Is The Hobbit a Children’s Story?
The Hobbit is a treasured and cherished children’s book, but the work is frequently ignored by adults who demote it to the nursery bookshelf and hand it down to younger siblings or store it away for the next generation. J.R.R. Tolkien was so successful at alluring to children through The Hobbit that it has a tendency to stay locked into the genre of children’s stories and sometimes even devoted Tolkien fans abandon it when they mature and so they move on to The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.
It is true that The Hobbit was written with an audience of children primarily in mind. The Hobbit was originally told as a bedtime story for J.R.R. Tolkien’s children. However, it should not be assumed that it is just a child’s book. In The Hobbit, Tolkien deals with a plethora of complex and prominent ideas. The book deals with the consequences of greed and the enticements to manipulate power. It even contemplates some difficult philosophical ideas, such as the relationship between fate and free will. Tolkien does a marvelous job of constructing his story to make it comprehensible to children, but that does nothing to make it a less fascinating and stimulating tale.
The Hobbit can be considered a children’s story through its characters, rhymes, and the innocent and playful tone of writing. Its characters resemble those of children’s stories, such as dragons, wizards and other mystical creatures. Smaug, is one of the characters in The Hobbit, he is the dragon who resides in the Lonely Mountain. Ages ago, Smaug heard of the treasure that the dwarves had hoarded in the mountain under Thror’s reign, and he drove them away to obtain the gold for himself. His flaming breath can burn down a city and his...
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...ting a plan, makes hasty and poor decisions, and generally relies on Bilbo to see him through his adventures, all the while treating Bilbo like an insignificant underling. Once Thorin gets his hands on Smaug’s treasure, he becomes irrationally greedy and obsessed with wealth, to the extent that he would rather wage a violent war than give the men from Lake Town their fair share of the treasure. Thorin is partially redeemed by his dying apology to Bilbo, but not even this act of remorse can fully redeem him. In general, the arrogant Thorin works as a foil for the unassuming Bilbo, setting off Bilbo’s best qualities and creating a leadership void that provides Bilbo the chance to seize the initiative and become a true hero.
The Hobbit is a brilliantly constructed tale with evolving themes that adult readers will still find captivatingly applicable to the modern world.
The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien is said to be one of the greatest children's novels of all time. The novel, due to its use of such characters as goblins, elves, trolls, giants, and others is in tradition, a fairy tale. The tale centers on a small hobbit by the name of Bilbo Baggins. It follows the journey of a band of dwarves, a wizard named Gandalf, and their robber, Bilbo on their way to retrieving treasure that had long been taken away from them. The hobbit traveled all over Middle-Earth, beginning with Bilbo's tiny hobbit-hole in the ground, to Mirkwood forest, to finally reaching the Mountain in which the dragon Smaug lives. Tolkien uses a large amount of imagery in his writing which can been seen through settings in The Hobbit. The imagery is usually either dark or light, depending on Bilbo's mood and contrast of his surroundings. J.R.R Tolkien uses dark and light imagery in The Hobbit to effectively set an eerie and mysterious mood and to foreshadow events such as Bilbo's journey in Mirkwood and his adventure in the Mountain.
The book The hobbit is a very interesting book that tell of a hobbit that gets sucked into going on an adventure. This book is told by the view of the main character, Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit. “He is living the life when the book first starts. There is no one bugging him, he has his cozy little hobbit-hole all to himself. (Tolkin 12)” Then one day this is all changed. During this book, the main character, Bilbo Baggins is very dynamic and changes a lot throughout the book.
Tolkien to be very good. He develops the story gradually, building up to the climax, and changing the main characters attitude. In the beginning Bilbo, the main character, starts as a very timid hobbit who knows nothing beyond his home, and is overwhelmed by the appearance of the twelve dwarves sudden appearance to his house. Although he grudgingly agrees to join them in their quest, he is very unhappy, and conveys it through this quote: “I wish I was home by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!” This shows how unhappy Bilbo was at the beginning of the story. Over the course of the story, J.R.R. Tolkien develops Bilbo into a brave character who had proved himself through his many acts of bravery. In conclusion, the author did an excellent job developing Bilbo as a
One of the recurring themes throughout The Hobbit is Tolkien’s manifestation of morality through his inherently good and evil characters. Although, some characters narrowly balance the line of good and evil through portraying characteristics such as greed, the hobbits represent naturally altruistic and peaceful characters. The protagonist Bilbo’s rational nature and willingness to compromise through his selfless transfer of the Arkenstone to Bard and the Elvenking further highlights Tolkien’s portrayal of a simple and sensible twentieth century Englishmen in a fantastical setting. Even though he risks his promised sum of the treasures, Bilbo chooses to work as a peacekeeper to opt for a more sensible way of solving a problem. Therefore, the dialogue between Bilbo, Bard, and the Elevenking is a manifestation by Tolkien of the moral high ground of hobbits and their rational and peacekeeping nature, which impresses the men and elves to award their trust and honor to the hobbit.
Smaug is depicted as being equally obsessed with wealth and treasure. Thorin describe Smaug as the average dragon when he says, “Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live, and never enjoy a brass ring of it” (23). As the dwarves cannot delight in the treasure, Smaug chooses to not do anything with the wealth. Although it is under Smaug’s control, he becomes possessive over it. After Bilbo steals a cup from the Smaug’s hoard to take back to Thorin to prove that there is treasure in the mountain, Smaug awakens and notices that the cup is gone. Immediately, he becomes furious. Tolkien writes, “His rage passes description – the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but never before used or wanted” (200). Because Smaug devotes his life to things that cannot satisfy, he becomes possessed by them. Smaug cannot stand to have one small piece of useless treasure taken away from him, because he values worldly riches over life itself, which causes his
The Hobbit written by J.R.R. Tolkien follows a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins as he takes an adventure of a lifetime. Bilbo is content to live a quiet, simple life far from adventure, until the wizard known as Gandalf appears on his doorstep one morning. Very much to Bilbo’s dismay, he is soon swept off on an adventure the likes of which he has only heard stories about. Gandalf, Bilbo, and thirteen dwarves encounter trolls, goblins, giant spiders, and a dragon named Smaug before their journey is finally completed. Due to the ever present danger and the thrill of adventure, Bilbo returns home a less fearful hobbit than the one who left helping to build Tolkien’s theme that even the most rooted of people can change.
Tolkien catches the attention of people of all ages with this fascinating book. Originally, Bilbo Baggins is a fearful hobbit who lives alone in a hole in the ground. When he gets an invitation for a thrill-seeking mission, he has the choice to accept or decline. Burgularing is essential to the journey, but he decides not to, until he is thrown into the job of the burglar. Leaving his safe hole, he left to journey far away with foreign dwarves. Hardly into the assignment, they got into a fight with trolls. Now fearless Bilbo survives until the end, and he ends a better hobbit by learning the meaning of friendship and being different. Quiet Bilbo changed extremely throughout sections, the departure, initiation, and the return in “The Hobbit” by JRR Tolkien, and now he’s
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892 in Bloemfontein, South Africa. He studied at Oxford pursuing a degree in English language and literature. This later gave him the thought of creating his own imagined world known as Middle-Earth. He then later married Edith Bratt, had four children, and became a professor at Oxford. The Hobbit, first published in 1937, had some of Tolkien’s invented language and mythology. The plot and character’s of The Hobbit combined the ancient heroic Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian epics, which he studied at Oxford. The Hobbit “is immersed in folk tradition” (Matthews). The character Bilbo Baggins was inspired by the rural Englishman of the 1930s. Tolkien was inspired by ancient European myths leading him to write Lord of the Rings, a prequel to The Hobbit. On September 2,1973, J.R.R. Tolkien died at the age of eighty-one.
The Hobbit, written by John R. R. Tolkien, is a fantasy novel published on September 21, 1937. It was written as a prelude to the famous series, The Lord of the Rings, written seventeen years later. The Hobbit introduces the reader to an incredibly immersive fantasy world, that enriches the reader into its epic storyline. The story takes place in a land called Middle-earth, a land filled with enchanting surprises and magical wonders. It was the perfect playground for Tolkien to develop his main character Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo Baggins was a small hobbit, who unaware in the beginning would become a large role in the plot. It is through this character that Tolkien implemented the theme of heroism into the story. Bilbo’s unexpected adventure with the dwarves and the wizard gave him the opportunity to develop into the ultimate hero of Tolkien’s tale. Bilbo’s epic journey to become the hero of the story begins when Gandalf, the wizard, tells Bilbo of an expedition that would soon change his life forever.
J.R.R Tolkien's action packed, fantasy driven, inspiring novel The Hobbit shows the message that everyone must know, that you should never give up even if all hope seems to be lost. It shows setting of evergreen forests with villages scattered along the paths of which they must take and mountains just on the horizon. The read must go along with bilbo baggins a hobbit that does not realize there is more to him than just being a baggins and that he will live up to his family's name. Even after gandalf tells him that he will embark on a great adventure he still doesn’t believe he is anymore than just bilbo. Therefor this story is inspiring and shows that with the setting, character, and theme combined make this story a great read.
There are a lot of characters in the Hobbit. Most if not all of them
It is likely for one to assume that a classic piece of literature set in a fantasy oriented stage will have no merits to the youths of today. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, however, with its crafty of usage symbolism, displays its relevance to issues that often trouble teens. As the story progresses from a children’s tale to an epic, the main character Bilbo undergoes a series of development, his experiences often overlapping with ordinary people. Reading the Hobbit will provide teens with opportunities of exploring the importance of several common but serious topics. People may encounter many of the themes presented in the book elsewhere repeatedly, but it’s possible that they never appreciated the applications it might have on themselves. When teens read the Hobbit, they perceive it as a simple fiction of adventure. Under proper guiding, they will be able to recognize and utilize the lessons of the Hobbit, and improve their attitudes and ideas about life.
In the story of “The Hobbit”, each character takes on a specific characteristic. In each of these characters identity on the surface is decided more by their race, family and their past rather than anything else in the beginning of the story. By making definite choices each character comes to define their own fate and
The first major theme in The Hobbit is greed. Greed is represented as evil, it doesn 't matter how big of a hero someone is or how great someone is anyone can fall victim to it. Tolkien illustrates the powerful effect
The Hobbit is a fantasy fiction book and the author is Tolkien. The main idea is how the hobbit, a small creature named Bilbo who is the main character, changes throughout the different adventures becoming an unlikely hero. In fact the hobbits themselves symbolize the modern middle class and therefore allow the reader to identify with the hobbits. The following paragraphs will describe the setting, the characterization, the theme and symbolism.