The Hobbit

''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''New York Herald Tribune'' for best juvenile fiction. The book remains popular and is recognized as a classic in children's literature.

''The Hobbit'' is set within Tolkien's fictional universe and follows the quest of home-loving Bilbo Baggins, the titular hobbit, to win a share of the treasure guarded by a dragon named Smaug. Bilbo's journey takes him from his light-hearted, rural surroundings into more sinister territory.

The story is told in the form of an episodic quest, and most chapters introduce a specific creature or type of creature of Tolkien's geography. Bilbo gains a new level of maturity, competence, and wisdom by accepting the disreputable, romantic, fey, and adventurous sides of his nature and applying his wits and common sense. The story reaches its climax in the Battle of Five Armies, where many of the characters and creatures from earlier chapters re-emerge to engage in conflict.

Personal growth and forms of heroism are central themes of the story, along with motifs of warfare. These themes have led critics to view Tolkien's own experiences during World War I as instrumental in shaping the story. The author's scholarly knowledge of Germanic philology and interest in mythology and fairy tales are often noted as influences.

The publisher was encouraged by the book's critical and financial success and, therefore, requested a sequel. As Tolkien's work progressed on its successor, ''The Lord of the Rings'', he made retrospective accommodations for it in ''The Hobbit''. These few but significant changes were integrated into the second edition. Further editions followed with minor emendations, including those reflecting Tolkien's changing concept of the world into which Bilbo stumbled.

The work has never been out of print. Its ongoing legacy encompasses many adaptations for stage, screen, radio, board games, and video games. Several of these adaptations have received critical recognition on their own merits.

Characters

Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist, is a respectable, reserved hobbit—a race resembling short humans with furry, leathery feet who live in underground houses and are mainly pastoral farmers and gardeners. During his adventure, Bilbo often refers to the contents of his larder at home and wishes he had more food. Until he finds a magic ring, he is more baggage than help. Gandalf, an itinerant wizard, introduces Bilbo to a company of thirteen dwarves. During the journey, the wizard disappears on side errands dimly hinted at, only to appear again at key moments in the story. Thorin Oakenshield, the proud, pompous head of the company of dwarves and heir to the destroyed dwarvish kingdom under the Lonely Mountain, makes many mistakes in his leadership, relying on Gandalf and Bilbo to get him out of trouble, but proves himself a mighty warrior. Smaug is a dragon who long ago pillaged the dwarvish kingdom of Thorin's grandfather and sleeps upon the vast treasure.

The plot involves a host of other characters of varying importance, such as the twelve other dwarves of the company; two types of elves: both puckish and more serious warrior types; Men; man-eating trolls; boulder-throwing giants; evil cave-dwelling goblins; forest-dwelling giant spiders who can speak; immense and heroic eagles who also speak; evil wolves, or Wargs, who are allied with the goblins; Elrond the sage; Gollum, a strange creature inhabiting an underground lake; Beorn, a man who can assume bear form; and Bard the Bowman, a grim but honourable archer of Lake-town.

Plot

Gandalf tricks Bilbo Baggins into hosting a party for Thorin Oakenshield and his band of twelve dwarves (Dwalin, Balin, Kili, Fili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur), who sing of reclaiming their ancient home, Lonely Mountain, and its vast treasure from the dragon Smaug. When the music ends, Gandalf unveils Thrór's map showing a secret door into the Mountain and proposes that the dumbfounded Bilbo serve as the expedition's "burglar". The dwarves ridicule the idea, but Bilbo, indignant, joins despite himself.

The group travels into the wild. Gandalf saves the company from trolls and leads them to Rivendell, where Elrond reveals more secrets from the map. When they attempt to cross the Misty Mountains, they are caught by goblins and driven deep underground. Although Gandalf rescues them, Bilbo gets separated from the others as they flee the goblins. Lost in the goblin tunnels, he stumbles across a mysterious ring and then encounters Gollum, who engages him in a game, each posing a riddle until one of them cannot solve it. If Bilbo wins, Gollum will show him the way out of the tunnels, but if he fails, his life will be forfeit. With the help of the ring, which confers invisibility, Bilbo escapes and rejoins the dwarves, improving his reputation with them. The goblins and Wargs give chase, but the company are saved by eagles. They rest in the house of Beorn.

The company enters the dark forest of Mirkwood without Gandalf, who has other responsibilities. In Mirkwood, Bilbo first saves the dwarves from giant spiders and then from the dungeons of the Wood-elves. Nearing the Lonely Mountain, the travellers are welcomed by the human inhabitants of Lake-town, who hope the dwarves will fulfil prophecies of Smaug's demise. The expedition reaches the mountain and finds the secret door. The dwarves send a reluctant Bilbo inside to scout the dragon's lair. He steals a great cup and, while conversing with Smaug, spots a gap in the ancient dragon's armour. The enraged dragon, deducing that Lake-town has aided the intruders, flies off to destroy the town. A thrush overhears Bilbo's report of Smaug's vulnerability and tells Lake-town resident Bard. Smaug wreaks havoc on the town, until Bard fires an arrow into Smaug's hollow spot, killing the dragon.

When the dwarves take possession of the mountain, Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, the most-treasured heirloom of Thorin's family, and hides it away. The Wood-elves and Lake-men request compensation for Lake-town's destruction and settlement of old claims on the treasure. When Thorin refuses to give them anything, they besiege the mountain. However, Thorin manages to send a message to his kinfolk in the Iron Hills and reinforces his position. Bilbo slips out and gives the Arkenstone to the besiegers, hoping to head off a war. When they offer the jewel to Thorin in exchange for treasure, Bilbo reveals how they obtained it. Thorin, furious at what he sees as betrayal, banishes Bilbo, and battle seems inevitable when Dáin Ironfoot, Thorin's second cousin, arrives with an army of dwarf warriors.

Gandalf reappears to warn all of an approaching army of goblins and Wargs. The dwarves, men and elves band together, but only with the timely arrival of the eagles and Beorn do they win the climactic Battle of Five Armies. Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies.

Bilbo accepts only a small portion of his share of the treasure, having no want or need for more, but still returns home a very wealthy hobbit roughly a year and a month after he first left. Years later, he writes the story of his adventures.

Concept and creation

Background

In the early 1930s Tolkien was pursuing an academic career at Oxford as Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, with a fellowship at Pembroke College. Several of his poems had been published in magazines and small collections, including ''Goblin Feet'' and '' The Cat and the Fiddle: A Nursery Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked'', a reworking of the nursery rhyme '' Hey Diddle Diddle''. His creative endeavours at this time also included letters from Father Christmas to his children—illustrated manuscripts that featured warring gnomes and goblins, and a helpful polar bear—alongside the creation of elven languages and an attendant mythology, including the Book of Lost Tales, which he had been creating since 1917. These works all saw posthumous publication.

In a 1955 letter to W. H. Auden, Tolkien recollects that he began work on ''The Hobbit'' one day early in the 1930s, when he was marking School Certificate papers. He found a blank page. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." By late 1932 he had finished the story and then lent the manuscript to several friends, including C. S. Lewis and a student of Tolkien's named Elaine Griffiths. In 1936, when Griffiths was visited in Oxford by Susan Dagnall, a staff member of the publisher George Allen & Unwin, she is reported to have either lent Dagnall the book or suggested she borrow it from Tolkien. In any event, Dagnall was impressed by it, and showed the book to Stanley Unwin, who then asked his 10-year-old son Rayner to review it. Rayner's favourable comments settled Allen & Unwin's decision to publish Tolkien's book.

Setting

The setting of ''The Hobbit'', as described on its original dust jacket, is ''"ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men"'' in an unnamed fantasy world. The world is shown on the endpaper map as "Western Lands" westward and "Wilderland" as the east. Originally this world was self-contained, but as Tolkien began work on ''The Lord of the Rings'', he decided these stories could fit into the legendarium he had been working on privately for decades. ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings'' became the end of the "Third Age" of Middle Earth within Arda. Eventually those tales of the earlier periods became published as ''The Silmarillion'' and other posthumous works.

Influences

One of the greatest influences on Tolkien was the 19th-century Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris. Tolkien wished to imitate Morris's prose and poetry romances, following the general style and approach of the work. The Desolation of Smaug as portraying dragons as detrimental to landscape, has been noted as an explicit motif borrowed from Morris. Tolkien wrote also of being impressed as a boy by Samuel Rutherford Crockett's historical novel '' The Black Douglas'' and of basing the Necromancer—Sauron—on its villain, Gilles de Retz. Incidents in both ''The Hobbit'' and ''Lord of the Rings'' are similar in narrative and style to the novel, and its overall style and imagery have been suggested as having had an influence on Tolkien.

Tolkien's portrayal of goblins in ''The Hobbit'' was particularly influenced by George MacDonald's ''The Princess and the Goblin''. However, MacDonald's influence on Tolkien was more profound than the shaping of individual characters and episodes; his works further helped Tolkien form his whole thinking on the role of fantasy within his Christian faith.

The Tolkien scholar Mark T. Hooker has catalogued a lengthy series of parallels between ''The Hobbit'' and Jules Verne's 1864 '' Journey to the Center of the Earth''. These include, among other things, a hidden runic message and a celestial alignment that direct the adventurers to the goals of their quests.

Tolkien's works show many influences from Norse mythology, reflecting his lifelong passion for those stories and his academic interest in Germanic philology. ''The Hobbit'' is no exception to this; the work shows influences from northern European literature, myths and languages, especially from the '' Poetic Edda'' and the ''Prose Edda''. Examples include the names of characters, such as Fili, Kili, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, Dwalin, Balin, Dain, Nain, Thorin Oakenshield and Gandalf (deriving from the Old Norse names ''Fíli'', ''Kíli'', ''Oin'', ''Glói'', ''Bivör'', ''Bávörr'', ''Bömburr'', ''Dori'', ''Nóri'', ''Dvalinn'', ''Bláin'', ''Dain'', ''Nain'', ''Þorin Eikinskialdi'' and ''Gandálfr''). But while their names are from Old Norse, the characters of the dwarves are more directly taken from fairy tales such as '' Snow White'' and ''Snow-White and Rose-Red'' as collected by the Brothers Grimm. The latter tale may also have influenced the character of Beorn.

Tolkien's use of descriptive names such as '' Misty Mountains'' and '' Bag End'' echoes the names used in Old Norse sagas. The names of the dwarf-friendly ravens, such as Roäc, are derived from the Old Norse words for "raven" and "rook", but their peaceful characters are unlike the typical carrion birds from Old Norse and Old English literature. Tolkien is not simply skimming historical sources for effect: the juxtaposition of old and new styles of expression is seen by Shippey as one of the major themes explored in ''The Hobbit''. Maps figure in both saga literature and ''The Hobbit''. Several of the author's illustrations incorporate Anglo-Saxon runes, an English adaptation of the Germanic runic alphabets.

Themes from Old English literature, and specifically from ''Beowulf'', shape the ancient world which Bilbo stepped into. Tolkien, a scholar of ''Beowulf'', counted the epic among his "most valued sources" for ''The Hobbit''. Tolkien was one of the first critics to treat ''Beowulf'' as a literary work with value beyond the merely historical, with his 1936 lecture '' Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics''. Tolkien borrowed several elements from ''Beowulf'', including a monstrous, intelligent dragon. Certain descriptions in ''The Hobbit'' seem to have been lifted straight out of ''Beowulf'' with some minor rewording, such as when the dragon stretches its neck out to sniff for intruders. Likewise, Tolkien's descriptions of the lair as accessed through a secret passage mirror those in ''Beowulf''. Other specific plot elements and features in ''The Hobbit'' that show similarities to ''Beowulf'' include the title of ''thief'', as Bilbo is called by Gollum and later by Smaug, and Smaug's personality, which leads to the destruction of Lake-town. Tolkien refines parts of ''Beowulf'' plot that he appears to have found less than satisfactorily described, such as details about the cup-thief and the dragon's intellect and personality.

Another influence from Old English sources is the appearance of named blades of renown, adorned with runes. In using his elf-blade Bilbo finally takes his first independent heroic action. By his naming the blade "Sting" we see Bilbo's acceptance of the kinds of cultural and linguistic practices found in ''Beowulf'', signifying his entrance into the ancient world in which he found himself. This progression culminates in Bilbo stealing a cup from the dragon's hoard, rousing him to wrath—an incident directly mirroring ''Beowulf'' and an action entirely determined by traditional narrative patterns. As Tolkien wrote, "The episode of the theft arose naturally (and almost inevitably) from the circumstances. It is difficult to think of any other way of conducting the story at this point. I fancy the author of Beowulf would say much the same." The name of the wizard Radagast is taken from the name of the Slavic deity Radogost.

The representation of the dwarves in ''The Hobbit'' was influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding the Jewish people and their history. The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their ancient homeland at the Lonely Mountain, and living among other groups whilst retaining their own culture are all derived from the medieval image of Jews, whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible

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