the hobbit thesis statement

A Summary and Analysis of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Hobbit is one of the biggest-selling books of all time. An estimated 100 million people have read Tolkien’s classic children’s novel since it was first published in 1937. The story of its origins, and Tolkien’s supposed invention of the word ‘hobbit’ (of which more below), are well-known. But how should we ‘read’ The Hobbit ? What does the story mean?

Before we offer a textual analysis of Tolkien’s novel, it might be worth briefly summarising the plot.

The Hobbit : plot summary

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit (a species of small creature which Tolkien invented) who lives in Bag End, in the rural loveliness of The Shire. The wizard Gandalf turns up one day, accompanied by thirteen dwarves, who are on a mission to reclaim their gold, as well as their kingdom, from beneath the Lonely Mountain. This land, which was once theirs, has been taken over by a fearsome dragon named Smaug.

Bilbo has been approached because they need a burglar: someone to break into Smaug’s cave so they can go in and defeat the dragon and recover their gold. Bilbo reluctantly agrees to accompany them. However, the leader of the dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield, is even more reluctantly than Bilbo to have the hobbit come along with them, because Bilbo is not a fighter as the dwarves are. However, the others persuade him, and they all set off together.

They travel to Rivendell, the home of the Elves, where Elrond gives them help with their map. But the gang are then caught by goblins while attempting to cross the Misty Mountains, and Gandalf has to rescue them. Bilbo, however, gets lost deep in the underground tunnels, and encounters Gollum, a mysterious creature whose magic ring Bilbo accidentally acquires.

The ring confers invisibility upon whoever wears it, and – to escape Gollum, having played a game of riddles with him – Bilbo uses the ring and finds his way out of the tunnels. He rejoins the dwarves and they once again have to flee the pursuing goblins. They are assisted by eagles and find their way safely to the house of Beorn, who can transform into a fearsome bear.

In the enchanted forest of Mirkwood, Bilbo uses his sword, Sting, to fight off giant spiders which attack them and ensnare the dwarves in webs. Nearing their destination, the gang are helped by the inhabitants of nearby Laketown, who want Smaug defeated as much as they do. Entering the mountain via a secret door, Bilbo finds Smaug’s lair and identifies a weakness in the dragon’s armour.

When Smaug notices him, he flies into a rage, realising that Laketown has helped Bilbo to find his cave; the dragon flies off to burn Laketown to the ground. Thanks to a thrush overhearing Bilbo’s account of Smaug’s weakness, and then flying to the town to tell them, a man named Bard is able to find Smaug’s weak spot and shoot and kill the dragon with an arrow, halting the destruction.

The dwarves are now able to regain their mountain, and Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, a stone precious to Thorin’s family. But he hides it rather than handing it over to Thorin. When the men of Laketown demand a cut of Smaug’s treasure to help repair their town, Thorin refuses, drawing on the surrounding armies of dwarves to defend his position.

Bilbo attempts to intercede, using the Arkenstone to bribe the Laketowners, but when Thorin finds out he sends Bilbo away, angered at having been betrayed by the hobbit.

With the help of the eagles and Beorn, the dwarves win the Battle of Five Armies. However, in the battle Thorin is mortally wounded. Before he dies, he forgives Bilbo. Bilbo returns home to his hobbit-hole, with a small cut of the treasure.

The Hobbit : analysis

We should, according to Tolkien, resist the urge to analyse The Hobbit as an allegory of any kind. Tolkien disliked allegory, and for this reason he wasn’t keen on his friend C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books (although Lewis denied that these were allegory, too).

In his preface to the second edition of the vast sequel to The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien wrote that many people confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’, and this distinction is worth pondering. ‘Applicability’, to use Tolkien’s phrase, gives the reader freedom in how they interpret and analyse the story, whereas ‘allegory’ involves a very top-down ‘you should read X here as representing Y’ instruction from the author.

So if we read one of the most famous allegories in twentieth-century literature, George Orwell’s Animal Farm (which appeared just eight years after The Hobbit : we have analysed Orwell’s book here ), as simply a tale about animals and their relationships with their human masters, we are missing something vital from the story.

With The Hobbit , we may detect possible meanings beneath the leafy Shire, the dragon guarding his gold, the novel’s quest motif, and many other details, but Tolkien refuses to prescribe one meaning that we’re meant to follow.

So it was with the great Anglo-Saxon and Middle-English epics which he admired and wrote about as part of his day job as Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford. Grendel and the dragon in Beowulf may mean any number of things: their meaning is in the eye, and mind’s eye, of the reader or listener.

Of course, it helps with old epic poems like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that the identity of the author remains unknown to us, so even if they were intended as allegory, we have lost the ‘key’ that supposedly unlocks them.

But even though we know The Hobbit was written by someone who had first-hand experience of war (like many men of his generation, Tolkien had fought in the First World War) as the inevitability of another war was growing even more urgent, we should refuse to draw any clear line between real-world events and the work of imaginative fantasy which Tolkien wrote.

So, if not as allegory, how should we interpret this quest tale for a modern readership, which is clearly indebted to Germanic and Norse myths of the Middle and ‘Dark’ Ages? On a structural level we can be more confident. In his vast and brilliant study of plot structures, The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories , Christopher Booker gives us two pointers which we might apply to The Hobbit : Tolkien’s tale is an example of both the ‘quest’ story and the ‘voyage and return’ narrative.

Indeed, Tolkien’s subtitle for The Hobbit , There and Back Again , even spells this out for us. Bilbo is the reluctant hero who must leave home – as in countless fairy tales – and go out on an adventure which will make him a wiser (and certainly richer) person.

In this connection, it’s worth stopping to analyse both the similarities between The Hobbit and many earlier folk tales and myths and the crucial ways in which Tolkien departs from these tropes and conventions. Vladimir Propp, in his influential work on the ‘ morphology of the folk tale ’, identified a number of plot details and character types which we find in various European fairy stories: a hero has to leave home, a hero is challenged to prove his heroic qualities, a hero is tricked by the villain, and so on; ending, of course, with the hero returning home and order being restored to the world.

Identifying many of Propp’s features in Tolkien’s novel helps to explain (or partly explain at least) why The Hobbit has become such a favourite novel among both young and old readers alike. There is something primal and mythic about its plot elements, as well as its local detail (dragons, treasure, giant eight-legged foes, shape-shifting bears, and the rest of it). Tolkien taps into the need for fireside tales told by travelling mythmongers and local bards which seems hard-wired into our brains.

With The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion it’s clear that Tolkien set out to create a full-blown mythology for England, drawing on its Germanic and Norse heritage, complete with fully developed languages like Elvish (Tolkien’s speciality was philology, or the study of languages). But with The Hobbit he was doing something less ambitious but no less mythic: creating a sort of modern-day fairy story.

And it is those elements of The Hobbit which depart from the traditional folk tale that make the novel something recognisably modern. The hero is not some wet-behind-the-ears youngster who needs to go out and find his way in the world: he is a middle-aged and perfectly settled creature of habit who has his life all sorted and only agrees to leave his comfortable hobbit-hole with the greatest reluctance.

He is not tricked by the villain but turns out to be the arch-trickster himself, outwitting Gollum and winning, for his efforts, the fated magic ring (another well-worn idea even when Tolkien used it: see the Ring of Gyges ) that would become the centrepiece of The Lord of the Rings .

And, of course, Bilbo is knocked unconscious soon after the climactic Battle of the Five Armies begins. Here, perhaps, we might be permitted a smidgen of biographical analysis: Tolkien, having fought in and survived a mass industrial war which afforded little opportunity for old-fashioned heroism, seems to be commenting on the unheroic nature of war and adventure. You’re more likely to be the fellow zonked out on the ground during the battle than you are the warrior wielding the sword and winning the day.

Indeed, even the story’s other main hero, Thorin, doesn’t survive the battle. The Hobbit offers a very cautious and critical account of war, with the costs often outweighing any perceived benefits.

However, this is not to say that Bilbo fails as a ‘hero’: merely that Tolkien is at pains to highlight a quieter, more diplomatic kind of hero whose work goes on behind the scenes (Bilbo’s role as burglar scouting out Smaug’s lair). He tries to prevent the final battle by bargaining with the Laketown residents and Wood-Elves. Thorin is enraged by this, but he ends up paying an even higher price than his family’s precious Arkenstone, giving his own life in the course of the battle.

Contrary to popular belief, the word ‘hobbit’ did exist before The Hobbit . The famous story is that Tolkien, while marking some of his students’ exam papers in Oxford one day, came to a blank sheet which had not a single word written on it. Out of nowhere – or so it seemed – he had a flash of inspiration, and hastily scribbled down the sentence, ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’

For all that Tolkien’s origin-story offers a delightful ‘Eureka’ moment for the novel’s (and word’s) conception, it should be taken with a pinch of salt. And ultimately, the strength of Tolkien’s novel lies not in its originality but in its superlative assembling of existing tropes and ideas into a story that offers a quiet commentary on the meaning of ‘heroism’ in the modern age.

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Themes and Analysis

By j.r.r. tolkien.

Within 'The Hobbit,' J.R.R. Tolkien taps into a number of interesting themes, uses powerful symbols of courage and history, and makes use of figurative language in new and memorable ways.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The Hobbit , although geared towards younger readers, is a literary masterpiece that every lover of fantasy should take the time to analyze. 

The Hobbit Themes 

Greed .

Greed for power, wealth, and influence comes up several times in the novel. It is in part greed that drives the dwarves back to their home and certainly greed that inspires Smaug to lord over their treasure. The leader of the party, Thorin , is at the center of this theme. Towards the end of the novel, before he loses his life in the Battle of the Five Armies, he exhibits manic greed about acquiring the Arkenstone and his belief that it’ll make him the rightful king under the mountain.

Bilbo is usually, although not always, at the opposite end of the spectrum. While he values home above almost everything else, he does pocket Gollum’s ring in the caves and is determined to keep it. There are other examples of characters’ greed, such as the scenes of the group eating ravenously and the wood-elves imprisonment of the dwarves in order to try to claim some of their treasure. 

Heroism 

When the novel begins, Bilbo is undoubtedly cowardly . He has no desire to step outside his comfort zone. But, as the story progresses, he starts to discover that he’s braver than he thought. He can be defined as a “reluctant hero,” someone who has been forced into the role of hero and taken it on because he had to. He’s not a character who sought out the chance to prove his bravery. It is interesting to consider while reading the novel how exactly Tolkien defines heroism. What does it take to describe a character as a hero in Tolkien’s world?

Home is one of the most important themes in all of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels . For the main character of The Hobbit, home is even more crucial. At the start of the novel, Bilbo has no desire to leave his home and travel into danger’s path. He’s content where he is. On the other side of the equation are the dwarves who are embarking on this quest in order to take back their home. It’s their courage that finally convinces Bilbo that he supports their quest and is willing to help them.

By the time readers get to the end of the novel, Tolkien has defined home as a place one has to love, but not so much they never want to leave it. 

Analysis of Key Moments in The Hobbit 

• Gandalf selects Bilbo Baggins to accompany an expedition of dwarves as a “burglar.” 
• The group encounters three trolls who try to eat them. 
• They are saved by Gandalf who distracts the trolls until the sun turns them into stone. 
• They discover a cache of swords they take with them on their journey. 
• The group goes to Rivendell to speak with Elrond. 
• Elrond translates Thorin’s map. 
• The dwarves and Bilbo are kidnapped by Goblins in the Misty Mountains. 
• Gandalf again rescues them but Bilbo is separated from the group. 
• He meets Gollum and acquires the One Ring. 
• The dwarves and Bilbo escape the goblins with the help of the eagles. 
• They meet Beorn, travel through Lake-town, and Bilbo enters the Lonely Mountain. 
• He encounters Smaug, steals the Arkenstone, and Smaug destroys Lake-town. 
• Bard kills Smaug. 
• The Battle of the Five Armies occurs and Thorin dies. 
• Bilbo returns home to find his possessions are being auctioned off. 

Style, Tone, and Figurative Language 

J.R.R. Tolkien used a light and fun tone to tell the story of Bilbo’s adventures. It’s structured as a children’s story, one that alludes to the darkness at the heart of the story but doesn’t go into detail about it. The text is meant to be fun to read and not too disturbing for young audience members. There are several great examples of this in Tolkien’s depiction of scenes that could otherwise be quite disturbing. For example, these lines from Chapter 2 when the dwarves have been kidnapped by the trolls:

there were lots of clothes, too, hanging on the walls – too small for trolls, I am afraid they belonged to victims – and among them were several swords of various makes, shapes, and sizes.

Tolkien is alluding to the many victims that the trolls have eaten without doing so in a way that would scare children. The gruesomeness of the scene is masked by his light tone and the style he uses while writing. He uses words like “I am afraid” in this passage to make the revelation that “the dwarves might be eaten by trolls” easier to digest. 

Throughout The Hobbit, Tolkien uses examples of figurative languages, such as metaphors and similes, in order to depict various scenes. Some other devices that can be found in the poem are flashbacks, examples of foreshadowing, onomatopoeia, and personification, among others. The latter can be seen in the first chapter when Tolkien describes the “winds…moaning in the night.” There are good examples of similes throughout the novel, such as “quick as lightning” also found in Chapter 1. There is a great example of foreshadowing in the first chapter as well. Gandalf, when speaking about Bilbo, says: 

he is a Burglar, then a Burglar he is, or will be when the time comes. There is a lot more in him than you guess, a deal more than he has any idea of himself.

Analysis of Symbols 

Swords .

The two swords the dwarves and Bilbo find in the trolls’ hoard, Orcrist and Glamdring, are symbols of the past and heroism. The swords embody the histories they were a part of and inspire those who wield them. It should also be noted that swords are an important part of many examples of heroic literature. With his sword, Bilbo starts to turn into the courageous hobbit he is at the end of The Hobbit . 

The Ring 

The Ring is one of the most important symbols throughout Tolkien’s best-known novels . It symbolizes power and the ability to make the impossible possible. With the ring, one can turn invisible. Its power is easily felt and it inspires greed in even the kindest and most open people. Once Bilbo takes possession of it, he’s braver and far more confident than he was before. 

The Arkenstone 

The Arkenstone, the prize of the treasure in the Lonely Mountain, is a symbol of a different time. One in which the dwarves ruled peacefully over the land. For Thorin, it is also a symbol of his power and what his heritage means he’s due. He hoards it greedily, not wanting to share it with anyone. He’s eventually buried with it after he dies. This final act symbolizes Thorin’s peaceful return to a time before greed and death were so much a part of their lives.

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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J.R.R. Tolkien

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Coming of Age

Although Bilbo Baggins is “fully grown” at the beginning of The Hobbit , his adventures teach him to be brave, to take responsibility for himself and for others, and to develop skills he didn’t know he had: in effect, to grow up. When Gandalf and the dwarves approach Bilbo with an offer to be their burglar, Bilbo is so satisfied with his life and his home that the mere thought of adventure is enough to…

The Power of Language

During The Hobbit , Bilbo , Gandalf , and the dwarves confront countless dangers: spiders, goblins, wood-elves, wolves, a dragon, etc. To defend themselves, they use an equally vast number of weapons: knives, daggers, spells, fire, rocks, sticks. Yet one of the most important weapons that they use—and one of the most important skills Bilbo develops on his travels—is language. In the early chapters of the book, Bilbo exhibits almost no sophisticated command of language…

Greed, Trust, Fellowship

Virtually every one of The Hobbit ’s primary characters—including both the heroes and the villains—is at least partially motivated by a desire for unnecessary material things. Smaug , the primary antagonist of the novel, is so greedy that he notices when Bilbo steals a single cup from his vast collection of treasure. (Tolkien notes that his anger is that of a rich man who’s lost something he never uses.) The dwarves are struggling to reclaim…

The Hobbit is a fantasy novel, and it contains many of the genre’s traditional tropes: a quest, treasure, a dark forest, and even a dragon. With this in mind, it’s worth asking who the hero—arguably the most important fantasy trope — of The Hobbit is, and how Tolkien defines heroism. Bilbo Baggins is the protagonist of The Hobbit , meaning that he’s the default hero. In the early chapters of the book, Bilbo is cowardly…

Home and Birthright

The desire and love for a home motivates most of the main characters in The Hobbit . Sometimes, the characters’ desires for home contradict each other. For instance, Bilbo Baggins says at many points throughout his journey that he regrets ever leaving his home in hobbit-town, while the dwarves with whom he’s embarking on his adventure seek to return to (and reclaim from Smaug) their home under the Lonely Mountain. In many cases, having home…

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Tolkien was an academic, being a professor at Pembroke College at Oxford. In the early 1930s, his works mostly consisted of children’s literature, which included poetry, nursery rhymes, and other types of writing for young adults. At this time, he was even making his own elven language and mythology, which he had been developing since 1917 (Rateliff, John D.).

According to a letter Tolkien sent to W.H. Auden in 1955, Tolkien began writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s while marking up papers by his students. He saw a blank page, and started to write, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” He was greatly inspired to write the story, and the first manuscript of The Hobbit was finished in 1932 (Carpenter, Humphrey). He handed the manuscript to his friends, including C.S. Lewis and Elaine Griffiths, a student of his. Griffiths later was the catalyst for the publishing of The Hobbit . When a staff member of the publishing company George Allen & Unwin, Susan Dagnall, came to Oxford, Griffiths either lent the book to Dagnall or was suggested to borrow it from Tolkien. Dagnall enjoyed the novel, and handed over the manuscript to a 10-year-old boy to receive a child’s point of view. With a favorable review from the child, George Allen & Unwin agreed to publish The Hobbit (Carpenter, Humphrey).

Before getting into how the book became a success, let us look into Tolkien’s influences for the story. William Morris, who was a 19th-century English poet, translator, and creative genius, was a significant figure to Tolkien. In fact, Tolkien desired to write more in Morris’ romantic style. In particular, a chapter named The Desolation of Smaug was directly influenced by Morris’ style and ideas (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien). Another writer that left an impression on Tolkien was Samuel Rutherford Crockett. His historical novel The Black Douglas and its villain Gilles de Retz inspired The Hobbit ‘s evil character Sauron. It is said the narrative style and even the events in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were influenced by The Black Douglas (Lobdell, Jared C.). The goblins within The Hobbit are closely associated with the goblins in the novel The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. In addition, MacDonald impressed upon Tolkien the role of fantasy in the context of Christianity ( J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment ). Another key influence on The Hobbit is Tolkien’s adoration of Norse mythology and Germanic philology. Not only are many myths from Norse mythology adapted into The Hobbit , the names of the characters have a distinct Old Norse feel to them (Rateliff, John D.). And speaking of characters, the dwarves were modeled after ancient Jewish people and their history (Rateliff, John D.). Last but not least, the epic Beowulf was the main inspiration behind the world Tolkien wanted to create. As Tolkien was a respected scholar of Beowulf , The Hobbit was in part a tribute to the epic and a reworking of it (Purtill, Richard L.).

After The Hobbit was published in 1937 on the 21st of September, it quickly sold copies amidst highly favorable reviews (Hammond, Wayne G.). Already by December of 1937, the publisher was asking for a sequel. Tolkien had to rework some of The Hobbit to match the tone of the sequel that eventually became The Lord of the Rings . In fact, he was still making edits to The Hobbit until 1966, through many editions ( The Annotated Hobbit ).

The Hobbit , which jumpstarted Tolkien’s career as an author, became not only a success, but also a worldwide phenomenon of fantasy and mythology. The Hobbit and the ensuing trilogy of The Lord of the Rings is so ingrained in world culture, that it is now unimaginable to think of our planet without this treasured novel. Through Tolkien’s love of literature, he incorporated many tales into The Hobbit , and improved their plots, mythology, and sense of kinship with readers.

Rateliff, John D. (2007). The History of the Hobbit . London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-723555-1.

Carpenter, Humphrey (1977), Tolkien: A Biography , New York: Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-04-928037-6.

Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (1981), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien , Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-31555-7.

Lobdell, Jared C. (2004). The World of the Rings: Language, Religion, and Adventure in Tolkien . Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9569-0.

Drout, Michael D. C., ed. (2007). J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment . Routledge. ISBN 0-4159-6942-5.

Purtill, Richard L. (2006). Lord of the Elves and Eldils . Ignatius Press. pp. 53–55. ISBN 1-58617-084-8.

Hammond, Wayne G.; Anderson, Douglas A. (1993), J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography , New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Books, ISBN 0-938768-42-5.

Tolkien, J. R. R. (2003) [1937]. Anderson, Douglas A., ed. The Annotated Hobbit . London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-713727-3.

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The Hobbit J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

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The Hobbit Essays

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Though it is a book of children’s literature, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit still deals with issues of great moral complexity. In the novel, Bilbo Baggins debates whether or not he should kill the creature Gollum, who stands in his way of escaping...

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• Children's Books
• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

"The Hobbit: Or, There and Back Again" was written by J.R.R. Tolkien as a children's book and first published in Great Britain in 1937 by George Allen & Unwin. It was published just before the outbreak of WWII in Europe, and the book acts as a prologue of sorts for the great trilogy, The Lord of the Rings . While it was originally conceived as a book for children, it has been accepted as a great work of literature in its own right.

While "The Hobbit" was by no means the first fantasy novel, it was among the first to combine influences from multiple sources. Elements of the book draw from Norse mythology, classic fairy tales, Jewish literature, and the works of 19th century Victorian children's authors such as George MacDonald (author The Princess and the Goblin , among others). The book also experiments with a variety of literary techniques including forms of "epic" poetry and song.

The novel takes place in the fictional land of Middle Earth, a complex fantasy world which Tolkien developed in detail. The book contains carefully drawn maps showing various parts of Middle Earth including the peaceful and fertile Shire, the Mines of Moria, the Lonely Mountain, and Mirkwood Forest. Each area of Middle Earth has its own history, characters, qualities, and significance.

Main Characters

The characters in "The Hobbit" include a wide range of fantasy creatures, most drawn from classical fairy tales and mythology. The hobbits themselves, however, are Tolkien's own creation. Small, home-loving people, hobbits are also called "halflings." They are very similar to small human beings except for their very large feet. Some of the main characters in the book include:

• Bilbo Baggins , a quiet, unassuming Hobbit and the protagonist of the story.
• Gandalf , a wizard who initiates Bilbo’s journey with the dwarves. Gandalf causes Bilbo to set aside his reputation for cautious respectability and go on an adventure that will change the hobbit forever.
• Thorin Oakenshield , the leader of a group of 13 dwarves who wish to recover a treasure horde stolen by a dragon.
• Elrond , a wise leader of the elves.
• Gollum , a once-human creature who found and is governed by a great ring of power.
• Smaug , the dragon and antagonist of the story.

Plot and Storyline

The story of "The Hobbit" begins in the Shire, land of the hobbits. The Shire is similar to a pastoral English countryside, and the hobbits are represented as quiet, agricultural people who shun adventure and travel. Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of the story, is surprised to find himself hosting a group of dwarves and the great wizard, Gandalf. The group has decided that now is the right time to journey to the Lonely Mountain, where they will retake the dwarves' treasure from the dragon , Smaug. They have nominated Bilbo to join the expedition as their "burglar."

Though initially reluctant, Bilbo agrees to join the group, and they head off far from the Shire into the increasingly dangerous sections of Middle Earth.

Along the journey, Bilbo and his company meet up with a wide range of creatures both beautiful and terrible. As he is tested, Bilbo discovers his own inner strength, loyalty, and cunning. Each chapter involves an interaction with a new set of characters and challenges:

• The group is captured by trolls and nearly eaten, but are saved when sunlight strikes the trolls and they are turned to stone.
• Gandalf leads the group to the Elven settlement of Rivendell where they meet the Elvish leader, Elrond.
• The group is caught by goblins and driven deep underground. Although Gandalf rescues them, Bilbo gets separated from the others as they flee the goblins. Lost in the goblin tunnels, he stumbles across a mysterious ring and then encounters Gollum, who engages him in a game of riddles. As a reward for solving all riddles Gollum will show him the path out of the tunnels, but if Bilbo fails, his life will be forfeit. With the help of the ring, which confers invisibility, Bilbo escapes and rejoins the dwarves, improving his reputation with them. The goblins and Wargs give chase, but the company is saved by eagles.
• The company enters the black forest of Mirkwood without Gandalf. In Mirkwood, Bilbo first saves the dwarves from giant spiders and then from the dungeons of the Wood-elves. Nearing the Lonely Mountain, the travelers are welcomed by the human inhabitants of Lake-town, who hope the dwarves will fulfill prophecies of Smaug's demise.
• The expedition travels to the Lonely Mountain and finds the secret door; Bilbo scouts the dragon's lair, stealing a great cup and learning of a weakness in Smaug's armor. The enraged dragon, deducing that Lake-town has aided the intruder, sets out to destroy the town. A thrush has overheard Bilbo's report of Smaug's vulnerability and reports it to Lake-town defender Bard. His arrow finds the chink and slays the dragon.
• When the dwarves take possession of the mountain, Bilbo finds the Arkenstone, an heirloom of Thorin's dynasty, and hides it away. The Wood-elves and Lake-men besiege the mountain and request compensation for their aid, reparations for Lake-town's destruction, and settlement of old claims on the treasure. Thorin refuses and, having summoned his kin from the Iron Hills, reinforces his position. Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone to head off a war, but Thorin is intransigent. He banishes Bilbo, and battle seems inevitable.
• Gandalf reappears to warn all of an approaching army of goblins and Wargs. The dwarves, men, and elves band together, but only with the timely arrival of the eagles and Beorn do they win the climactic Battle of Five Armies. Thorin is fatally wounded and reconciles with Bilbo before he dies. Bilbo accepts only a small portion of his share of the treasure, having no want or need for more, but still returns home a very wealthy hobbit.

"The Hobbit" is a simple tale when compared to Tolkien's masterpiece "The Lord of the Rings." It does, however, contain several themes:

• It explores the process by which an untested individual develops the insight and skills to become a leader;
• It guides the reader to question the value of wealth as opposed to peace and contentment;
• It builds on Tolkien's personal experience in World War I to consider the question of whether victory, though desirable, is worth the price of war.
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A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

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Chapters 8-13

Chapters 14-19

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Discussion Questions

Does Bilbo’s character develop new principles and virtues over the course of the narrative , or do the events of the journey simply bring out the virtue that was dormant within Bilbo the whole time? Use at least three examples from the text to support your answer.

Is Gandalf a wise and prudent friend, or a manipulative puppet master directing Bilbo and the dwarves however he sees fit? Discuss at least three instances of Gandalf’s stratagems.

Is Thorin a good leader, or is he simply the leader by default based on his ancestry?

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