dwarves are still trapped under the mountain, he is convinced that he must return to the goblins’ caverns to help them. This is a far cry from the Bilbo of the first chapter, who had been relieved to think that the dwarves had gone off on their adventure without him.

Bilbo, of course, does not have to go back to rescue the dwarves, but the important thing here is that he was willing to do so. Instead, the travelers are soon pursued and surrounded by the combined forces of wargs and the goblins of the mountains. The wargs are essentially werewolves—an Old English term meaning “man wolves.” Werewolves appear in one of Tolkien’s favorite sources, the Völsunga Saga. These wargs look like wolves but are able to speak and have the organization and cunning of men. The goblins are also speaking and thinking creatures, but they are motivated solely by hunger, greed, and hatred. Essentially, as Tolkien readily acknowledges in a 1954 letter to Naomi Mitchison ( Letters 178), his goblins are based on the creations of George McDonald in his classic children’s book The Princess and the Goblin, although, as Green asserts, Tolkien’s goblins are far more seriously evil than McDonald’s (69).

As this third section of the novel draws to a close, the company is saved once again in a somewhat unexpected way—this time by the eagles, who serve the function of the helpful animals that often appear in romance narratives, in opposition to the hostile animals so clearly represented by the wargs. Further, just as the second section ends with a respite for the company in the Last Homely House of Elrond Halfelven, so this third section ends with a restful interlude in the home of Beorn.

Beorn is a shape-changer of the sort that appears in some Norse sagas. In Egil’s Saga, for example, Egil’s grandfather, Kvedulf, is introduced as one who can change into a wolf, while Queen Gunnhilda in the form of a swallow is nearly the cause of Egil’s death. Shippey also notes that the protagonist of the Saga of Hrolf Kraki is known as Böthvarr Bjarki (“Little Bear”) and is apparently a were-bear ( J. R. R. Tolkien 31). Beorn’s ability to change into a bear, then, is not unique in the kind of world Tolkien was recreating from his sources. The name itself is a pun, as Green points out, playing on the similarity between the Old Norse words bjorn (or bear) and beorn (or warrior) (114). Tolkien suggests that Beorn had formerly lived in the Misty Mountains and was forced to leave once the goblins moved in, and he looks forward to the time when the goblins will be destroyed and he can go back. In his enmity with the goblins, Beorn is clearly to be seen as a good and admirable character. Paul W. Lewis suggests that Beorn is, in fact, a kind of early precursor of Tom Bombadil in The Fellowship of the Ring , noting in particular their closeness to nature, which in Tolkien always seems to be an indication of virtue (Lewis 154). Beorn farms, lives in harmony with his animals (demanding that his ponies be brought back from the edge of Mirkwood when he loans them to the dwarves), and is a vegetarian. His help sends the troop on its way well provisioned to begin their trek through the great forest, but Gandalf’s warning that he must leave them on their own for that journey causes the company a good deal of anxiety.

Just as Bilbo’s adventure with Gollum repeated several of the motifs of his encounter with the trolls, so do many details of this fourth section of the novel parallel events in the previous sections. William Green lists the companions’ hunger, the gloomy setting (the dark forest this time rather than a cavern), the crossing of water that leads the travelers into danger, the dwarves’ capture and imprisonment in bags by enemies who mean to devour them, Bilbo’s awakening alone after losing consciousness, the interrogation of the dwarves by a king in an underground hall, the escape via an unusual means of transport (the barrels rather than the eagles this time), and the attainment of a final safe refuge (Green 83). More important, this section presents another stage of Bilbo’s maturation, containing a descent into the darkness, confrontation of an archetypal shadow, and a rebirth.

The scene of action this time is Mirkwood, a frightening and dangerous forest over which a darkness has fallen in recent years because of the presence of “the Necromancer,” who has risen to power and established himself in the southern part of the forest. This, of course, is Sauron, as will become clear later in The Lord of the Rings, though Tolkien seems not to have finalized that aspect of his mythography at the time he was writing The Hobbit. The name and idea of Mirkwood were adopted, as Shippey points out, from the Old Norse Poetic ( Elder ) Edda, where Myrcvið inn ókunna (“Mirkwood the Unknown”) is mentioned several times as an eastern boundary through which the Burgundians must travel to the stronghold of Attila the Hun ( J. R. R. Tolkien 33–34). It also functions here as the dark wood common to fairy tales such as “Hansel and Gretel” or “Little Red Riding Hood.” In this fantasy world, the companions are subject to the conditions of the fairy tale, one of which is the ancient motif of the “fairy tale prohibition” that Tolkien himself discusses in his essay “On FairyStories” (67). Briar Rose must not touch a spindle, Cinderella must leave the ball by midnight, Bluebeard’s wife must not look in one of the rooms of the castle. In this case, the dwarves must not leave the path or there will be dire consequences, as Beorn and Gandalf warn them three times. As in the traditional fairy story, the reader knows that the prohibition will be violated and the protagonists will suffer the consequences.

In the case of the starving dwarves, it is only as a last resort that they leave the paths when they see the elves’ fires. Tolkien has peopled Mirkwood with elves, in this case what he would call in The Silmarillion Avari—Grey-elves—rather than the High-elves from whom Elrond is descended. The picture of elves presented here seems inspired by the kinds of elves or fairies that appear in medieval Breton lays and other romances inspired by them. The disappearing circles of singing elves in the wood, for instance, occurs most famously in Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale.” Most specifically, as Shippey has pointed out, the first evidence of the elves in Mirkwood is inspired by the Middle English romance of Sir Orfeo (a text Tolkien taught often, and that he translated into modern English) ( J. R. R. Tolkien 35). In Sir Orfeo, while wandering in the wood, Orfeo comes upon the King of Faërie hunting. Tolkien translates the passage thus:

There often by him would he see when noon was hot on leaf and tree, the king of Faërie with his rout come hunting in the woods about with blowing far and crying dim, and barking hounds that were with him; (ll. 281–286)

In chapter 8 of The Hobbit, the travelers first become aware of the forest’s inhabitants when they are trying to cross the black stream, they hear the sound of a horn and of hunting dogs, and a deer leaps across the stream among them. The elves, however, are not kindly disposed toward the dwarves—this is clear later on when Thorin is brought before the elves’ king and prefers to be thrown into a dungeon rather than reveal his quest. Their failure to welcome the famished dwarves within the circle of their fires stems from this animosity and is nearly the dwarves’ undoing.

The danger this time is more horrifying than either Gollum or the three trolls of the previous sections. If Mirkwood is an archetypal symbol of the unconscious self, the spiders represent the nightmare terrors lurking in the depths of the psyche. Indeed, Bilbo has been sleeping when he awakens to find himself in the nightmare of the giant spider’s web. As Rogers points out, the horror of the situation may have come from Tolkien’s own deepest subconscious fears: As a very young child in South Africa, he had been bitten by a tarantula (72), and the image of that may have haunted him still in his adult years (Ungoliant in The Silmarillion and Shelob in The Lord of the Rings repeat this same motif). Bilbo’s ability to slay the spider without the aid of anything but his own sword gives him a new confidence and is clearly a step in his maturing process. The fact that he names his sword “Sting” at this point marks a rite of passage for him: Like the sword, he has a new identity, one that is bold and dangerous to his enemies.

J. R. Wytenbroek calls this adventure the second stage of Bilbo’s maturation process. Rather than fleeing from evil, Bilbo has confronted and overcome it, and Wytenbroek attributes this new strength to Bilbo’s earlier confrontation of his shadow in the form of Gollum (7). Unlike Gollum, however, whom Bilbo ultimately accepts and for whom he has compassion, the spiders represent what Wytenbroek calls the embodiment of primordial darkness, an inhuman evil that is “the incarnation of nightmare. . . . [The spiders] are the demons of the soul, and they must be routed and conquered” (8). Bilbo’s conquest of the spiders, alone and unaided, is his symbolic conquest of his most deeply rooted fears and thus a stage of maturation beyond his earlier confrontation of his own shadow.

His manner of defeating the giant spiders— through his invisibility, his craftiness, his verbal insults that madden the creatures and his stonethrowing that hobbles them—is not the approach of the typical hero. Bilbo is more what Green calls a trickster figure in this episode (87). There are no direct confrontations or acts of physical strength, no clashes of warriors in single combat. This is not who Bilbo is; it is not who most people are. Bilbo the hobbit, a small person in the wide world, is an ordinary person who is capable of heroic actions that involve personal courage, a sense of responsibility toward his friends, and willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of the whole group. These are qualities that any person may display, and they form one of Tolkien’s major themes that also runs through The Lord the Rings : the ability of ordinary people to perform extraordinary acts of courage in difficult circumstances.

The growth in Bilbo’s character is acknowledged after he saves the dwarves from the spiders when it is discovered that Thorin has disappeared. At this point, all of the dwarves look instinctively to Bilbo for leadership:

Where were they, and where was their path, and where was there any food, and what were they going to do next? These questions they asked over and over again, and it was from little Bilbo that they seemed to expect to get the answers. (163)

Of course, Bilbo cannot answer any of these questions, and the next day, as the companions are desperately trying to find their way back to the path to get out of the forest, they are captured by the same elves that have already imprisoned Thorin. Bilbo’s invisibility allows him to escape capture and to sneak into the elves’ fortress undetected, but it is clear that the dwarves will need rescuing once again. This time, however, the problem is a more difficult one. The trolls, Gollum, and the spiders all offered real and imminent threats to the lives of Bilbo and his companions, and their defeat—and, in the case of the spiders, wholesale slaughter—was unquestionably the triumph of good over evil.

Moral ambiguity enters Bilbo’s world in the castle of the elves. The elves are not evil and are holding the dwarves because they have passed into the elves’ land and refuse to give an accounting of themselves. Bilbo realizes that the dwarves’ stubbornness and greed is in part responsible for their predicament, along with the mysterious enmity between elves and dwarves that he does not understand. As Green points out, rescuing the dwarves this time is less a matter of courage and more one of “discretion, tact, and cleverness,” as Bilbo recognizes it would be wrong to harm the elves and is even uncomfortable taking their food during the time he must remain invisible within their walls (Green 83). His respect for the elves is clear when, having put his escape plan into motion, he returns the keys to the sleeping jailer, so as not to get the hapless elf into trouble.

As with most of Tolkien’s legendarium, the dwarves’ escape from the elves’ prison has roots in mythic literature. One story that scholars have compared to this one is the tale of Odysseus’s escape from the Cyclops in The Odyssey. Green lists the following parallels in the stories: Both begin with the protagonists trapped underground; both involve getting the watchman falling asleep, and his inability to see the protagonist; both involve the group escaping while hiding in things that the watchman must open the door to let out; and in both cases, the hero’s own escape is the most difficult, as Odysseus must hold onto the lead ram while Bilbo has to grab onto the last barrel that is flung into the river (Green 91). Again, as with all of Tolkien’s “borrowings,” the source has been completely absorbed into the overall logic of the entire fantasy world. It is worth noting that here, once again, Tolkien uses birth imagery as Bilbo escapes from the elves’ cave, shooting forth in a gush of water from his womblike prison (Matthews 36). Bilbo has been reborn again, having gone through a further maturation process in his adventures with the spiders and the elves.

As Bilbo floats down the river, he is struck by the barrenness of the landscape throughout the area surrounding the distant Lonely Mountain, and he learns from the talk of the raftsmen that the land has become desolated since the coming of the dragon. Clearly the medievalist in Tolkien has constructed a wasteland here that recalls the motifs of the Grail legend. In its earliest Celtic form, the wasteland is associated with the infertility and impotence of its ruler, originally the maimed “Fisher King.” The fertility of the land and the healing of the king can be accomplished by the Grail Knight. In the Perceval legend, Perceval must ask the appropriate question (“Who is served by the grail?”) in order to bring about this restoration. In other manifestations, the Grail itself may be the vessel that heals the king, and so the knight’s quest is to find it.

Here, restoration of the land’s fertility must come with the slaying of the dragon. Since the object of Bilbo’s quest is the dragon hoard, perhaps the symbolic Grail is part of that treasure. The inhabitants of Lake-town—living, as they do, on the lake itself—may well be a remnant of the former Fisher King’s people, but they seem themselves to have degenerated. As Green asserts, they are chiefly interested in business and trade, and their leader is “a selfish and cowardly pragmatist” (85). They have neither courage nor virtue, and they are mainly concerned with their own self-interest when they welcome Thorin as the returned King under the Mountain, since they believe he will bring them a new golden era.

The novel’s fourth section ends, like the previous sections, with the company safe in a new refuge after passing through great danger. But the moral ambiguity introduced into the story with the elves’ castle continues here, for Lake-town is not the paradisal refuge of Rivendell, nor even the house of the isolated but clearly righteous Beorn. It is a town of folk who are, like the land they inhabit, decayed and in need of restoration. No wonder Bilbo ends this section worried about the pending adventure on the mountain.

Part 5 of the novel contains, once again, some of the motifs of earlier sections, most notably Bilbo’s descent into the cave, his confrontation of a great danger there, the spectacular deliverance of the companions and their emergence from the cave, and Bilbo’s obtaining a valuable talisman—this time the Arkenstone of Thrain to go along with his sword and ring. Notably missing from the end of this section is the respite received at Rivendell, Beorn’s House, and the lake town of Esgaroth. In fact, the dwarves’ exploration of Smaug’s abandoned cave could have been such a respite, but like the reader, the dwarves are at this point unaware of the deliverance that has occurred with the death of the dragon. As Green points out, that news is conveyed only through the highly uncharacteristic flashback that begins chapter 14. The effect of this is heightened suspense as the book draws to its climax (Green 96).

The fifth section begins, as Deborah and Ivor Rogers point out, with events reminiscent of the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring in which the entire fellowship waits outside the gate to Moria and cannot get in until Gandalf stumbles upon the secret password that opens the gate (73). Here Bilbo finds the way in partly by luck (as he did in discovering the key to the trolls’ cave) but also partly by his noticing what is going on around him—the thrush, the setting sun, the sliver of moon. This is Durin’s Day as he has heard it described from the runes on Thorin’s map.

Once the way in is discovered, it is, of course, up to Bilbo to descend into the passageway down to the dragon’s den. This, after all, was the reason he was brought along on the adventure: He is a burglar, and now he must steal some part of the treasure. He sees the glow of the dragon at the end of the tunnel and knows that he is heading directly into the dragon’s lair, and he is completely alone. He has symbolically faced his inner fears and demons in the previous two episodes, wherein the archetypal darkness of his unconscious and of his shadow were overcome. He has performed acts worthy of a mythic hero and been admired by the dwarves for his courage and resourcefulness. Now, alone in the dark tunnel, Bilbo engages in an internal struggle that no one else witnesses. From the traditional heroic point of view, he has done nothing. But Tolkien’s narrator makes it clear:

Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. (205)

Tolkien, though a medievalist, is still a modern writer, and his view of heroism is a modern one: True courage is internal. Brave acts are the outward manifestation of an internal state of mind, and so it is with Bilbo.

Ultimately what Bilbo finally snatches from the hoard of the sleeping dragon is a great two-handled cup. In this, Tolkien was clearly borrowing from the last part of Beowulf, in which a thief rouses the wrath of a dragon by stealing a cup from its hoard, and the dragon lays waste to Beowulf’s land after the thief brings Beowulf the cup that was stolen. In the same way, Smaug, enraged when he realizes that something is missing from his treasure, rushes out to burn the mountainside, including the door that he realizes must have been the burglar’s way into his den. Once more, it is Bilbo, through a kind of intuition that seems part of his luck, who warns the dwarves that they must come inside the tunnel to escape the dragon’s fire. Although they lose their horses, it is only Bilbo’s foresight and quick response that save the dwarves from certain death.

Bilbo again must take the lead as he and the dwarves are trapped within the tunnel into the mountain. Invisible, he makes his way back to the dragon’s lair and this time actually engages Smaug in conversation. Tolkien’s model for dialogue with dragons was in fact Sigurd’s conversation with the wounded dragon Fafnir in “The Lay of Fafnir,” a poem from the Poetic Edda . In that poem, Sigurd conceals his name from Fafnir, while Fafnir sows distrust in Sigurd’s mind toward his mentor, the dwarf Regin. Here, Bilbo also conceals his identity, instead giving Smaug riddling descriptions of himself as “clue-finder,” “the guest of Eagles,” and “Barrel-rider.” The exchange recalls the earlier riddle contest with Gollum, and Bilbo seems to have learned something from that contest that helps him with his quick thinking here, for the narrator says he is “pleased with his riddling” (213), although he does give the dragon reason to suspect the men of Lake-town of aiding the dwarves. Smaug, at the same time (like Fafnir with Sigurd), succeeds in undercutting Bilbo’s trust of the dwarves, pointing out how they are waiting outside and sending Bilbo in to do the dangerous work. Readers familiar with The Silmarillion or The Children of Húrin (2007) will recognize the parallel to Glaurung’s confrontation with Túrin. As Rogers and Rogers point out, Bilbo the burglar is more successful in resisting the dragon’s wiles than the traditional hero, Túrin, who succumbs easily, and with disastrous effects (74).

The traditional hero in The Hobbit is the man Bard. At first, he is simply a “grim-voiced man” who warns the men of Esgaroth that they must prepare for the coming of the dragon. Bard is a descendant of Girion, lord of Dale, before that city’s destruction. This, along with his residence in the Lake-town, associates him with the archetypal figure of the Fisher King in the Grail myth, whose restoration will reinvigorate the Waste Land. In fact, he is able to begin the process of healing by slaying the dragon that has laid waste the land. But he is only able to do this because, first, he has inherited his ancestors’ ability to understand the language of the thrushes; and, second, because Bilbo, in the unlikely role of Grail Knight, has been able to discover the necessary information (as the Grail Knight was required to ask the right question)—in this case regarding the weak spot in the soft underbelly of the dragon. That is the spot to which Bard directs his final arrow, the symbol of his heritage handed down from his fathers.

Even Bard, however, is not a completely traditional hero. Shippey points out that, in fact, it is not the battle rage of the berserker nor the one-onone heroism of Beowulf’s episodes of single combat that wins the day against Smaug. Rather, it is the modern and very British concept of discipline— the coolness of the well-trained soldier who does his duty under fire and is ready and prepared to carry out orders under any circumstances ( Road to Middle-earth 81–82). In the midst of the panic and of all others fleeing the city under Smaug’s attack, Bard keeps his own troops together and under control, steady in their defense of the city, and it is this discipline that enables him to fight to his last arrow. This is the sort of military discipline that had secured the British Empire through the 19th century, and it was the sort of training Lieutenant Tolkien would have had, and instilled in his own troops, at the Battle of the Somme. “It is discipline that does for Smaug,” Shippey says, so that “The death of Smaug, like Bilbo in the dark, lets us see courage in a modern way” ( Road 83).

In the meantime, of course, Bilbo and the dwarves have been exploring the halls of Thorin’s forefathers, filled with the dragon’s hoard. While Bilbo receives the wondrous gift of the elven mithril coat, and there is a good deal of joy in the treasure, this joy is purely a joy in earthly treasures, and Bilbo comes to see his companions’ limitations, perhaps in particular since he has been prepared to see them in this light by the dragon’s persuasive speech. Much of their motivation has been simply greed, and now Thorin is nearly mad with desire for the Arkenstone. That great jewel, the Heart of the Mountain, is for the dwarves a treasure of special, even mythic, proportions—it is essentially their Holy Grail. As Douglas Anderson points out, the word comes from the Old English word eorclansta¯n , meaning “precious stone”—a word appearing in line 1208 of Beowulf (in Tolkien, Annotated Hobbit 293).

By this time, Bilbo himself has matured to the extent that he has outgrown the dwarves, whose desire for the treasure seems excessive to him. As the narrator says, “Mr. Baggins kept his head more clear of the bewitchment of the hoard than the dwarves did” (228). As for the Arkenstone, Bilbo has already taken it and hidden it in his cloak. One might look at this as an act of greed on his part, and it is clear that he is momentarily overcome by the beauty of the great jewel. This may seem like the kind of “bewitchment” the narrator had denied in Bilbo. Nor is it clear why he does not yield the stone to Thorin when he knows that the dwarf lusts after it. It appears that Bilbo is not sure himself why he has kept the Arkenstone, which suggests that the act is another instance of Bilbo’s intuition, a part of his “luck.” He suspects that the stone will be important in the future and wants to be able to control what happens to it.

It is worth noting that in these chapters, specifically in chapters 12 and 13, Bilbo begins to quote his father as he thinks over how to respond to the challenges of the dragon. “‘[T]hird time pays for all’ as my father used to say,” he says when he understands that Thorin expects him to visit the dragon’s lair and thereby earn his reward, though he has already saved the dwarves twice (203). “‘Every worm has his weak spot,’ as my father used to say,” he says when he is about to go down into the dragon’s lair for the second time (using worm in the sense of the Old English wyrm, meaning “serpent” or “dragon”) (211). Finally, when he and the dwarves are trapped in the tunnel without food and their only way out is through the dragon’s lair, Bilbo quotes his father for the third time: “‘While there’s life there’s hope!’ as my father used to say” (223). It is surprising to see Bilbo quoting his father, the Baggins side of his personality, at the moments when he is about to confront the dragon, the most dangerous aspect of the adventure that he has come on at the urging of his Tookish side. But in fact, Bilbo’s adventures with trolls, goblins, wargs, and spiders, not to mention his dangerous meeting with Gollum, have clearly satisfied his Tookish side, and the maturation symbolized by the rebirths he has experienced in the past several chapters has meant, as well, the integration of all parts of his personality into a unified self. While the Bagginses may have been unexciting and incurious people, “solid and comfortable” as the narrator says early on (17), there is also something very practical and reliable about such people. And while they might not be anxious or do anything “queer” like travel on adventures, they could be counted on to do what was expected of them. In this sense, Bilbo’s Baggins side makes him solid and dependable, makes him willing to do the job he was hired to do, even though it means meeting a live dragon. It is this Baggins side that will not let Bilbo neglect his duty, and in this sense it might be remarked that Bilbo’s kind of courage is not much different from Bard’s—both rely on the more modern sense of duty and discipline to get their jobs done.

Without a doubt, the most remarkable aspect of these chapters is Bilbo’s selfless “betrayal” of the dwarves. In an action that completely redefines the concept of heroism that has been one of the novel’s major themes, Bilbo chooses to turn over the Arkenstone, for Thorin the embodiment of treasure and the power of his kingship, to the dwarves’ enemies. Green has defined Bilbo’s behavior in these chapters by reference to Carl Jung’s notion of mystical participation (Green 88). This is what Jung called the behavior associated with group identity, the unconscious identification of the individual will with the collective will, the extreme manifestation of which is mob behavior. Such identification causes individuals to accept or even participate in behavior that they would never agree to on their own, so that morality becomes a matter of popular opinion. As Green says, “the trouble with mystical participation is that the morality and taste of a single person is often superior to that of any group” (88). Through their various adventures to this point, Bilbo has grown to identify himself with the dwarves and their goals, but in order to become a completely individuated character (to use Jung’s terminology), Bilbo must separate himself from the group, particularly when the group is making unethical decisions.

This is indeed Bilbo’s finest hour, all the more remarkable for his ability to distance himself from his companions when he recognizes the error of their ways. At this point, Bilbo has reached his highest level of maturity and individuation. But these events mark Thorin’s lowest point. He has proclaimed himself King under the Mountain and assumed his hereditary role, including possession of the treasure. In this role, he is essentially acknowledged by the ravens that served his grandfather, but when the ravens advise him against his rash preparations for war, he ignores them. Bilbo recog-nizes that Thorin will not hear dissenting opinions, and his plan is the only thing that will prevent a disastrous battle. For Thorin is beyond reason: As Rogers and Rogers point out, he has taken what in traditional literature might be seen as a heroic stand, adamantly guarding his home and treasure against impossible odds (75). But, in fact, Thorin is denying the rights of all other claimants to the treasure despite the legitimate demands of Bard, whose slaying of the dragon made Thorin’s position possible. Green suggests that the dragon has simply been replaced by Thorin, whose madness he calls “dragon sickness,” a condition that involves both his mad determination to defend the mountain against impossible odds and his unquenchable lust for the Arkenstone, the symbol of his own power and ego. According to Green, Thorin is “Inflamed to suicidal stubbornness by belief that the Arkenstone is near,” and “would only become worse if he possessed it” (100). His confrontation with Bard’s herald, when he fires an arrow that strikes the herald’s shield, underscores his contrast with the true hero. Bard’s arrow had struck true, penetrating the dragon’s breast. Thorin’s has stuck quivering in the shield of his enemy. In Freudian terms, Thorin’s arrow, a phallic symbol, has shown itself impotent, and the kingdom he seeks to establish can only be sterile and infertile.

If Bilbo is the Grail Knight, he has here found a way to restore fertility to the wasteland created by the dragon—and perpetuated by the dragonlike greed in the heart of Thorin. In the original Grail legend, as related in Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte le Graal , Perceval fails to ask the right question (“Who is served by the Grail?”) and so fails in the quest. Bilbo, who has shown himself a champion questioner and solver of riddles in the Gollum episode as well as with the dragon, seems here not only to have asked the right question about the Arkenstone, but worked out the answer as well. No one will truly be served by returning the stone to Thorin. But the Arkenstone can serve all parties with an interest in the treasure by serving as a means by which war between dwarves, elves, and men can be avoided.

What may be even more surprising at the end of this episode is Bilbo’s declining the elf king’s offer of sanctuary. His sympathy toward Bombur, whom he fears will be blamed if he fails to return, and his overall loyalty to his friends, even though their cause is wrong, are admirable qualities, but more impressive than these is his forthright admission to Thorin that he has given the Arkenstone to the dwarves’ enemies. This full acceptance of the responsibility and willingness to take the full consequences of his decision mark the apex of Bilbo’s development. If heroism is a main theme of the novel, as Rogers and Rogers say, “the question of what a hero does is answered, no matter how unheroic the manner of his actions” (76).

Not surprisingly, Gandalf reappears at precisely the moment of Bilbo’s decision to return to the dwarves. Up until the moment when he left the company upon their entrance into Mirkwood, Gandalf had been the group’s leader and protector. But in Mirkwood and the elven king’s castle through their adventures with Smaug on the mountain, Bilbo has been serving in that capacity, tentatively at first but with more and more conviction until this moment, when the matured Bilbo has been forced to act the role of the adult in the face of Thorin’s petulant obsessions. As Green remarks, “Gandalf returns precisely when Bilbo has successfully enacted the Gandalf-role in his absence, when the hobbit no longer needs him” (101).

Chapter 16 contains two important biblical allusions. The title of the chapter, “A Thief in the Night,” alludes to the passage in 1 Thessalonians 5:2, where Paul tells the church that the day of the lord—i.e., judgment day—will come “like a thief in the night”—that is, unexpectedly. I would suggest that Tolkien was echoing, as well, Christ’s sermon near the end of the Gospel according to Matthew, wherein he advises his listeners to be watchful, for no one will know when the kingdom of heaven will come. In Matthew 24:23, he declares that if a householder had known when the thief would come, he would not have allowed the thief to break in. Bilbo is, of course, literally a thief in the night, but the allusion suggests something about his task: perhaps that it is a judgment on Thorin, for one thing; and perhaps that Bilbo, who brings peace by his sacrifice, is in this context a Christ figure—the one who will come, according to Paul, like a thief in the night. But the second allusion also recalls that same sermon in Matthew: In the parable of the talents, the Master says to his faithful servant, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21, JB), as Gandalf says to Bilbo at the end of this chapter. Thus, Bilbo is pronounced a faithful servant to the master (who represents the Lord in the parable). If Tolkien was indeed suggesting parallels between Bilbo’s actions and Christ’s sermon on the coming of the kingdom and the Day of Judgment, he was also alluding to a swift and unanticipated judgment. In the context of The Hobbit, that may in fact suggest the surprising attack by the goblins and wargs—in some ways a judgment on the others, who are so caught up in their quarrel among themselves that they have had no inkling of the coming danger.

While Bilbo’s heroics have prevented war, they have earned him Thorin’s sworn enmity. But, of course, there can be no lasting peace, as the armies of goblins and wargs descend upon the assembled armies unlooked for. What this says about peacemakers is uncertain. They may be blessed as the children of God according to the beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount, but it seems that as long as there is pure irrational evil in the world—of the sort represented by the goblins and wolves—then their efforts may be doomed to failure. There are times, it seems, when one must fight to defend life and freedom. And in those cases, one must choose the right side. In this way, Thorin redeems himself. It is clear to him that he must stand with elves and men in this battle, and his unexpected last charge from the mountain turns the tide of battle, at least momentarily. Although his attack will mean his death, it is also his salvation.

This sixth section ends like the previous sections: with a divine deliverance that comes without warning. This time, it is once again the eagles who come to the rescue and reinforce the armies of Bilbo’s side. Bilbo himself, invisible through the power of his ring, is knocked unconscious just as he proclaims the coming of the heavenly birds, and so he does not see Beorn himself arrive to sweep all before him. For the third time, Bilbo passes out, to awaken (as he did in Gollum’s cave and in Mirkwood) to a new stage of his maturity. But this third time (the critical number in all folk traditions) will usher Bilbo into a new world.

This final section of the novel brings a sense of closure to Bilbo’s adventures by, first, restoring relationships among the different races of people (men, elves, and dwarves) and between individuals among them (Bard, Thorin, and Bilbo); second, by taking us through Bilbo’s return journey, thereby closing the circle of his going forth and his coming back to the place he had left; and third, by demonstrating that Bilbo has come back a changed hobbit, a more mature and complete individual.

The conclusion begins with Thorin’s restoration to sanity and his reconciliation with Bilbo. Thorin’s realization during the battle of who his true allies were sparked him to heroic action, and although it cost him his own life and those of his close kinsmen Fili and Kili (who, in the fashion of medieval Germanic warriors, had lost their lives on the battlefield protecting their liege lord), he has been restored to sanity and healed of the dragonmadness that had obsessed him. For his part, Bilbo kneels before Thorin as King under the Mountain and receives his blessing—a mixture, as Shippey points out, of “ancient epic dignity and a modern wider awareness: on the one hand, ‘I go now to the halls of waiting, to sit beside my fathers,’ on the other, recognition of ‘the kindly West’ and ‘a merrier world’” ( J. R. R. Tolkien 44). It is a mixture that Bilbo himself now encompasses in his own now balanced personality. For his part, he leaves the tent and weeps, his tender, “kindly” side manifesting itself at this point. There is a kind of irony in the fact that Thorin is buried with the Arkenstone on his breast. It is not unlike the funeral pyre of Beowulf, which contains all the treasure of the dragon that he died to achieve. The treasure, the Arkenstone, was never anything more than a symbol, and its power as a symbol was generated largely by Thorin himself. Now that he is dead, the symbol will be buried with him, and he himself will become the Heart of the Mountain.

When the treasure is finally divided, Bilbo very sensibly realizes that he could never carry his fourteenth share back home with him, and he takes only two small chests. The journey home with Gandalf allows Bilbo, and the reader, to spend a little more time with Beorn (with whom they spend the winter months) and Elrond (whom they visit again in the spring), and it also allows Gandalf and Bilbo to recover the trolls’ treasure that they had buried on the first stage of their journey. Each of these help to bring a sense of closure to the narrative, as Bilbo comes full circle in returning home.

When Bilbo does arrive back in the Shire, however, it is clear that he is not simply returning to his old life. Bilbo himself is a different person, so his home is not the same, either. The first hint of this comes when he breaks into spontaneous song (“Roads go ever on and on”) at the sight of his own hill in the distance. Gandalf’s reaction to the song is, simply, “You are not the hobbit that you were” (284). This fact is underscored symbolically as Bilbo arrives at his own house and finds that his neighbors and relatives all believe he is dead and are auctioning off his furniture. His cousins, the SackvilleBagginses (who are in the process of “sacking” his home, or “villa”), refuse to believe that he is the real Bilbo Baggins. It has been suggested that here again, Bilbo’s story parallels that of Odysseus (as it has before, in the “Barrels out of Bond” chapter), as the returning warrior must rid his home of those who are ransacking it in the belief that he has died. In fact, the old Bilbo has died and been given new life as a completely individuated individual, one who is unafraid of his adventurous side but also, as he revealed in the last few chapters, one who sees the virtue of his practical and humble side as well.

But Tolkien does not end the story here. In one final coda, Gandalf and Balin visit Bilbo years later, and he learns how things have turned out under the mountain, where a new master has taken charge of Lake-town and all are living in peace and prosperity. The old songs, Bilbo notes, “have turned out to be true, after a fashion” (286), and Gandalf chides him for his skepticism. Prophecies, the wizard says, are no less true just because one is himself involved with bringing them to pass. The question raised has to do with destiny and free will, and Tolkien hints here at a characteristically medieval view of the matter. God’s foreknowledge, which would be the origin of any true prophecy, does not preclude free will, since God, from his eternal vantage point, sees what humans will do without causing those actions and shapes his providential plan accordingly. It was an argument made famous by Boethius in the sixth century, and it was Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy that popularized the views throughout medieval Europe. In the end, just as he had throughout the novel, Tolkien bases The Hobbit on a well-mixed variety of medieval sources.

Although he does not appear until very late in the novel, Bard is a character of major significance, as the one who actually slays the dragon Smaug. Bard is first introduced as a “grim-voiced fellow” (235) who warns the people of Esgaroth, the Lake-town, to prepare for the attack of the dragon, and who later commands a troop of bowmen who, displaying a very British kind of discipline, defend the city to the last man as the dragon sweeps over them breathing fire.

Bard is descended from Girion, the last lord of Dale, the city destroyed by the dragon when he also destroyed the dwarves’ kingdom of Erebor and captured the Lonely Mountain and its hidden treasure. As a true descendant of the royal line, he understands the speech of the thrushes, and at the vital moment of the dragon attack, the thrush informs him of the weak spot in the dragon’s belly. Bard sends his last black arrow, one inherited from his princely forebears, straight and true into Smaug’s heart.

Afterward, Bard leads an army of men, allied with the elven king of Mirkwood, to the Lonely Mountain to claim a share of the treasure, and he narrowly avoids a disastrous war with the dwarves when he and they are forced to fight the Battle of the Five Armies against goblins and wargs. Bard ultimately rebuilds Dale and reestablishes his kingship there. In some ways, Bard recalls the Fisher King of the Grail legend, whose restoration to the throne heals the dragon’s wasteland and brings fertility back to the kingdom. As the tale’s traditional hero, Bard also acts as a foil to Bilbo, whose heroism is of a very different variety but is real nonetheless.

Bilbo Baggins

Bilbo is a hobbit—a small person half the height of a human, with large hairy feet— who lives in a well-furnished hole in The Hill. Hobbits are generally a highly provincial group, devoted to the comforts of home (particularly their meals) and to small, everyday occurrences. Bilbo himself is the son of Bungo Baggins, a very respectable hobbit, and Belladonna Took, the beautiful daughter of the Old Took, whose family was reputed to have fairy ancestors. From them Bilbo has inherited the luxurious hobbit hole called Bag End. He has also inherited the two sides of his nature: the stolid, respectable Baggins side and the adventurous Took side. At the beginning of the novel, the middle-aged Bilbo has managed to suppress his adventurous Took side for all his adult life, but it is awakened by the wizard Gandalf, who chooses him to be the 14th member of an expedition for treasure to the Lonely Mountain with Thorin Oakenshield and 12 other dwarves, for whom he is to act as burglar. The journey becomes not only the story of adventure and a quest for treasure, but the story of Bilbo’s development as a character, from the protected infantilism of his womblike hole to the heroism of one who confronts a dragon.

Bilbo makes a rather poor showing early in the quest, though he survives near capture by trolls through his own luck and Gandalf’s protection, and he receives the talisman of the elven blade Sting after this initiation into the heroic role. Later, in the goblins’ cave fortress, Bilbo must be carried by the dwarves as they flee from the goblins, until he is lost and knocked unconscious. After he awakes, he finds a ring (again, through his uncanny luck) and is confronted by the creature Gollum, whom he defeats in a riddle contest by asking what he has in his pocket (it is the ring, which was Gollum’s treasure). He escapes from Gollum and the goblins through the power of the ring, which makes him invisible, and through this adventure, he gains confidence. After Gandalf leaves the company before they plunge into the darkness of Mirkwood, Bilbo rescues the dwarves from giant spiders through his invisibility and his short sword Sting. When Thorin Oakenshield is captured by Wood-elves, the other dwarves begin to look to Bilbo for leadership. After the other dwarves are captured, Bilbo finds a way to rescue them from the elven king’s dungeons, and he sends them down the river packed in empty barrels.

By now Bilbo has become the group’s de facto leader, and it is he who is sent into the lair of the dragon, from whom he steals a cup. The dragon, Smaug, engages Bilbo in a conversation and learns something about the dwarves from this, but Bilbo learns more: He sees a weak spot in the underbelly of the dragon that the birds eventually tell the archer Bard about, and Bard is able to destroy the dragon based on the intelligence Bilbo has found. By this time, Bilbo has embraced his adventurous Took side but has also begun to quote from his father, accepting some of the wisdom of his more staid and provincial Baggins side. He has reached a state of maturity that Carl Jung called individuation. He has also fulfilled most of the expectations of the archetypal hero of myth and legend.

Bilbo’s greatest heroic act, one that demonstrates his ultimate personal development, occurs after the dragon’s death, when he and Thorin’s company are besieged in the mountain by the forces of men and elves who want their just share of the treasure. Bilbo’s gift to the elven king of the Arkenstone of Thrain, the one great jewel of the treasure for which Thorin will do anything, ensures that the standoff will end peacefully—or would if the army of goblins and wargs did not arrive just when peace was about to conclude. In this act, Bilbo finds a higher morality than that of his peers and stands apart from them as a true hero. When he returns to his home at Bag End, he finds that he has been presumed dead and that his cousins are about to take possession of his home. In fact, he has changed and is not the same hobbit he was when he left. Although he is able to get his home back and settle back into his comfortable life again, he never loses the reputation of one who is a friend of elves and wizards.

Gandalf/Pinterest

Gandalf the wizard had his origins in a picture postcard that Tolkien brought back with him from a holiday in Switzerland in 1911. The picture, from a painting by J. Madelener called Der Berggeist (or “spirit of the mountain”), shows an old man with a white beard, wearing a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat (Carpenter, Tolkien 51).

Gandalf has encouraged the expedition of Thorin and Company, and he apparently recognizes something in Bilbo that others cannot see when he recommends the hobbit as the 14th member of the expedition. It is Gandalf who gives Thorin the map of Thror, which holds the key to entering the dragon’s den.

Aside from being the moving force behind events in the book, Gandalf takes the part of the archetypal “Wise Old Man” figure of the story, like Merlin in the Arthurian legend. He is a protective father figure who helps the group out of predicaments with the trolls and the goblins, but he leaves them at a crucial time—their entry into Mirkwood. In terms of Bilbo’s growth as a character, Gandalf must leave the company, since Bilbo can never mature into the hero he becomes unless he leaves the protection of the father figure and is forced to face dangers on his own. It is only when Bilbo has reached the pinnacle of his heroic stature that Gandalf reappears to pronounce the judgment “Well done” upon Bilbo’s actions (258).

Gandalf seems less powerful here than he will be in The Lord of the Rings. Along with Bilbo, he hides from the trolls and bests them only through trickery. He cannot defend the company against the army of goblins and wargs and is caught in the trees with them. He is, however, a respected counselor and adviser to those in power. Still, there is in The Hobbit a small indication of his role in The Lord of the Rings. He speaks with Thorin in the first chapter about finding the dwarf’s father in the dungeons of “the Necromancer” (37), and he later tells the dwarves that he cannot accompany them to Mirkwood because of “some pressing business away south” (137), which turns out to be helping to expel this Necromancer (who is, in fact, Sauron) from his fortress of Dol Guldur in the south of Mirkwood. In these episodes, Gandalf can be seen to presage his broader and more powerful role in the trilogy.

The creature Gollum appears in only one chapter of The Hobbit —“Riddles in the Dark”—but he is one of the most memorable of the novel’s characters and one who becomes vitally important in The Lord of the Rings . Here, Gollum is a creature who lives by stealth in an underground cave, subsisting on the slimy fish he finds in the underground lake or on the flesh of goblins that have become separated from their fellows and whom Gollum kills and eats through the power of invisibility that he has from his ring. The ring, he says, was his birthday present, and he refers to it as his “precious”—a term he also seems to use when talking to himself (a habit he seems to have developed from long years of living alone in the darkness). Thus, he either personifies the ring in his own mind or sees it as an extension of himself. This explains why he is so devastated when he finds he has lost the ring, and why he hates Bilbo so ferociously when he realizes that Bilbo has, in fact, found it and used it to become invisible to escape his vengeance.

In The Hobbit, the origins of the creature Gollum are never explored, nor is the origin of the ring itself. The name Gollum presumably is an imitation of the sound the creature makes in its throat when it swallows, although the name also sounds like the legendary golem of Jewish folklore—a mindless inhuman automaton. But there is some humanity in Gollum, who seems to enjoy the riddle contest with Bilbo (at least as long as he thinks he will be able to eat Bilbo in the end) as an actual social event that allows him to interact with another sentient creature for the first time in untold years. Gollum’s mind is still keen, if twisted, and he is able to solve Bilbo’s riddles and pose difficult ones of his own, although his riddles tend to be about things he knows best: a mountain, fish, and time. In some ways, Gollum is also a foil to Bilbo, reflecting perhaps in an extreme way on what Bilbo would have become if he had never left his own comfortable underground home: completely self-centered and thinking only about his next meal and the personal treasures he has hoarded.

Smaug is the great dragon that, in the days of Thorin’s grandfather, destroyed the dwarves’ kingdom of Erebor as well as the city of Dale at the foot of the Lonely Mountain, drove out the dwarves and men, and claimed the great treasure trove of the dwarves as his own. In The Hobbit, revenge on the dragon and reclaiming the treasure are the ultimate goals of the expedition of Thorin and company, although no one seems to have had any idea what, precisely, to do about the dragon that sits brooding on the treasure hoard. He is depicted as a great serpent with huge wings and fiery breath that he uses to burn and flatten the city of Lake-town in the novel. His hide is thick and resistant to blades or arrows, and although his underbelly is soft, his years of lying upon the treasure have encrusted it with precious stones that serve as an impenetrable armor.

Smaug knows every item in his hoard intimately, and he is infuriated when he finds that Bilbo has snatched a drinking cup from it. His keen sense of smell detects the invisible Bilbo when the hobbit comes down the tunnel to his hoard the second time, and his conversation with Bilbo at that point reveals the dragon to be intelligent and subtle. He sees through Bilbo’s riddles and plants seeds of doubt in Bilbo’s mind concerning the dwarves’ appreciation of his services. Smaug is also vengeful, attempting to destroy the dwarves and all their ponies after the theft of his cup and traveling south to destroy Esgaroth, the Lake-town, for the village’s part in aiding the dwarves and Bilbo on their journey. Of course, this results in his death, for Bilbo has seen the weak spot on his left breast during their conversation, and that information is carried to the archer Bard by an old thrush. Bard’s arrow strikes Smaug’s heart and kills him.

Tolkien based the character of the dragon chiefly on two sources. One was the third section of Beowulf, which depicts a great fire-breathing dragon who sits brooding on a treasure hoard, destroys a kingdom because of the theft of a cup from his hoard, and ultimately is killed by King Beowulf. The other source was the dragon Fafnir in Old Norse literature, particularly his depiction in “The Lay of Fafnir,” from the Elder Edda, where the dragon (wounded in his soft underbelly) is depicted as devious and tries to plant doubts in Sigurd’s mind about his mentor, the dwarf Regin. Tolkien uses the same idea of an insinuating beast whose hypnotic voice attempts to confuse and mislead his victim in his story of Túrin, both in The Silmarillion and in The Children of Húrin.

Oakenshield Thorin is the grandson of Thrain, the last dwarvish King under the Mountain in Erebor and heir to that kingdom. When he was a young man, the dragon Smaug drove him, along with his father and grandfather, from the Lonely Mountain, usurping their fortress and the great treasure they had accumulated there. At the beginning of The Hobbit , Thorin plans to lead 12 of his followers on an expedition to his ancestral home in an attempt to take revenge on the dragon and to recover some portion of his family’s lost treasure. In this he has the help and guidance of the wizard Gandalf the Grey, who recommends the hobbit Bilbo Baggins as a 14th member of the expedition.

Thorin acts as leader of the expedition, although he is not particularly effective. He speaks authoritatively, but in the beginning it is Gandalf who sees the company through its difficulties, and eventually it is Bilbo who rescues the dwarves from their difficulties and who actually confronts the dragon. In large part, Thorin is a foil to Bilbo: Whereas Bilbo is a humbler, self-effacing figure whose growing confidence never manifests itself as bluster or egoism, Thorin is highly conscious of his birth and his position, stubbornly resisting any perceived diminution of his authority. His obstinate silence in the face of the elven king’s questions about his presence in Mirkwood may seem like bold defiance, but it is part of a tendency that ultimately nearly destroys him and his companions.

Like most dwarves, Thorin has a deep fondness for treasure, and when he has gained back the dragon’s hoard and reclaimed his hereditary position as King under the Mountain, that fondness is transformed into pure greed, and his natural haughtiness is twisted into arrogance, ingratitude, and rashness. He refuses to share the treasure with the lake men who helped him on his journey, or with Bard, the dragon slayer, defying their besieging army and provoking them to attack. When he learns that Bilbo has given the besieging army the Arkenstone of Thrain, chief object of Thorin’s desire, he breaks with the hobbit who has saved his life, disavowing him.

Thorin redeems himself in the end, however, and recognizes the madness into which his greed has led him. He becomes a true leader, charging from his mountain fortress with his followers and rallying men, elves, and dwarves to him as he leads a final charge in the Battle of the Five Armies. Dying from his wounds, in his final meeting with Bilbo he renounces his harsh words and recognizes the hobbit’s simple wisdom and courage as preferable to his own behavior. He is buried under the Lonely Mountain, with the Arkenstone on his breast.

Analysis of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Novels

Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Analysis of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Fantasy Novels and Novelists

Further Reading Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2008. Carpenter, Humphrey. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977. Couch, Christopher L. “From Under Mountains to Beyond Stars: The Process of Riddling in Leofric’s The Exeter Book and The Hobbit.” Mythlore 51 (Autumn 1987): 9–13, 55. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957. Green, William H. The Hobbit: A Journey into Maturity. New York: Twayne, 1995. Jung, Carl G. Four Archetypes: Mother, Rebirth, Spirit, Trickster. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. Lewis, Paul W. “Beorn and Tom Bombadil: A Tale of Two Heroes.” Mythlore 97/98 (Spring/Summer 2007): 145–159. Matthews, Dorothy. “The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins.” In A Tolkien Compass, edited by Jared Lobdell, 27–40. LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1975. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd ed. Translated by Laurence Scott. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Rogers, Deborah Webster, and Ivor A. Rogers. J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980. Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. ———. J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Tolkien, J. R. R. The Annotated Hobbit: Revised and Expanded Edition. Edited by Douglas A. Anderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. ———. The Hobbit. Rev. ed. New York: Ballantine, 1966. ———. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Humphrey Carpenter. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Wytenbroek, J. R. “Rites of Passage in The Hobbit.” Mythlore 13, no. 4 (Summer 1987): 5–8, 40.

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Essays on The Hobbit

Prompt examples for "the hobbit" essays, the hero's journey in "the hobbit".

Examine the hero's journey as experienced by Bilbo Baggins in "The Hobbit." How does Bilbo evolve as a character throughout his adventure, and what challenges and transformations does he undergo?

Character Analysis: Bilbo Baggins

Analyze the character of Bilbo Baggins. Explore his personality, motivations, and the role he plays in the story. How does Bilbo's character development drive the narrative?

Themes of Friendship and Loyalty

Discuss the themes of friendship and loyalty in "The Hobbit." How do the relationships between characters like Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves illustrate these themes?

Tolkien's World-Building

Explore J.R.R. Tolkien's world-building in "The Hobbit." Discuss the creation of Middle-earth, its races, creatures, and geography. How does this world enhance the storytelling?

The Role of the Ring

Analyze the significance of the One Ring in "The Hobbit." How does it connect to the larger narrative of Tolkien's Middle-earth, and what effects does it have on the characters who possess it?

Conflict and Resolution

Discuss the major conflicts in "The Hobbit" and how they are resolved. How does Bilbo contribute to resolving these conflicts, and what does this reveal about his character?

Moral and Ethical Choices

Examine the moral and ethical choices made by characters in "The Hobbit." What dilemmas do they face, and how do their decisions shape the course of the story?

Symbolism in "The Hobbit"

Identify and analyze symbols used throughout "The Hobbit." How do these symbols enrich the narrative and convey deeper meanings within the story?

Comparative Analysis: "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings"

Compare and contrast "The Hobbit" with J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" series. How do the two works differ in tone, themes, and storytelling style?

Impact and Legacy of "The Hobbit"

Discuss the lasting impact of "The Hobbit" on literature and popular culture. How has Tolkien's work influenced the fantasy genre and subsequent generations of authors?

Themes in J.r.r. Tolkien's "The Hobbit"

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The Theme of Heroism in The Hobbit by J. R. Tolkien

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The Hobbit: Bilbo Baggins Becoming a Transformed Man

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The Hobbit Essays

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In J. R. R Tolkien’s award-winning 1937 novel The Hobbit, it is extremely evident that there are a multitude of elements that support the conventions of the fantasy genre. Most recurring themes, events and characters support the fantasy genre. There is a continuous quest all throughout the novel...

1 102 words

The Hobbit, By J. R. R Tolkien is definitely one of history’s most important fantasy novels. It was written in the Great Depression, a time of grief and distress, and Tolkien gave the novel’s readers what they lacked, hope, courage and a light at the end of the tunnel. The book alludes mythical...

I will be talking about Gandalf’s role in the story and how he is like a father figure to Bilbo. The Hobbit was wrote by J. R. R. Tolkien. We first see Gandalf at the beginning of the story when he meets Bilbo at his hobbit hole. The first impression the story gives us about Gandalf is he is wise...

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Essay Topics and Study Questions on The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (08.01.14 by Robert Morris) - var disqus_shortname = 'tolkienlibrary'; (function () { var s = document.createElement('script'); s.async = true; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.src = 'https://' + disqus_shortname + '.disqus.com/count.js'; var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = 'https://tolkienlibrary.disqus.com/embed.js'; (document.getElementsByTagName('HEAD')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('BODY')[0]).appendChild(s); }()); Comments

Suggested topics for essay

1. Describe how Tolkien relies on humor to portray the adventures in The Hobbit . Which authorial techniques does he use to bring a light element to the most serious parts of the plot? Does this style of writing make The Hobbit a comedy? 2. How does Tolkien portray the importance of wealth? What is the attitude towards material goods and property of the characters in The Hobbit ? Whose approach is praised and approved in the book and why? 3. What factors does the author use to define the characters’ identity in The Hobbit ? Are the persons in the plot determined by race, family and other static factors, or they have power over their personal development?

Study questions

1. Does Thorin fall under the definition of a ‘hero’? Is the death of this character expected and justified after his actions throughout the novel?

Thorin is a complex individual that shows both lovable and repulsive characteristics. By the start of the Battle of the Five Armies, Thorin Oakenshield deserves disrespect and antipathy by most readers and many of the characters in the book. However, his personality also has aspects worthy of respect, especially when he shows exceptional bravery and determination while reclaiming the treasure of his ancestors from Smaug. He rises and falls throughout the book, and his failings are mostly associated to the common characteristics of all dwarves – imperious ego and greed for gold. Thorin’s greatest sin is the ingratitude he shows to the characters that support him, such as the lake men who gave their lives for the victory over Smaug. Thorin is so adamant about the legitimate right to that gold, that he is dishonorable to his benefactors. However, to his credit, he does regret his mistakes in the end and admits his wrongs to Bilbo. However, it is nearly impossible to list this character under the ‘heroic’ category. The main thing he lacks is the ability to think of plans and execute them. Bilbo is the one who gets him through the difficulties that come at his way. 

2. Bilbo seems to be completely happy in the hobbit community, but he is not entirely accepted there. At the end of the novel, does he belong in Hobbiton? How can the relation between simple life and heroism be balanced? How does Tolkien approach this issue?

Heroism seems contradictory to the simple life at the beginning of the novel, but these two concepts become complementary at the end of the novel. Bilbo’s resumption of the simple life after proving his courage and wisdom is part of his heroic characteristics. As Thorin says, if all proud warriors learned from the way hobbits live, the world would be a much happier place. When Bilbo returns to Hobbiton and embraces simple life at the end, he proves that evil is obsolete. Even though Bilbo doesn’t belong in the community as far as the hobbits are concerned, there is no other place he belongs to more to than Hobbiton.

3. Are humans portrayed as a good race? Where do they fit in between the races of Middle-Earth?

All races of Middle-Earth possess very distinguishing, constant characteristics. Humans have goodness in them, but this aspect of their personality varies. Tolkien presents humans as creatures capable of determining their own graciousness. Bard, as a great example, is grim, but a kind man that can easily be dubbed as a hero. The old Master of Lake Town, on the other hand, is devious, calculating, and selfish in a way that is almost pitiful when he dies seizing the stolen gold out in the desert. Although the good in humans often prevails, they are somewhere in the middle between the goblins, who are the really evil ones, and elves, who are the true good race.

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“The Hobbit” by Tolkien, Essay Example

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The Hobbit book by J.R.R. Tolkien is set in Middle Earth and was first published in early 1937 (Tolkien 11).  The book mainly illustrates and a comfort hobbit-hole that belongs to Bilbo Baggins, who is the main character in the story.  The books also mainly deal with children literature and mostly involve a number of similarities as the Beowulf story (Tolkien 13).  This is because hobbit Bilbo Baggins struggles to win a share of a treasure guarded by the dragon just like in the Beowulf story. Bilbo journey takes him to various sinister settings in the story and allows him reach high levels of maturity as depicted at the end of the story (Tolkien 15).   Therefore, the main purpose and aim of this paper is to focus on the development of Bilbo as the chief character in the book and the changes that take place along his journey at particular moments in the story. The paper will also evaluate whether these are bad or good changes as depicted in the story.

Bilbo Character Development in “The Hobbit” Story by J.R.R Tolkien

Bilbo is the main character and the chief protagonist in the story (Tolkien 21).  He is depicted by the author as one of the courageous and heroic character in the story (Harris 72). Although various characters are corrupted by greed at the beginning of the story, Bilbo maintains high integrity in the story (Tolkien 31).  At beginning and start of the story, he is depicted as the most comfortable hobbits, and he loves foods, drinks as well as security. This is indicated when he snug some little hole at the Bad end especially under the hill (Tolkien 14).

Later in the story, the author introduced Bilbo family life including his involvement with Gandalf under the mountain (Corliss 11). This later gives him gradual development and transformation from a small size homebody to a brave, courageous and confident hero. He is able to hold the dwarves group together due to his cunning tricks, and this allows him to save and rescue them from spiders and wood elves in the Mirkwood (Tolkien 131). After finding his way to the mountain, he leads the group to the treasure; he discovers the Smaug’s weak spot and also attempts to thwart Thorin’s greed (Parman 36).  Through this, he brings peace to the elves, humans, and the feuding dwarves (Tolkien 111).

In that sense, Tolkien portrays Bilbo development and changes in the story by depicting him as a small man at the start of the story but later develops into a heroic, confident and brave character in the story (Parman 34). Despite remarkable deeds, Bilbo as the character does not change him (Epps 122). Furthermore, he realizes he has unique and good characters but he does not act arrogantly (Tolkien 167). Thorin also manages to learn how to survive in the outer world from heroic deeds and characters (Tolkien 173). Therefore, due to his ability to save the humans and the elves, it is clear that Bilbo developed into a hero in the story.

Works Cited

Corliss, Richard. “Review: Do Enlist In The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies.” Time.Com (2014): 11.

Epps, Peter G. “Joseph Pearce. Bilbo’s Journey: Discovering the Hidden Meaning of the Hobbit.” Christianity & Literature 64.1 (2014): 122-126.

Harris, Jennifer. “A Hobbit Journey: Discovering the Enchantment of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.” Library Journal 137.18 (2012): 72.

Parman, Sue. “A Song for J. R. R. Tolkien.” Antioch Review 73.1 (2015): 34-44.

Tolkien, J. R. “The Hobbit”.  (1937): 11-410

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A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-7

Chapters 8-13

Chapters 14-19

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Does Bilbo’s character develop new principles and virtues over the course of the narrative , or do the events of the journey simply bring out the virtue that was dormant within Bilbo the whole time? Use at least three examples from the text to support your answer.

Is Gandalf a wise and prudent friend, or a manipulative puppet master directing Bilbo and the dwarves however he sees fit? Discuss at least three instances of Gandalf’s stratagems.

Is Thorin a good leader, or is he simply the leader by default based on his ancestry?

Related Titles

By J. R. R. Tolkien

Farmer Giles of Ham

Leaf by Niggle

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Return of the King

The Children of Húrin

The Fellowship of the Ring

The Silmarillion

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“The Hobbit”: Book vs. Movie Essay

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Introduction

Events deleted or changed in the movie, changes that enhance the film, political imagery in the hobbit book and film.

In the book, The Hobbit, the author, JR Tolkien tells a story of short, contented humanlike creatures called hobbits. In this fantasy story, Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, a Gandalf, a wizard, and a group of midgets set out on an adventure to repossess stolen treasure hidden in the Lonely Mountain. A fiery dragon, Smaug, claims ownership of the treasure after acquiring it during an earlier invasion. The band of fourteen endures hostile weather conditions, constant attacks and abductions, and starvation on their way to the Lonely Mountain. After fighting many battles, they recover the dwarves’ treasure and begin their journey back to the hobbit lands. The dwarves share some of their treasure with Bilbo for his role in its recovery. Bilbo returns to his hobbit-hole a changed hobbit. It is evident that the ‘adventure’ to the Lonely Mountain transformed Bilbo into a wise and knowledgeable hobbit.

The book was adapted into a film named The Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey . However, several modifications and additions to the screenplay make the film different from the Hobbit book. The names of places, characters, and events are the same in both the book and the movie. The plot has also been conserved in the movie. Striking differences between the Hobbit book and its movie version relate to the use of imagery, dialogue, and alliteration. This essay compares and contrasts the Hobbit book and the movie based on the differences and similarities between the two.

In chapter one, the events preceding the quest (the unexpected party) have been modified in the movie. The book’s description of the Hobbits’ stature and landscape has been changed in the screenplay. The book describes them as being half the size of humans, but some scenes of the movie depict Bilbo’s as having the same height as that of dwarf. As the story begins, Gandalf enters through Bilbo’s door and requests him to join the dwarves on an adventure to the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo flatly rejects this offer. In contrast, the movie begins with “an unexpected party”, which follows the scene where Bilbo refuses Gandalf’s offer. Although Bilbo declines the offer, out of his kind-heartedness, he invites him for tea (supper) the following day, but soon rues his decision. This does not happen in the movie. Gandalf just shows up at the party without Bilbo’s invitation.

Moreover, in the book, the story is narrated from the author’s perspective. In contrast, in the movie, the story revolves around Bilbo and the dwarves. A prologue in the movie introduces the audience to the story. Tolkien reveals to the reader the history of the Middle Earth, the origin of the Hobbits, and the Dwarves’ current situation in his book. This sets out the context for the story. After declining the offer, Bilbo enters his hobbit-hole and shuts his “round green door”, which Gandalf marks to enable the dwarves to locate the hobbit.

The same events are replicated in the movie. The dwarves come to Bolbi’s home in five different groups: Dwalin Balin, Kili and Fili, Ori, Gloin, Oin, Dori, and Nori, Bifur, Bombur, Bofur, and Thorin. Each group dons brightly coloured attires and carry musical instruments. In the novel, Thorin is the last one to join the “unexpected party”. In contrast, in the film adaptation, Thorin enters the party in the company of three dwarves, Bombur, Bofur, and Bifur. In addition, the visitors carry no tools.

The events of the unexpected party have also been changed in the film adaptation. The book describes Bag-End, Bilbo’s abode, as having a cellar (room) that serves as a liquor store. During the party, Bilbo prepares and serves food to his guests. In comparison, in the movie, the dwarves serve themselves and help clean up the place after the party. A soothing music that involves different instruments, including flutes, a drum, clarinets, viols, and a harp, is played after the party. The music they played sounds good as the attendees, including Gandalf, dance to its rhythm. However, in the movie, dwarves’ music sounds like a dirge. The attendees do not dance to it. Moreover, unlike in the text, the dwarves use no musical instruments in the music.

In the book, Gandalf remarks that a goblin, named Azog, killed Thorin’s father and grandfather during the great Dwarf-Goblin War. However, in the movie, Azog, though missing an arm, appears well and alive. Moreover, in the book, the illustration of the dragon, Smaug, is red in colour. Although Bilbo later describes the dragon as golden-red, the map hanging on the wall of the Bag-End depicts him as red. In contrast, the movie depicts the dragon as simply a sketch with no colour. Moreover, a map hanging on the Bag-End walls (the Hobbiton area) is also missing in the film adaptation. After the party, Bilbo ushers his guests to different rooms to sleep before retiring to his bed for the night. Thorin is heard singing as Bilbo goes to sleep. The same events are replicated in the film adaptation.

The characters in the book also differ from those in the movie. In the movie, the elderly Bilbo tells his nephew, Frodo (played by Elijah Wood), about his epic journey to distant lands. However, Frodo is not in the Tolkien’s novel and thus, the conversation with his uncle is missing. Moreover, Tolkien’s description of the Hobbits’ appearance is not reflected in the film adaptation. Tolkien describes them as short, rotund creatures (middle-aged) with long brown fingers and deep chuckles. In Jackson’s adaptation of the book, the characters are neither short nor fat.

Another incident that is missing in the film adaptation relates to Bilbo’s attempt to escape from his hobbit hole to boycott the impending adventure. In the book, the author writes that Bilbo schemed to avoid accompanying the dwarves in their quest to recover their lost treasures. This description is missing in the film adaptation. Bilbo’s ancestry is also missing in the movie. Tolkien explains that Bilbo, in many ways, bore remarkable resemblance to his mother, Belladonna Took. Took is said to be half-fairy, which gave her magic powers. Bilbo’s maternal ancestry, though unconfirmed, gave him a knack for mystic adventures. This explains why the dwarves want him to accompany them in the current quest.

Furthermore, some events have been introduced in the movie. Radagast the Brown, a wizard, plays a major role in the movie. The film depicts him as a gentle and queer person who loves animals. On one occasion, he distracts a group of goblins in pursuit of Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarfs allowing them to escape. In contrast, Radagast does not feature much in the book. Another scene that is portrayed differently in both the film and the book involves Bilbo’s interaction with a group of Trolls. In the book, Bilbo follows the Trolls into the woods and steals items from them while in the film the object of his pursuit is to free the dwarves’ horses, which the goblins had taken.

The pursuit takes Bilbo, the dwarves, and Gendalf into the Troll’s cave, where they discover three magic swords: the Orcrist, the Glamdring, and the Sting. In the film, Gandalf gives Bilbo the Sting (a Hobbit Sword). However, in the book, Bilbo selects the Sting by himself and thus, decides his own fate.

Another striking difference between the Hobbit book and film relates to the disappearance of the ponies. The novel states that the Trolls took away and ate the ponies that belonged to Bilbo, the dwarves, and Gandalf. However, in the film it is revealed that the ponies vanished or “bolted” away. Moreover, during their quest, the group arrives at the elves’ Rivendell abode where they are given food and shelter. In contrast, in the film, the dwarves refuse to put up with the elves and request Gandalf to seek alternative shelter. Thus, the film, unlike the novel, depicts them as an ungrateful and disgruntled lot. In addition, throughout the film, Thorin and Bilbo seem to harbour ill feelings against each other.

Thorin criticizes Bilbo’s comfortable lifestyle at his home and believes he cannot withstand the challenges associated with the quest. Their hostility is revealed through their confrontations in various scenes of the film. In contrast, the two do not seem to harbour any ill feelings against each other in the book version.

Some alterations, additions, and deletions enhance the screenplay. Since the plot remains the same in both the book and the film, these changes serve as enhancements that make the film more appealing and clearer to the audience. One such alteration relates to the appearance of the Hobbits, the wizards, and the dwarves. In the novel, the Hobbits are depicted as short, rotund creatures while the dwarves appear short, hairy, and unattractive. Moreover, the wizards appear old and frail while the Gollum is depicted as an ugly beast with large eyes.

In contrast, in the adapted film, Peter Jackson makes many changes to the appearance of the characters. Thorin, although short, has no curly beards or additional arm-like structures on the nostrils like the rest of the dwarves. Additionally, Jackson gives this character a deep voice, which is characteristic of heroes. By comparison, the novel depicts Thorin as an unattractive, greedy, selfish, and vengeful individual whose intention for taking part in the quest is to kill Smaug and obtain the gold. The alterations made in the film are consistent with the characterizations present in Hollywood blockbuster movies. In addition, any adventure should have a hero who is appealing and strong to lead the quest. Thus, Thorin’s depiction in the film makes sense.

Another scene that greatly enhances the film relates to Bilbo’s retrieval of a gold ring. The film describes Gollum attempting to kill and eat a goblin. A struggle ensues as the goblin tries to free itself. During this struggle, a gold ring falls from Gollum’s pocket onto the ground. Bilbo retrieves and keeps it. The ring would later become useful in the quest. In contrast, in the novel, the details of how the ring disappears are left out. The novel only says that Bilbo retrieves it from the cave floor. The readers cannot know how the ring got lost in the first place. Thus, the alterations in the film improve the clarity of the plot and make the story more appealing to the audience.

In the final scenes of the film, angry giant wolves, named “wargs”, corner the dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo. They climb tall trees to escape from the “wargs”, which continue to snap at them. To send them away, Gandalf lights some pine branches and throws them at the wags. He manages to send the “wargs” away, but, inadvertently, sets the trees on fire. Gandalf beckons the Eagles to come and save them from the raging inferno.

However, before the Eagles could arrive, the Pale Orc, the goblin leader, joins the “wargs” in trying to capture the wizard, the dwarves, and Bilbo who remains perched in one tree. Their weight makes the tree to bend dangerously low as the Pale Orc and the “wargs” wait for them to fall. In this scene, Bilbo draws his sword (the Sting) and attempts to fight off the “wargs”. Before the “wargs” could snatch him, the Eagles arrive and rescue the company from them. These additional events help bring a final climax to a scene, which in the novel version, is largely uneventful.

Moreover, in the novel, as Bilbo is carried away to safety, he appears terrified and shaken. The eagles tell him that he is out of danger. In contrast, in the film adaptation, the eagles have no ability to speak; they only lead him into safety. In this regard, Jackson depicts Bilbo as a confident hero whose fearless actions saves the dwarves and the wizards. In contrast, Tolkien portrays Bilbo as a lazy individual who cannot be useful during fights or wars. Given his fight with the “wargs” portrays him as hero.

In both the Hobbit novel and film, the portrayal of the events and characters has strong political connotations. They make political statements that represent or satirize the society. The sole purpose of the quest in The Hobbit was to retrieve certain ancestral treasures that would improve the livelihoods of the dwarves, as a community. The treasures would restore the fallen kingdom and enhance the livelihoods of the subjects. Thorin, the dwarves’ de facto leader and heir to the throne, had lost the Crown to a fiery dragon living on the Lonely Mountain.

Moreover, the dwarves’ ancestral town, Dale, was destroyed during the invasion of Smaug. Thus, Thorin knows that by regaining the treasure, he will reclaim the dwarves’ lost lands and wealth. The object of the treasure hunt is much clearer in the book than in the film, as the events in the book revolve around the quest to retrieve the treasure trove with Thorin as the leader.

The Hobbit also depicts greed and corruption among the ruling political class. Smaug and Gollum are portrayed as selfish and evil beings, which lack a sense of community. Smaug leads a lonely life at the Lonely Mountain, where he hides the treasure trove. He does not make any good use of the hidden treasure, but fiercely defends it. On the other hand, Gollum does not share his magical gold ring with the Bilbo. Additionally, the Master of Lake-town, after Thorin gives him a proportion of the treasure, becomes corrupt and greedy. He does not use the treasure to reconstruct the town after the war. As a result, he is removed from power and Bard takes over. These events are well detailed in the text compared to the film.

Political imagery is also evident in the way the characters use their powers. Gandalf uses his powers throughout the book and the film. After Bilbo declines to accompany the dwarves and the wizard on a quest to the Lonely Mountain, Gandalf labels his door. This allows the dwarves to track Bilbo to his hobbit hole. Gandalf also uses magic power to disappear and reappear miraculously. Bilbo’s power, on the other hand, grows throughout the book. Initially, he is depicted as a lazy and unadventurous individual, but as the story progresses, he grows in confidence and becomes a hero in the eyes of many. He saves the dwarves from the Elvenking cave and confronts Smaug and Gollum.

He becomes an influential leader during the quest when rescues the group during confrontation with the “wargs”. He seems to be the “lucky”, diplomatic, and wise individual. Despite possessing immense powers, Bilbo leads a simple quiet life. On the other hand, the goblins and Smaug are depicted as wicked creatures that prefer war to diplomacy. They represent political leaders who go into war for personal gain. The Hobbit book details the political actions of the characters more clearly than the film because the adaptation removed key events present in the book.

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by J.R.R. Tolkien

The hobbit themes, solitude and nostalgia.

Gollum is an interesting piece of the puzzle. Sitting on a rock within a subterranean lake, besieged by memories of life with his grandmother above ground, Gollum is an allusion to Caliban, a pitiable, doomed-to-be-evil malcontent who appears in Shakespeare's The Tempest and reappears in "Caliban upon Setebos," a famous Victorian poem. Like Caliban, Gollum has a history that includes a brief education, a maternal unit, life above ground and more happiness than the present. Caliban is named for cannibalism and marked by his inability to speak properly; Gollum is named for the talking sound he makes while eating and as far as eating goes, Gollum is more than willing to voice his grammatically improper desire to eat Bilbo or anything else. Gollum's dismal state stimulates a brief flash of sympathy, for his loss of his magical ring (another parallel to the alluded Caliban) is a well-timed juxtaposition to Bilbo's growing nostalgia and magical power (much like Caliban's victorious adversary).

Sleep and Unconsciousness

In the first few chapters, we find that sleep is one of the few cherished joys of the hobbits. Things change as the quest requires Bilbo's maturation into a full hero. Chapter 8 offers an interesting fusion of sleep, lethargy and unconsciousness. We find Bilbo's victory is achieved because he is a light sleeper, while Bombur's dip into the water has made him blissfully forgetful. This is an allusion to the dark waters of the underworld (Greek mythology). The river Lethe, from which we get the word lethargy, inspired an erasure of memory. The opiate and narcotic effects of the underworld are repeated in this same chapter as the "dinner dreams" (fires set by numerous elves) seem to be forged in some hellish furnace, a deliberate effort to lure the travelers off of their path. Continuing with the idea of sleep, we can also see the archetypal forest and residential elves paving a way to Shakespeare's hilarious "A Midsummer Night's Dream." This is not an allusion; rather, both works take the old images and ideas surrounding sleep, forests and elves and employ them in new efforts that encourage us to reconsider who we think our noble hero is, where we think our homes are, and what we think is happening while we sleep. Tolkien retains Protestantism's intense suspicion of sleep and only when we are deep within the elven lands can we glimpse the beauty and revelry of unsuspecting, bewitched sleep‹a pagan vestige that Shakespeare secured by placing his story within an explicitly pre-Christian setting (Athens of ancient Greece).

Captivity, Surveillance and Invisibility

This is of primary importance when we remember that Bilbo has stolen a ring that makes him invisible. Throughout the novel, the need ot hide oneself is present and one thing that certainly distinguishes this group of travelers from an ordinary set of heroes, is the fact that they are always hiding in fear of a lurking monster. Creatures like Gollum thrive on the advantage they have‹to see others while remaining invisible. We also see this power used for good in the examples of Bilbo and Gandalf . The issue of surveillance is very connected to the theme of captivity as the group is captured in every other chapter. Bilbo is able to play a hero's role by using his invisibility to avoid initial captivity. Then, he can invisibly rescue his friends. He can help his friends to share his freedom, but in the end, he cannot share his magic with them.

Wisdom and Knowledge

This story is full of maps, keys and clever games of riddles. All of this helps to balance the magic of the story. Besides fate and magic, there is a good deal of wisdom that is necessary in order for Bilbo to become a successful hero. We find characters like Elrond , who is able to decipher the moon-runes, and Bard , who is able to understand the language of the bird, Roac . At the end of the novel, Bilbo's own foray into political intrigue demonstrates that he has gained a certain sensibility. And this is no small feat, as the Ring tends to make its bearer foolhardy and unwise, rather than cautious, generous and patient.

The Hobbit Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Hobbit is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Suggest two reasons why the spiders didn’t hear or see bilbo coming

I need answer

find one sentence on pages 175, 186, and 187 which demonstrates a narration that speaks directly on the reader.

"Poor Mr. Baggins - it was a weary long time that he lived in that place all alone, and always in hiding, never daring to take off his ring, hardly daring to sleep, even tucked away in the darkest and remotest comers he could find."

Chapter 16 A Thief in the Night

Gandalf is proud of Bilbo's problem solving skills. Bilbo knew his actions would have consequences, and yet, he did what he believed to be right anyway.

Study Guide for The Hobbit

The Hobbit study guide contains a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Hobbit
• The Hobbit Summary
• Character List
• Chapters 1-4 Summary and Analysis

Essays for The Hobbit

The Hobbit essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

• Tolkien's Hobbit: From Children's Story to Mythic Creation
• Heroes and the Hobbit
• Sting and Bilbo: Significance of the Small in The Hobbit
• Archetypes of Englishness in The Hobbit and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
• The Impact of Setting in The Hobbit

Lesson Plan for The Hobbit

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to The Hobbit
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• The Hobbit Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for The Hobbit

• Introduction
• Concept and creation
• Critical analysis

More From Forbes

How not to write your college essay.

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If you are looking for the “secret formula” for writing a “winning” college essay, you have come to the wrong place. The reality is there is no silver bullet or strategy to write your way to an acceptance. There is not one topic or approach that will guarantee a favorable outcome.

At the end of the day, every admission office just wants to know more about you, what you value, and what excites you. They want to hear about your experiences through your own words and in your own voice. As you set out to write your essay, you will no doubt get input (both sought-after and unsolicited) on what to write. But how about what NOT Notcoin to write? There are avoidable blunders that applicants frequently make in drafting their essays. I asked college admission leaders, who have read thousands of submissions, to share their thoughts.

Don’t Go In There

There is wide consensus on this first one, so before you call on your Jedi mind tricks or predictive analytics, listen to the voices of a diverse range of admission deans. Peter Hagan, executive director of admissions at Syracuse University, sums it up best, saying, “I would recommend that students try not to get inside of our heads. He adds, “Too often the focus is on what they think we want.”

Andy Strickler, dean of admission and financial aid at Connecticut College agrees, warning, “Do NOT get caught in the trap of trying to figure out what is going to impress the admission committee. You have NO idea who is going to read your essay and what is going to connect with them. So, don't try to guess that.” Victoria Romero, vice president for enrollment, at Scripps College adds, “Do not write about something you don’t care about.” She says, “I think students try to figure out what an admission officer wants to read, and the reality is the reader begins every next essay with no expectations about the content THEY want to read.” Chrystal Russell, dean of admission at Hampden-Sydney College, agrees, saying, “If you're not interested in writing it, we will not be interested when reading it.” Jay Jacobs, vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Vermont elaborates, advising. “Don’t try to make yourself sound any different than you are.” He says, “The number one goal for admission officers is to better understand the applicant, what they like to do, what they want to do, where they spend the majority of their time, and what makes them tick. If a student stays genuine to that, it will shine through and make an engaging and successful essay.”

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Don’t Be Artificial

The headlines about college admission are dominated by stories about artificial intelligence and the college essay. Let’s set some ground rules–to allow ChatGPT or some other tool to do your work is not only unethical, it is also unintelligent. The only worse mistake you could make is to let another human write your essay for you. Instead of preoccupying yourself with whether or not colleges are using AI detection software (most are not), spend your time focused on how best to express yourself authentically. Rick Clark is the executive director of strategic student success at Georgia Institute of Technology, one of the first institutions to clearly outline their AI policy for applicants. He says, “Much of a college application is devoted to lines, boxes, and numbers. Essays and supplements are the one place to establish connection, personality, and distinction. AI, in its current state, is terrible at all three.” He adds, “My hope is that students will use ChatGPT or other tools for brainstorming and to get started, but then move quickly into crafting an essay that will provide insight and value.”

Don’t Overdo It

Michael Stefanowicz, vice president for enrollment management at Landmark College says, “You can only cover so much detail about yourself in an admission essay, and a lot of students feel pressure to tell their life story or choose their most defining experience to date as an essay topic. Admission professionals know that you’re sharing just one part of your lived experience in the essay.” He adds, “Some of the favorite essays I’ve read have been episodic, reflecting on the way you’ve found meaning in a seemingly ordinary experience, advice you’ve lived out, a mistake you’ve learned from, or a special tradition in your life.” Gary Ross, vice president for admission and financial aid at Colgate University adds, “More than a few applicants each year craft essays that talk about the frustration and struggles they have experienced in identifying a topic for their college application essay. Presenting your college application essay as a smorgasbord of topics that ultimately landed on the cutting room floor does not give us much insight into an applicant.”

Don’t Believe In Magic

Jason Nevinger, senior director of admission at the University of Rochester warns, “Be skeptical of anyone or any company telling you, ‘This is the essay that got me into _____.’ There is no magic topic, approach, sentence structure, or prose that got any student into any institution ever.” Social media is littered with advertisements promising strategic essay help. Don’t waste your time, energy, or money trying to emulate a certain style, topic, or tone. Liz Cheron is chief executive officer for the Coalition for College and former assistant vice president of enrollment & dean of admissions at Northeastern University. She agrees with Nevinger, saying “Don't put pressure on yourself to find the perfect, slam dunk topic. The vast majority of college essays do exactly what they're supposed to do–they are well-written and tell the admission officer more about the student in that student's voice–and that can take many different forms.”

Don’t Over Recycle

Beatrice Atkinson-Myers, associate director of global recruitment at the University of California at Santa Cruz tells students, “Do not use the same response for each university; research and craft your essay to match the program at the university you are interested in studying. Don't waste time telling me things I can read elsewhere in your application. Use your essay to give the admissions officer insights into your motivations, interests, and thinking. Don't make your essay the kitchen sink, focus on one or two examples which demonstrate your depth and creativity.” Her UC colleague, Jim Rawlins, associate vice chancellor of enrollment management at the University of California at San Diego agrees, saying “Answer the question. Not doing so is the surest way we can tell you are simply giving us a snippet of something you actually wrote for a different purpose.”

Don’t Overedit

Emily Roper-Doten, vice president for undergraduate admissions and financial assistance at Clark University warns against “Too many editors!” She says, “Pick a couple of trusted folks to be your sounding board when considering topics and as readers once you have drafts. You don’t want too many voices in your essay to drown you out!” Scripps’ Romero agrees, suggesting, “Ask a good friend, someone you trust and knows you well, to read your essays.” She adds, “The goal is for the admission committee to get to know a little about you and who better to help you create that framework, than a good friend. This may not work for all students because of content but helps them understand it’s important to be themselves.” Whitney Soule, vice provost and dean of admissions at The University of Pennsylvania adds, “Avoid well-meaning editorial interference that might seem to polish your writing but actually takes your own personal ‘shine’ right out of the message.” She says, “As readers, we connect to applicants through their genuine tone and style. Considering editorial advice for flow and message is OK but hold on to the 'you' for what you want to say and how you want to say it.”

Don’t Get Showy

Palmer Muntz, senior regional admissions counselor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks cautions applicants, “Don’t be fancier than you are. You don’t need to put on airs.” He adds, “Yes, proofread your work for grammar and spelling, but be natural. Craft something you’d want to read yourself, which probably means keeping your paragraphs short, using familiar words, and writing in an active voice.” Connecticut College’s Strickler agrees, warning, “Don't try to be someone you are not. If you are not funny, don't try to write a funny essay. If you are not an intellectual, trying to write an intellectual essay is a bad idea.”

Anthony Jones, the vice president of enrollment management at Loyola University New Orleans offers a unique metaphor for thinking about the essay. He says, “In the new world of the hyper-fast college admission process, it's become easy to overlook the essential meaning of the college application. It's meant to reveal Y...O...U, the real you, not some phony digital avatar. Think of the essay as the essence of that voice but in analog. Like the completeness and authenticity captured in a vinyl record, the few lines you're given to explain your view should be a slow walk through unrestrained expression chock full of unapologetic nuances, crevices of emotion, and exactness about how you feel in the moment. Then, and only then, can you give the admissions officer an experience that makes them want to tune in and listen for more.”

Don’t Be A Downer

James Nondorf, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid at The University of Chicago says, “Don’t be negative about other people, be appreciative of those who have supported you, and be excited about who you are and what you will bring to our campus!” He adds, “While admissions offices want smart students for our classrooms, we also want kind-hearted, caring, and joyous students who will add to our campus communities too.”

Don’t Pattern Match

Alan Ramirez is the dean of admission and financial aid at Sewanee, The University of the South. He explains, “A big concern I have is when students find themselves comparing their writing to other students or past applicants and transform their writing to be more like those individuals as a way to better their chances of offering a more-compelling essay.” He emphasizes that the result is that the “essay is no longer authentic nor the best representation of themselves and the whole point of the essay is lost. Their distinctive voice and viewpoint contribute to the range of voices in the incoming class, enhancing the diversity of perspectives we aim to achieve.” Ramirez simple tells students, “Be yourself, that’s what we want to see, plus there's no one else who can do it better than you!”

Don’t Feel Tied To A Topic

Jessica Ricker is the vice president for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid at Skidmore College. She says, “Sometimes students feel they must tell a story of grief or hardship, and then end up reliving that during the essay-writing process in ways that are emotionally detrimental. I encourage students to choose a topic they can reflect upon positively but recommend that if they choose a more challenging experience to write about, they avoid belaboring the details and instead focus on the outcome of that journey.” She adds, "They simply need to name it, frame its impact, and then help us as the reader understand how it has shaped their lens on life and their approach moving forward.”

Landmark College’s Stefanowicz adds, “A lot of students worry about how personal to get in sharing a part of their identity like your race or heritage (recalling last year’s Supreme Court case about race-conscious admissions), a learning difference or other disability, your religious values, LGBTQ identity…the list goes on.” He emphasizes, “This is always your choice, and your essay doesn’t have to be about a defining identity. But I encourage you to be fully yourself as you present yourself to colleges—because the college admission process is about finding a school where your whole self is welcome and you find a setting to flourish!”

Don’t Be Redundant

Hillen Grason Jr., dean of admission at Franklin & Marshall College, advises, “Don't repeat academic or co-curricular information that is easily identifiable within other parts of your application unless the topic is a core tenant of you as an individual.” He adds, “Use your essay, and other parts of your application, wisely. Your essay is the best way to convey who your authentic self is to the schools you apply. If you navigated a situation that led to a dip in your grades or co-curricular involvement, leverage the ‘additional information’ section of the application.

Thomas Marr is a regional manager of admissions for the Americas at The University of St Andrews in Scotland and points out that “Not all international schools use the main college essay as part of their assessment when reviewing student applications.” He says, “At the University of St Andrews, we focus on the supplemental essay and students should avoid the mistake of making the supplemental a repeat of their other essay. The supplemental (called the Personal Statement if using the UCAS application process) is to show the extent of their passion and enthusiasm for the subject/s to which they are applying and we expect about 75% of the content to cover this. They can use the remaining space to mention their interests outside of the classroom. Some students confuse passion for the school with passion for their subject; do not fall into that trap.”

A Few Final Don’ts

Don’t delay. Every college applicant I have ever worked with has wished they had started earlier. You can best avoid the pitfalls above if you give yourself the time and space to write a thoughtful essay and welcome feedback openly but cautiously. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect . Do your best, share your voice, and stay true to who you are.

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Revealed: Harvard Business School’s New MBA Essays For Applicants

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Harvard Business School’s Baker Library.

With just 10 weeks before its first application deadline on Sept. 4th, Harvard Business School today (June 25) revealed a newly revised application for MBA candidates, including a new set of three short essays along with a refresh on how it will evaluate applicants for future classes.

The new prompts?

Business-Minded Essay : Please reflect on how your experiences have influenced your career choices and aspirations and the impact you will have on the businesses, organizations, and communities you plan to serve. (up to 300 words)

Leadership-Focused Essay : What experiences have shaped who you are, how you invest in others, and what kind of leader you want to become? (up to 250 words)

Growth-Oriented Essay : Curiosity can be seen in many ways. Please share an example of how you have demonstrated curiosity and how that has influenced your growth. (up to 250 words)

NEW HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL ESSAYS PUT THROUGH BY NEW MBA ADMISSIONS CHIEF

Eagerly awaited by thousands of prospective students and admission consultants, you can bet that the admissions pages of the HBS website were continually refreshed all morning for a glimpse at the new essay. The Harvard Business School essay prompt for the Class of 2027 was posted at 10:30 a.m. with the opening of the 2024-2025 application online.

This year’s change was put through by Rupal Gadhia , who joined the school as managing director of admissions and financial aid last October. A 2004 Harvard MBA, Gadhia came to the school with no previous admissions experience, having been the global head of marketing for SharkNinja robots.

In explaining the change in a blog post , Gadhia noted that “we have refreshed the criteria on which we evaluate candidates. We are looking for applicants who are business-minded, leadership-focused, and growth-oriented…This is your opportunity to discuss meaningful or formative experiences that are important to you that you haven’t had a chance to fully explore elsewhere in your application…Be authentic, be yourself.”

WHAT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL IS REALLY LOOKING FOR IN THE NEW ESSAYS

The school added some context to its new criteria for admission, more clearly defining what it means by business-minded, leadership-focused, and growth-oriented.

Business-Minded

We are looking for individuals who are passionate about using business as a force for good – who strive to improve and transform companies, industries, and the world. We are seeking those who are eager to solve today’s biggest problems and shape the future through creative and integrated thinking. Being business-minded is about the interest to help organizations succeed, whether in the private, public, or non-profit sector. This business inclination can be found in individuals with a variety of professional and educational experiences, not just those who come from traditional business backgrounds.

In Your Application: We will look for evidence of your interpersonal skills, quantitative abilities, and the ways in which you plan to create impact through business in the future.

Leadership-Focused

We are looking for individuals who aspire to lead others toward making a difference in the world, and those who recognize that to build and sustain successful organizations, they must develop and nurture diverse teams. Leadership takes many forms in many contexts – you do not have to have a formal leadership role to make a difference. We deliberately create a class that includes different kinds of leaders, from the front-line manager to the startup founder to the behind-the-scenes thought leader.

In Your Application: Your leadership impact may be most evident in extracurriculars, community initiatives, or your professional work.

Growth-Oriented

We are looking for individuals who desire to broaden their perspectives through creative problem solving, active listening, and lively discussion. At HBS you will be surrounded by future leaders from around the world who will make you think more expansively about what impact you might have. Our case and field-based learning methods depend on the active participation of curious students who are excited to listen and learn from faculty and classmates, as well as contribute their own ideas and perspectives.

In Your Application: We will look for the ways in which you have grown, developed, and how you engage with the world around you.

TIGHTER TIMEFRAME FOR ROUND ONE APPLICANTS

The new essay prompts come  nearly two months after candidates to the school’s MBA program would more typically know what was expected of them. Some admission consultants say the delay over the prompt’s release, along with nearly a month’s slow down in releasing application deadlines, is “wildly insensitive” to applicants who will have less time than normal to prepare for the round one deadline of Sept. 4th.

That’s especially true because the most successful applicants to HBS have highly demanding jobs that consume the vast majority of their time. Many candidates go through multiple drafts of their essays to get them as close to perfection as humanly possible. MBA admission consultants are expecting a lot of up-to-the-deadline work this year to help prep candidates for Harvard and other top business schools.

The new application still preserves the post-interview reflection for applicants who are invited to a 30-minute admissions interview. Within 24 hours of the interview, candidates are required to submit a written reflection through the school’s online application system.

REACTION TO THE NEW CHANGE IS MIXED

Early reaction to the change suggests the likelihood of mixed reviews. “This is an uninspired and odd set of questions,” says Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com and an MBA admissions consultant who closely reads the tea leaves of Harvard’s admissions process. “I don’t know how it’s different from what else do you want us to know about you, frankly,” he adds in a reference to last year’s single essay prompt.

“HBS has certainly moved from the abstract to the concrete,” believes Jeremy Shinewald, founder and CEO of mbaMission, a leading MBA admissions consulting firm. “Some applicants previously felt like they didn’t know where to start and some weren’t sure if they had answered the question, even when they were done. Now, the questions are quite straightforward and all have a cause and effect relationship — one where the applicant discusses the past to reveal the present or future. Smart applicants will understand how to share their experiences and, more importantly, how to relay their values. Some will mistakenly try to whack HBS over the head with stories of their epic feats, but the key isn’t to brag or embellish – the key is to simply create a clear relationship, via narrative, between past experience and true motivations.”

Shinewald found it astonishing that Harvard could not have made the change earlier. “It is, of course, surprising that HBS left applicants on edge until the last minute, all to create very traditional essays,” he adds. “As applicants learn in MBA classrooms, change can be hard and take time. The bottom line here is that these essays are somewhat of an applicant’s dream – they allow the savvy applicant to play to their strengths and draw on their best anecdotes and experiences to create a complete story. Some applicants will lament the absence of a ‘Why HBS?’ prompt, but my guess is that the admissions committee recognized that they would get an almost homogenous collection of essays touting the case method and other well known features. HBS gets some kudos for keeping the focus on the applicant.”

Adds Petia Whitmore of My MBA Path: “I think they reflect one of the traits of this new generation of candidates which is that they don’t handle ambiguity well. So it seems like Harvard had to spell out what they’re looking for way more prescriptively than in the past.”

Some, however, find the new essays a return to the past. “To me, the prompts feel quite regressive, and a return to the more formulaic approach that pervaded MBA applications two decades ago,” believes Justin Marshall, a New York-based MBA admissions consultant. “Because the previous prompt was so open ended, it forced applicants to be introspective and self-aware. You couldn’t just ramble for 900 words; you had to identify themes in your life to show how your personal experiences shaped your values, your leadership style, and your goals. Comparatively, these new prompts are much more paint-by-numbers. Applicants will likely cover the same ground in terms of topic, but there’s very little room for nuance and self-expression. I think it will be harder for applicants with less conventional backgrounds and experiences to differentiate themselves. I’m sure HBS grew tired of reading so many painfully earnest ‘life story’ essays, but I suspect they’ll soon find themselves yearning for essays that have a heartbeat and personality. 250 words just doesn’t allow for that unless you’re a very crafty writer.”

Whatever the case, getting into Harvard’s MBA program is still a daunting exercise. Last year, 1,076 of the 8,264 candidates who applied for admission to Harvard Business School gained admission, an acceptance rate of 13.2%, making HBS the second most selective prestige MBA program in the country after Stanford Graduate School of Business which had an admit rate of 8.4%. Harvard saw a 15.4% drop in MBA applications from the 9,773 it received a year-earlier.

Joint degree applicants for the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School must provide an additional essay: How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (up to 400 words)

BIGGEST CHANGE IN HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL ESSAY IN NEARLY A DECADE

Joint degree applicants for the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences must provide an additional essay: The MS/MBA Engineering Sciences program is focused on entrepreneurship, design, and innovation. Describe your past experiences in these areas and your reasons for pursuing a program with this focus. (recommended length: 500 words). Applicants will also be able to respond to an optional essay.

In any case, it’s the biggest change in Harvard Business School’s application in nearly a decade. The last time HBS made a major switch, moving to the essay prompt it just eliminated, was in 2016. That change to just one essay with no word limit and a post-interview reflection was made by then admissions chief Dee Leopold.

When Leopold applied to Harvard as an MBA candidate in 1978, she had to write eight essays. Over her years as managing director of admissions, she first cut the essays down to four and then one, making it optional, and finally the one last prompt with a post-interview reflection, saying that applying to HBS should not be a writing contest .

OUR BUSINESS CASUAL PODCAST: The New HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL MBA Application:   Fortuna Admissions’ Caroline Diarte-Edwards and ApplicantLab’s Maria Wich-Vila join P&Q’s John A. Byrne to offer applicant advice on how to answer the new HBS essay prompts

DON’T MISS: 2024-2024 MBA APPLICATION DEADLINES or  HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL WILL NOW UPDATE ITS MBA ESSAY 

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104 Essays The Principles of Success

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Hillary Clinton to release essay collection about personal and public life

This cover image released by Simon & Schuster shows “Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love and Liberty” by Hillary Rodham Clinton. The book will be released Sept. 17. (Simon & Schuster via AP)

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Hillary Clinton’s next book is a collection of essays, touching upon everything from marriage to politics to faith, that her publisher is calling her most personal yet.

Simon and Schuster announced Tuesday that Clinton’s “Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love and Liberty” will be released Sept. 17.

Among the topics she will cover: Her marriage to former President Bill Clinton, her Methodist faith, adjusting to private life after her failed presidential runs, her friendships with other first ladies and her takes on climate change, democracy and Vladimir Putin.

“The book reads like you’re sitting down with your smartest, funniest, most passionate friend over a long meal,” Clinton’s editor, Priscilla Painton, said in a statement.

“This is the Hillary Americans have come to know and love: candid, engaged, humorous, self-deprecating — and always learning.”

Clinton, the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary and presidential candidate, will promote her book with a cross country tour. “Something Lost, Something Gained” comes out two months before Bill Clinton’s memoir about post-presidential life, “Citizen.”

Financial terms were not disclosed. Clinton was represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett, whose other clients have included former President George W. Bush and former President Barack Obama.

Clinton’s previous books include such bestsellers as “It Takes a Village,” “Living History” and “What Happened.”

Let the Paris Olympic Games begin, but keep an eye on public health

People film the Olympic rings displayed on the Eiffel Tower in Paris on June 4. Credit: AP/Aurelien Morissard

This guest essay reflects the views of Arthur Caplan and Lisa Kearns, head and senior research associate, respectively, of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and Lee Igel, professor at the NYU Tisch Institute for Global Sport.

The multicolored, interlocking rings mounted on the Eiffel Tower signal that the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games will soon be underway. Along with tens of thousands of athletes, officials, staff, media, and contractors from more than 200 nations, organizers expect 15 million tourists in Paris during the Games. Throngs of people from diverse communities coming together for sport and culture is something to cheer. The breeding ground for illness and disease transmission that it can create is not.

When the Olympics begin July 26, followed by the Paralympic Games a month later, attention will be paid to medal counts, doping violations, and competitions. Yet there are significant public health issues that merit serious attention, too. Fortunately, measures still can be taken to mitigate some of them.

France’s Le Monde newspaper recently reported that more than 2,500 cases of dengue have been detected in the country this year. Although often causing no symptoms, the mosquito-borne virus can induce high fever, nausea, severe headaches, and muscle pain. Severe cases can be fatal. Insect repellent will be helpful.

The dengue cases echo Zika concerns at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, and the COVID-19 pandemic that led to the one-year postponement of the Tokyo 2020 Games. People are tired of paying attention to COVID, but danger still lurks: Tight travel conditions and crowded venues could create a COVID superspreader event. Ventilation, masking, and vaccination can still help.

Nor should anyone ignore an upcoming protest of the use of the River Seine for some events, despite swimming being banned for a century because of pollution. Some Parisians intend to express their displeasure by contributing their own bodily waste to the river. Originally timed to precede Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s since-postponed June 23 swim to demonstrate the safety of the water, her dip, and presumably the protest, will take place after the French elections — but still before the Olympics. If the people do “speak,” water monitors could find shigella, yersinia, campylobacter, aeromonas, candida, klebsiella, cryptosporidium, entamoeba histolytica, norovirus, and hepatitis A alongside still unsafe levels of E. coli. Competing for a medal by swimming in filth ought not to be an option.

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The most immediate health concern, though, is heat-related illness. July is historically the hottest month in Paris, and with rising global temperatures, heat stroke is a real threat, especially for athletes. Although an environmentally friendly system of pipes will cool rooms in the athletes village, at least six major national delegations — including the U.S. — are supplying air conditioning units to ensure comfort and safety. Of course, these measures don’t apply to outdoor training and competition. Shifting events to cooler times of day, increasing vehicular transportation, and adding more air conditioning should be in store if temperatures climb.

Olympic and French health officials should promote prevention, including vaccines for those who can take them. Another measure — no matter how impressive images of events on the River Seine could be — is moving competitions to clean bodies of water. Also, organizers need to ensure that an abundance of health care workers trained in heat-related illnesses are standing by and that shade and water are widely available.

The Paris Olympics will go on. Amid the excitement, attendees should think through where and how they will move about. Personal and public health must be prioritized. Let the Games begin.

This guest essay reflects the views of Arthur Caplan and Lisa Kearns, head and senior research associate, respectively, of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and Lee Igel, professor at the NYU Tisch Institute for Global Sport.

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