The Hobbit Summary

While The Hobbit chronicles the journey of Bilbo Baggins, it forms also a journey for the reader.

It starts in the cozy hobbit-hole of Bilbo, who is very relatable. He is just a hobbit, content with smoking pipe, eating cake and drinking tea to fill the rest of his days.

And then, Gandalf appears. The wizard persuades the reluctant hobbit to aid, thirteen dwarves with their quest for stolen gold and revenge, in that order.

He also has to persuade the dwarves to hire Bilbo as a Burglar. Their leader Thorin doubts if the” little fellow” can help them to sneak in their former mountain, where the dragon Smaug slumbers, thief of their gold and killer of their kin. But a wizard can be very convincing, so off they go.

Tolkien’s mastery of the

And so are we.

It proves to be an uncomfortable journey, with pouring rain and muddy tracks. And to top that, Bilbo learns he cannot longer lunch twice a day, which disturbs him deeply. He regrets his decision. “I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!” It is clear Tolkien wrote The Hobbit to read to his children. There is a narrator who is not afraid to get involved in the story and to use exclamation points.

‘Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion.’

You can hear the excitement in his voice.

As result, it reads as an fairy tale for bedtime. Not the dull, sugary kind, but the enjoyable kind that causes children to listen with tinkling eyes, and to fear to breathe out at the scary parts, and finally, to let out a cry of agony when the parent closes the

I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong, strong, Thief in the Shadows!" he gloated. "My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!"

Smaug is an interesting antagonist. Bilbo and the dwarves rightly fear him, but he is not the real villain.

The real threat in both The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings is the power, the temptation and the domination of greed. And it leads to self-destruction.

Tolkien brings that idea home to us in a poignant manner. When the dwarves reclaim their treasure, the villagers from around the Mountain, who got their houses destroyed by the fire of Smaug, enraged by Bilbo and the dwarves, come back to ask their part of the gold, and Thorin, the self-claimed King under the Mountain, refuses. Completely.

Immediately, the villagers, aided by wood-elves, declare a siege on the mountain, until Thorin complies. This goes on for days.

Bilbo, the only one who agrees with the villagers, is exasperated by this nonsense. He fails to talk sense in the dwarves. With regret, he notes that the adventure has taken a bitter course. His friends are now locked in an unjustly siege and he longs back to the simple days in his