Fantasy Is Reality

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Recommended: Fantasy elements in the hobbit

As a story of creatures like the hobbit, dwarves, elves, goblins, wolves, and the wizard Gandalf, and their lives and adventures in a place called the Middle Earth, the fantastical nature of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit deserves no further explanation. Yet the use of fantasy in it is remarkable and prominent, which contributes to its popularity over the years since it has been published in the 1930s.

According to Steven Jones, the use of fantasy in fairy tales is "the most salient...stylistic feature." In most other stories which fall into the genre of fairy tales or fantasy literature, one can never overemphasize the importance of fantasy in them. However, the fantastical elements there is usually accompanied by some realistic elements, such as a link with the ordinary world like ours. For example in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the fantasy world is only a dream and the protagonist never physically left the real world. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, there is still an ordinary world (the Muggles' world) which was linked to the fantasy world by the Leaky Cauldron in the Diagon Alley.

The Hobbit is a different case. Although fantasy, similar to the above stories, is a means to construct an imaginary world, its use is extended to the whole fiction, rather than part of it or as a companion to the reality. The setting of the fiction, the Middle Earth is imagined. Nearly all the characters, good or evil, such as the hobbit, dwarves, goblins, elves, trolls, Gollum, the dragon Smaug, the skin-changer Beron, and other talking animals like wolves, spiders, and eagles are all created. The events happened, such as the eagles' saving the adventurers' lives, Beron's aid in their journey and the fighting wit...

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... to escape? A human being is an animal who is congenitally indisposed to accept reality as it is." Perhaps Tolkien has a deep understanding of this, so he choose to use fantasy to present reality, so that it is more easily acceptable for the readers.

Works cited Page

Eaton, Anne T. "The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien" The New York Times <http://www.nrtco.net/~gtv/the_hobbit.htm> March 13, 1938.

Editorial Reviews. "Escapism" Amazon.com. <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0801865409/102- 2385410-3878518?vi=glance> [Accessed on 5 December, 2002]

Hunt, Peter. Children's Literature. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001

Jones, Steven S. The Fairy Tale: The Magic Mirror of Imagination. New York: Twanyne Publishers, 1995.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit or There and Back Again. London: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 1998.

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