The Hobbit

Back when I started reading books with my partner, Tolkien was the exact example I used to tell them the sort of books I had no interest in. Epic fantasy spanning thousands of pages, endless meandering descriptive narration, and deep lore I care very little for. I do enjoy the Lord of the Rings movies but my past attempts at reading Tolkien didn’t amount to much with me painfully having read the hobbit a decade ago and I remember it having taken me months and my attempt at reading The Fellowship of the Ring ending about halfway through the book because I just couldn’t stand the style and pace anymore. Yet after finishing up another book of The Witcher saga, my partner wanted something a bit more lighthearted and was going to re-read The Hobbit on their own. So I just decided on a whim that it was about time that I meet my past demons and give Tolkien another shot and back into The Hobbit I went.

It didn’t take long for me to be on edge about the writing style again, the very first note I took whilst reading was on page 8 regarding the sentence “And you do know my name, though you don’t remember that I belong to it. I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!”. It’s nicely written but it also isn’t how anyone would ever naturally say such things and so my reading kept getting interrupted trying to decipher pretty but difficult to read sentences. That being said, something is very obvious when reading, this isn’t meant to be a “read in your head” book. The fanciful phrases and energetic and colourful narration is intended to be read out loud, to be acted out to entertain the audience and when approached this way, it suddenly becomes a lot more fun to read. Everyone and everything has characters between the messiness of the dozen of dwarfs, Gandalf’s surprising sarcasm, the elves’ wimsy and all the little jokes thrown about.

Altogether I thought The Hobbit to be a delightful story about our little hero Bilbo Baggins heading out on a grand adventure with child friendly action in a heartfelt wholesome world. At least that’s what I thought before re-reading it, I was aware that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a lot darker and more serious than The Hobbit but as it turns out, The Hobbit wasn’t that wholesome either. It is funny, it is cute, it is relatively low in its stakes but it also gets dark with impactful deaths and darker themes. I also found it particularly odd how Bilbo and his troup’s ponies got eaten twice, something the narrator brings specific attention to; I just struggle to imagine myself telling a group of 5 year-olds the stories of Bilbo’s horse getting eaten up by a horde of goblins but maybe that’s just me. Bilbo is also not the traditional children’s adventure hero. My memory of the story must have gotten tainted by the movies because I was genuinely taken aback by Bilbo straight up refusing to go on this adventure until Gandalf forces him out. Even after having been forced to join the adventure, it takes Bilbo a long time to get into his protagonist boots and he arguably never really gets there. The grand image I had of Bilbo outsmarting three trolls (whose names are William, Bert and Tom…very troll-like names)? That was Gandalf. Bilbo fighting with the dwarves against the underground goblins? That was also Gandalf. Escaping with the eagles? Also thanks to Gandalf. The climax of the battle of the five armies? Bilbo hides it out wearing the ring and then still manages to get knocked out. Even his encounter with Gollum, he wins by chance and he’s otherwise not the brightest bulb, ignoring some of Gandalf’s advice or giving up secrets by accident. He does get his moments with the spiders and the elves but on the whole, Bilbo is far less of a hero than I expected.

Bilbo’s lack of heroism however doesn’t take anything away from what is happening. Despite my issues with the style messing up my reading a bit, the pacing is brilliantly mastered and I never got bored. Some parts feel like they could have been split just to avoid chapter length fatigue (I’m thinking of the hour long mistwood forest chapter that could easily have been split in two) but it was still always interesting. This was especially the case as the inklings of what would eventually become the Lord of the Rings can be found can already be found. The ring is suggested to have a will of its own, Gandalf finding Glamdring, the introduction of Elrond and Sauron (as the unnamed necromancer) and many other little details. However, a lot of these also come with an asterisk as some oddities remain that either clash with the concepts of fantasy or the wider world-building. I pointed out the very British names the trolls had, but there’s also off-hand comments about all the post offices that apparently exist in Middle Earth like it’s just a British suburb or Gandalf finding his legendary sword entirely through the chance encounter with the trolls. There is also the sticking point of animals talking and everyone understanding them. I was aware of the eagles talking as a special race of eagles, but wargs, crows, thrushs and spiders also all speak. It’s almost disney-esque but it also puts into question how Bilbo in his major heroic deed of saving the dwarves from the spiders kills dozens of them without remorse nor second thought. As far as the world-building is concerned, spiders are fully conscious and intelligent creatures capable of speech and logical thought and that makes their mass murder by Bilbo questionable especially when Bilbo doesn’t even express any shock about his actions.

Nevertheless, on the whole, The Hobbit was an amazing read, it’s one of those books where the work put into it is palpable. From vocabulary to sentence structure to world logic, everything is imbued with a refinement that no other fantasy book I’ve read had. Middle Earth was Tolkien’s magnum opus and it is felt and this revisit of The Hobbit was so pleasant that I might just want to give The Lord of The Rings another try.