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 on 21 September
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 Smaug the dragon.
Bilbo's journey takes him from 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 the 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 titular protagonist, is a
respectable, reserved hobbit—a
race resembling very short humans who live in underground houses and are mainly
pastoral farmers and gardeners.[1][2] 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,[3]
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[4][5] 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;[6] 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.[5][7]
Plot
Gandalf tricks Bilbo
Baggins into hosting a party for Thorin Oakenshield
and his band of dwarves,
who sing of reclaiming the 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, where 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 of riddles. As a reward for
solving all riddles Gollum will show him the path out of the tunnels, but if
Bilbo 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
before resting in the house of Beorn.
The
company enters the black forest of Mirkwood without Gandalf. 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 travels to the Lonely Mountain and finds the secret door;
Bilbo scouts the dragon's lair, stealing a great cup and espying a gap in
Smaug's armour. The enraged dragon, deducing that Lake-town has aided the
intruder, sets out to destroy the town. A thrush had overheard Bilbo's report of Smaug's vulnerability and
reports it to Lake-town defender Bard. Bard's arrow finds the hollow spot and slays the dragon.
When
the dwarves take possession of the mountain, Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, an
heirloom of Thorin's family, and hides it away. The Wood-elves and Lake-men
besiege the mountain and request compensation for their aid, reparations for
Lake-town's destruction, and settlement of old claims on the treasure. Thorin
refuses and, having summoned his kin from the Iron
Hills, reinforces his position. Bilbo
tries to ransom the Arkenstone to head off a war, but Thorin is only enraged at
the betrayal. He banishes Bilbo, and battle seems inevitable.
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.
Concept and creation
Background
Further information: Hobbit
(word)
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[8] and The Cat and the
Fiddle: A Nursery Rhyme Undone and its Scandalous Secret Unlocked,[9] 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.[10]
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[11] and a student of Tolkien's named Elaine Griffiths.[12] 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[12]
or suggested she borrow it from Tolkien.[13] 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.[14]
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.[15] 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,[16]
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.[17] 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.[18] Incidents in both The Hobbit and Lord of the
Rings are similar in narrative and style to the novel,[19]
and its overall style and imagery have been suggested as having had an
influence on Tolkien.[20]
Tolkien's
portrayal of goblins in The Hobbit was particularly influenced by George
MacDonald's The Princess and the
Goblin.[21] However, MacDonald influenced Tolkien more profoundly than
just to shape individual characters and episodes; his works further helped
Tolkien form his whole thinking on the role of fantasy within his Christian
faith.[22]
Tolkien
scholar Mark T. Hooker has catalogued a lengthy series of parallels between The
Hobbit and Jules Verne's
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.[23]
Tolkien's
works show much influence from Norse
mythology, reflecting his lifelong passion
for those stories and his academic interest in Germanic philology.[24] The Hobbit is no exception to this; the work shows
influences from northern European literature, myths and languages,[25]
especially from the Poetic Edda
and the Prose Edda.
Examples include the names of characters,[26] 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).[27] 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.[28]
Tolkien's
use of descriptive names such as Misty
Mountains and Bag
End echoes the names used in Old Norse sagas.[29] The names of the dwarf-friendly ravens, such as Roäc, are
derived from Old Norse words for "raven" and "rook",[30]
but their peaceful characters are unlike the typical carrion birds from Old
Norse and Old English literature.[31] 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.[32] Maps figure in both saga literature and The Hobbit.[29] 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 Bilbo stepped into. Tolkien, a
scholar of Beowulf, counted the epic among his "most valued
sources" for The Hobbit.[33] Tolkien was one of the first critics to treat Beowulf
as a literary work with value beyond the merely historical, and his 1936
lecture Beowulf: the
Monsters and the Critics
is still required in some Old English courses.[citation needed] Tolkien
borrowed several elements from Beowulf, including a monstrous,
intelligent dragon.[34] 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.[35] 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 thief, as Bilbo is called by Gollum and later by
Smaug, and Smaug's personality, which leads to the destruction of Lake-town.[36] Tolkien refines parts of Beowulf's 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.[37]
Another
influence from Old English sources is the appearance of named blades of renown,
adorned in 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.[38] 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."[33]
The
name of the wizard Radagast
is widely recognized to be taken from the name of the Slavic
deity Rodegast.[39]
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.[40] 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,[40][41] whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew
Bible.[40] The Dwarvish calendar invented for The Hobbit
reflects the Jewish calendar in beginning in late autumn.[40] And although Tolkien denied allegory, the dwarves taking
Bilbo out of his complacent existence has been seen as an eloquent metaphor for
the "impoverishment of Western society without Jews."[41]
Publication
George
Allen & Unwin Ltd. of London published the first edition of The Hobbit
on 21 September 1937 with a print run of 1,500 copies, which sold out by
December because of enthusiastic reviews.[42] This first printing was illustrated in black and white by
Tolkien, who designed the dust
jacket as well. Houghton
Mifflin of Boston and New York reset type
for an American edition, to be released early in 1938, in which four of the
illustrations would be colour plates. Allen & Unwin decided to incorporate
the colour illustrations into their second printing, released at the end of
1937.[43] Despite the book's popularity, paper rationing
due to World War II and not ending until 1949 meant
that the Allen & Unwin edition of the book was often unavailable during
this period.[44]
Subsequent
editions
in English were published in 1951, 1966, 1978 and 1995. Numerous English-language
editions of The Hobbit
have been produced by several publishers.[45] In addition, The Hobbit has been translated into over sixty languages, with more than one published version for some languages.[46]
Revisions
In
December 1937 The Hobbit's publisher, Stanley Unwin, asked Tolkien for a
sequel. In response Tolkien provided drafts for The Silmarillion, but
the editors rejected them, believing that the public wanted "more about hobbits".[47] Tolkien subsequently began work on The New Hobbit,
which would eventually become The Lord of the Rings,[47] a course that would not only change the context of the
original story, but lead to substantial changes to the character of Gollum.
In
the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum willingly bets his magic ring on
the outcome of the riddle-game, and he and Bilbo part amicably.[6] In the second edition edits, to reflect the new concept of
the One
Ring and its corrupting abilities,
Tolkien made Gollum more aggressive towards Bilbo and distraught at losing the
ring. The encounter ends with Gollum's curse, "Thief! Thief, Thief,
Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!" This presages
Gollum's portrayal in The Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien
sent this revised version of the chapter "Riddles in the Dark" to
Unwin as an example of the kinds of changes needed to bring the book into
conformity with The Lord of the Rings, but he heard nothing back for
years. When he was sent galley
proofs of a new edition, Tolkien was
surprised to find the sample text had been incorporated.[48] In The Lord of the Rings, the original version of
the riddle game is explained as a "lie" made up by Bilbo under the
harmful influence of the Ring, whereas the revised version contains the
"true" account.[49] The revised text became the second edition, published in
1951 in both the UK and the US.[50]
Tolkien
began a new version in 1960, attempting to adjust the tone of The Hobbit
to its sequel. He abandoned the new revision at chapter three after he received
criticism that it "just wasn't The Hobbit", implying it had
lost much of its light-hearted tone and quick pace.[51]
After
an unauthorized paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings appeared from
Ace
Books in 1965, Houghton Mifflin and Ballantine asked Tolkien to refresh the text of The Hobbit to
renew the US copyright.[52] This text became the 1966 third edition. Tolkien took the
opportunity to align the narrative even more closely to The Lord of the
Rings and to cosmological developments from his still unpublished Quenta Silmarillion as it stood at that time.[53] These small edits included, for example, changing the
phrase "elves that are now called Gnomes" from the first,[54] and second editions,[55] on page 63, to "High Elves of the West, my kin"
in the third edition.[56] Tolkien had used "gnome" in his earlier writing to refer to the second kindred
of the High Elves—the
Noldor (or "Deep Elves")—thinking "gnome",
derived from the Greek gnosis (knowledge), was a good name for the
wisest of the elves. However, because of its common denotation of a garden
gnome, derived from the 16th-century Paracelsus, Tolkien abandoned the term.[57] He also changed "tomatoes" to "pickles"
but retained other anachronisms, such as clocks and tobacco. In The Lord of
the Rings, he has Merry
explain that tobacco had been brought from the West by the Númenóreans.
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