The Protagonist’s Quest in The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn

When you look at various genres of literature, the one binding theme that they all have is the sense of a journey or quest. The protagonist goes through a mental and emotional journey where they rediscover themselves, or an epic quest filled with adventure and high-paced action. Often times, we see both attributes used by the author. The quest is highly significant throughout the story as it creates change in the main character. Through reading both “The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkien and “The Last Unicorn” by Peter S Beagle, I discovered that while both had very different plotlines, the journey that the Unicorn and Bilbo shared were vastly similar in many ways. The Unicorn’s journey was one that was fuelled because she wanted to feel a sense of friendship and longing. Bilbo’s journey was quite different, as it involved much more action and was fuelled by the Dwarves’ revenge and hunger to get their gold back. Despite this, they both go through an emotional journey in which they see themselves change immensely, they both have to go through a lot of physical hardships in order to complete their quest and they both changed after their respective quests and had a hard time adapting to life. As David Mitchell once stated “there ain't no journey what don't change you some.”

Throughout the two stories, both protagonists go through an emotional journey. For Bilbo, his idea of a utopia at the beginning of the story was that home is the best place and that there is no reason to leave home unless you have to. As his experiences with the dwarves get him into dangerous situations, he discovers his Tookish side and uncovers his hidden love for adventure. In the first couple of pages in the book, Bilbo asks Gandalf if he is sure that he will come ...

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...onment that is his house. As for the Unicorn, she knows nothing more than the comfort of her forest at the start of the novel. She lives an innocent creature, not even knowing how long she has truly been living for. Her view of the world ultimately gets changed when she becomes a human, and unfortunately for her, she takes the feeling of love and regret she developed as a human into her Unicorn life. Both characters in the end not only become completely opposite to what they started as, but also The stories may capture different senses of fantasy (The Last Unicorn being much more fairy tale like in it’s approach), yet the progression both stories take, show that in the end as Rainer Maria Wilke correctly stated, “The only journey is the one within”.

Works Cited

The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

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