The Hobbit is a surprising study about the nature of evil and despair
Bilbo and the dwarves quest for treasure can teach us a lot about facing our fears
Mention The Hobbit and most people will think a fire breathing dragon or a riddle game played in a cave beneath a mountain. A pleasurable, no stakes adventure when the world seemed untroubled. Comforting enough to read to a child but also ideal when one needs a pick me-up.
The playful tone and fast-paced narrative easily lends itself to that interpretation. Given the fact that the famed prequel of the Lord of the Rings won several children’s book awards upon publication in 1931, there’s some meat to support the idea.
Think of the comical fight between the trolls and Gandalf’s diverting asides meant to confuse them and it’s quite clear what elements in The Hobbit appear ‘childlike’. The scene is formally fraught with tension and danger but the wry humour of it all makes that less apparent, putting one in mind of the time when the prospect of Hansel getting eating by the evil witch evoked anticipation rather than horror. Coupled with the rich descriptions of hearth and home, food and stories as well as elves and magic, The Hobbit seems to lull one into complacency.
Yet a closer read reveals hidden depths. Or not so hidden, if one remembers an early line within the story:
Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway.
The key to why we return to this tale is revealed here.
On the surface, it might be because Bilbo Baggins endears himself to us as an unwilling hero with a heart of gold or because Rivendell is too enchanting to pass up reading about, especially when tired and weary.
But The Hobbit’s staying power has to do with the fact that it deals with darkness-of the outer as well as inner kind.
One scene in which the former becomes apparent is when Bilbo loses his way in the goblin caves, stumbling on the cavern where Gollum lives. Far from light and hope, sundered from his companions, he is fenced in by blackness. For anyone who has suffered from depression, it is a mental image all too familiar.
It would be easy to lie down, shiver in fright, close one’s eyes and refuse to move one step further into the unknown. But this is what Bilbo does:
“Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!” So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter
Keeping his wits in the subsequent riddle game and escaping from Gollum without succumbing to murder, he shows remarkable strength of character. Choosing to dash towards freedom, no matter how unlikely an escape seems to be, Bilbo finds an open door through which a ‘leak of sunshine’ comes through, enough to dazzle him. The way he squeezes through, buttons flying, out of the dark into the light, gives hope to anyone fighting both their own sense of doom as well as self-doubt.
But this is not the only instance where the light seems to fade in the narrative. As the story progresses, it darkens. Brand kills Smaug, Thorin falls under the spell of the dragon hoard, nearly killing Bilbo for his perceived betrayal and the merry adventure culminates in the Battle of the Five Armies. Notably, the word ‘grim’ is often repeated in The Hobbit-whenever Brand’s fierce demeanour is described or Thorin’s craze for gold. It is a word often found in Norse sagas and myths, bloodthirsty tales of old that Tolkien knew and loved. Last but not least is the fact that Bilbo’s discovery of the One Ring precipitates the strife and sorrow that would come to tinge Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings.
Given all this, it is no wonder that Tolkien came to rue the tone he adopted in The Hobbit. He said that the former was not a children’s story, adding that all the bits in which the narrator’s voice seem to be talking down to an imaginary child in a simplistic manner were exactly the passages his children disliked.
In her piece A merrier world: J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’, fantasy author Jo Walton makes an interesting observation on the nature of Bilbo that seems to support the claim that The Hobbit is by no means a children’s story. Most works in children’s literature feature a protagonist who is also a child but here, we have a full grown hobbit of around 50 years. He lives alone in his own hole in Hobbiton at Bywater, cooks and bakes his own seed cakes, drinks as well as smokes. Arguably, there is a childlike innocence to the figure of the perpetual bachelor but to a child’s eye, Bilbo must seem old. (I remember, at my final English oral exam, that I described the Wife of Bath in The Canterbury Tales as ‘probably fifty, rather old’, provoking much laughter among the examiners, something I would grow to understand and appreciate years later-and that was when I myself was eighteen!)
Also, the moral ambiguity of the story does not lend itself to the ‘good/evil’ formula we come to expect from conventional Western fairy tales. The competing claims to whom the gold is owed, especially after the destruction of Laketown and the killing of Smaug by Bard speak to this. Smaug himself is captivating, particularly in his rendition by Benedict Cumberbatch in the otherwise only visually arresting film trilogy, described as a danger and threat rather than as a funny and harmless creature as was usual in children’s literature of the time, as in the case of Kenneth Grahame’s The Reluctant Dragon. Last but not least, the deaths of Fili, Kili and Thorin transform the tale into a miniature elegy, especially when Bilbo coins his own formal farewell speech to Thorin.
All these instances are needed to understand the message the book tries to impart-one of both self-actualization but also self-realisation. Through perils, Bilbo comes to understand himself. His limits but also his potential. Sleeping uneasily with dreams of hunting wolves and cries of goblins, fighting loneliness in the halls of the Elvenking as well as hunger and exhaustion in Mirkwood, Bilbo nonetheless finds beauty, courage and strength in himself and in the world.
The Hobbit makes the case that life is for the living, not for hiding away in a burrow or a cave or a mountain stronghold. All dragons can be overcome, especially when friends yet unknown to us await. And in living with and for each other, the true treasure is found-darkness or not.
Sources
Scull, C. (1987) The Hobbit considered in relation to Children’s Literature: Contemporary with its Writing and Publication. Mythlore, Vol. 14, №2 (52) , p. 49–56. Available from [Accessed 21 September 2023]
Snyder, C.A. (2022) Making of Middle Earth: The Worlds of Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings. Union Square & Co.
