Abuse Of Power In The Hobbit

Dean Ornish, an American physician and motivational speaker once said, “Power corrupts, and anytime you have power, even the best of men, it gets taken advantage of.” He wrote this quote to show how power and evil go hand in hand. It portrays the idea that anyone who receives power will abuse it and become corrupt. In The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien, that philosophy reigns true throughout the whole book. Power will corrupt those who come upon it including Smaug, Thorin, and even Bilbo Baggins.

The first example is how Smaug, the dragon, relies on his supernatural power to massacre and steal from others yet has no use for said wealth. The first instance of Smaug abusing his ability is from the narrator's perspective about the creature's origins.

The first example of Bilbo relying on the ring too much is when he first obtains it and tries to escape the creature which he stole it from. Page 81 states, “Forgetting to even draw his sword, he stuck his hand in his pocket, and there was the ring.” In other words, he stopped relying on himself and his ability to fight by himself. He began to fully rely on the ring's power to even help him survive. In the next instance, Bilbo relies more on the ring than his friends around him during a fight with colossal-sized spiders. On page 136 it states, “Also, Bilbo slipped on his magic ring before the fight had even started.” This illustrated that Bilbo began to fully survive off of the ring's power. This has already started to corrupt him because he trusts the ring more than anything or anyone else including his friends and even himself. The last example of Bilbo giving up his free will to the ring was during the battle of the 5 armies. He eventually gets knocked out while the ring is on. Page 242 cites, “He likely would've been counted among the dead if he had gone unseen with the ring any longer.“ To clarify, because he got knocked out while the ring was on, he was invisible while unconscious. As a result, no one could find him and he was almost left for dead. To summarize, Bilbo gets corrupted by the power of the ring based on the fact that he progressively begins to rely on it fully throughout the