The Hobbit Journey

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One lost hobbit. A cold, jet-black cave. A slimy Gollum. Just one of the many trying challenges encountered in the hobbit’s big adventure. The Hobbit is a high fantasy novel written by J.R.R Tolkien. The movies, directed by Peter Jackson, are based off the books, but split into a series of videos. The complete story is about a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, as he advances along with 12 dwarves, their lead dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield, and a wizard, Gandalf, on a quest to the Lonely Mountain. They started this expedition to retrieve Thorin’s stolen heirlooms. Along the way, the group is confronted with many challenges, such as trolls, goblins, Gollum, and even a dragon, all to redeem what was lost. A specific encounter that the party experienced, …show more content…

To illustrate, it says in the book, “‘ Praps we sits here and chats with it a bitsy, my preciouss. It likes riddles, praps it does, does it?’” (Tolkien 73). The scene here is Bilbo has just met Gollum and is holding out his sword in front of him, as protection. When Gollum sees this, he becomes more friendly and offers to play a little game with Bilbo, in hopes of finding out more about him, making it seem as if everything rests on what Gollum does, adding suspense to the story. It shows that Gollum is a creature to be feared, which promotes Bilbo even more into the role of a hero. In the movie, Bilbo at first is hiding from Gollum, but as soon as Gollum sees him, he tries to eat Bilbo. In response, Bilbo holds out his sword and carefully proposes a riddle game to Gollum, seeming more than a childish game than a matter of life and death (Jackson). In this scene, the two characters are circling around a rock, making it suspenseful and suggesting that Gollum has no intention of letting Bilbo leave. Gollum wasn’t very friendly to Bilbo, even when he was threatened. The background was not as dark as the book described probably because if it was, we couldn’t really see what was happening in the scene. Also, there really was no music for this part, but Gollum’s voice was very raspy in an almost frightening kind of way. It …show more content…

The book said he jumped clear over Gollum, while the movie shows Bilbo kicking him in the head as he went over. As evidence, in the book it says, “ No great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark. Straight over Gollum’s head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air; indeed, had he known it, he only just missed cracking his skull on the low arch off the passage” (Tolkien 87). After Gollum lost the riddle game, he still didn’t want to lose Bilbo so he went to find his invisibility ring. When he couldn’t find it, he started chasing after Bilbo, who put it on in order to escape. Eventually, Gollum got ahead of him, so Bilbo tried to find another way to go. In the end he decided to jump, which adds a nice twist to the story. It also shows that Bilbo has become quite brave at this point, taking many risks to help his group achieve their goal; which adds to Bilbo’s ‘hero’ disposition. Tolkien probably intended this part to change the way the readers think of Bilbo at this point, constructing his new character. In the movie, as Bilbo is running from Gollum, he sees Gandalf and the dwarves running past in the cave towards the opening. To catch up with them, he attempted to jump over Gollum with the invisibility ring on, but did not quite jump as high as he predicted (Jackson). The movie adds Bilbo kicking Gollum as he jumps to add

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