The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
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Book Summary Information
Author: J.R.R. TolkienEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1981-03-12
ISBN: 0345296044
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of The Hobbit
Book Review: The Best Book. (period)
Summary: 5 Stars
The Hobbit was just about the most fun reading experience I have ever had. I'm not sure whether the effect stemmed from the great quality of the book or from my particular developmental stage when I read it. Probably a bit of both. It's really just the simple story of a bourgeosis everyman who is thrown into a world of dragons, goblins, wizards, and dwarves and is forced to discover the greatness within himself. The plot arch might be that of Beowulf, substituting a typical well-to-do Englishman for the mighty thewed hero of the legend. The splendor is in Tolkien's wizardly story-telling and poetic vision. The story is worked to a minute perfection on every single page, every single sentence, even. Each chapter is punctuated with songs, or poems, making the Hobbit a true prose romance, in the tradition of the earlier great fantasists, such as William Morris, Lewis Carrol, Kipling, or ER Eddison. And every song is good.
The Hobbit evokes a sense of nostalgia in this particular reader, a nostalgia for a lost pre modern world of primordial Northern England and Europe. As CS Lewis wrote somewhere, no other writer is able to capture the feel of Norse mythology, its symbols and moods, and weave them into a story the way Tolkien does. Tolkien employs his own private mythology, later published as the Silmarillion, to give the setting a sense of historical depth. For example, at one point the heroes find swords "forged during the goblin wars of Gondolin," foreshadowing a subsequent encounter with goblins. Each encounter brims with invention and unique imagination seldom found in any other author, but at the same time invoking an homage to the other great heroic stories of the world. The eyrie of the giant eagles recalls the story of Sinbad in the rocs' nest. The riddle game with Golum, one of the most inventive scenes in any story, reminds one of the Sphinx from Greek mythology. And each riddle is brilliant.
All Tolkien's works are incomparable, but the Hobbit is his greatest, I think, mainly for its simplicity. It lacks the Manichean overblownness of the Lord of the Rings or the Silmarillion. Here is not a cataclysmic war between absolute good and absolute evil, but a simple quest to get some loot from a dragon. The story is thusly more like real life, and closer to primeval mythologies of Europe in that there is no Zoroastrian conception of good and evil.
The Hobbit has some real life relevance too, I suspect. I think there is a message in the Hobbit, about a cataclysmic world event, but to recognize it requires one to have an encompassing understanding of twentieth century history, a familiarity with Tolkien's own life (i.e. a sense of when the book was written), and penetrating awareness of the tropes of the fantasy genre. The story sort of picks up the thread started in the Worm Ouroboros, as pertaining to the allegory behind Gro and the ambassador. I've always wondered if any one else can answer the riddle of the Hobbit.
Summary of The Hobbit
Written for J.R.R. Tolkien"s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when first published more than sixty years ago. Now recognized as a timeless classic with sales of more than 40 million copies worldwide, this introduction to Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf the Wizard, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth tells of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent."In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."
The hobbit-hole in question belongs to one Bilbo Baggins, an upstanding member of a "little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves." He is, like most of his kind, well off, well fed, and best pleased when sitting by his own fire with a pipe, a glass of good beer, and a meal to look forward to. Certainly this particular hobbit is the last person one would expect to see set off on a hazardous journey; indeed, when Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, "looking for someone to share in an adventure," Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit's doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure.
The dwarves' goal is to return to their ancestral home in the Lonely Mountains and reclaim a stolen fortune from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, they and their reluctant companion meet giant spiders, hostile elves, ravening wolves--and, most perilous of all, a subterranean creature named Gollum from whom Bilbo wins a magical ring in a riddling contest. It is from this life-or-death game in the dark that J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, would eventually spring. Though The Hobbit is lighter in tone than the trilogy that follows, it has, like Bilbo Baggins himself, unexpected iron at its core. Don't be fooled by its fairy-tale demeanor; this is very much a story for adults, though older children will enjoy it, too. By the time Bilbo returns to his comfortable hobbit-hole, he is a different person altogether, well primed for the bigger adventures to come--and so is the reader. --Alix Wilber
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