Lets Review: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Hobbit – It is the bar against which almost all other children’s fantasy is judged, and much adult fantasy fiction too.  Published in September 1937, it has endured as the most influential novel in the genre coupled with the Lord of the Rings trilogy which came out seventeen years later.  What better book is there to review first and hone my reviewing chops on than this timeless classic?

I haven’t been reading this alone, however.  My day job is working as a Primary School Teacher in the UK.  I’ve been reading this book with a class of nine- and ten-year-olds too – children the same age as I was when I first read this book.  Seeing their responses to the text has informed my own judgements about what it is like and how good it is.

So, first of all, what were my top ten favourite things about the Hobbit?

10  – Thorin’s verbal diarrhoea 

If it can be said in three words, Thorin will stretch it out to a hundred.  He’s such an over-talker, and very formal too most of the time. This is amusing – I have met so many people like that (usually in a professional capacity,I hate to say). It  makes him seem pompous and aloof and flawed. But it also makes him seem likeable for those failings. Nobody likes a king who is too perfect. The trait stamps a personality on one of the dwarves which are lacking early on in the book.

9 – Bert, Tom and William

Such an iconic part of the Hobbit has to do with when the Company of Thorin Oakenshield are caught by the three trolls. Despite their best efforts, they are only saved by Gandalf impersonating the trolls.  This scene is exciting and interesting, and has some fine comedy moments in it (The confusion about the Burrahobbit for example) and the class and I were laughing through the antics of the trolls.

8  – Proper Goblins

For some reason most visual and written fantasy tales told in the last f decades (at least that I am aware of) treat goblins at best as fodder and at worst as comic relief. Reading the Hobbit, it is refreshing to see them treated as skilled, aware and tactical – and utterly vicious and selfish. They are masters of machines, of gunpowder or its Middle Earth equivalent, and are stealthy as hobbits! It seems a pity that these creatures have been reduced to so little in modern role-playing games especially, but there is always the Hobbit to enjoy them in, at their best.

7 – Elrond schools Gandalf

When the Company of Thorin Oakenshield reach Rivendell, they meet Elrond who helps them with the next part of their adventure. He also drovers moon-runes that were not noticed before by Gandalf. Gandalf is put out by this discovery, and though he gets over it fast, is still irked at not being the smartest kid in class. This part is all me – it made me chuckle that one of the demi-god made a mistake and was annoyed by it.

6 – The Power of Birds

The Hobbit is filled with the power of birds.  They really first appear as the Eagles save the company from the Wargs and goblins.  A thrush leads the Dwarves to the hidden gate into the Lonely Mountain, and then relays Bilbo’s discovery of Smaug’s weak spot to Bard (who kills the poor Dragon).  The crows, led by Roac, allowed Thorin to talk with his cousin, Dain, as the Dwarves of the Iron Hills rushed to help the besieged company. Without their help, at the major points of the story, Thorin and company would have failed.  So, in short, the birds in the Hobbit rock. 

5 – Down to Goblintown

The Hobbit is filled with songs – as is most of Tolkien’s Middle Earth work.  But it is Down to Goblintown which gets the ‘Grammy’ for most awesome song. Of course, that’s my personal opinion, but it is also the correct one!

4 – The Last Stand Against the Wargs

Surrounded, with Wargs and Goblins on one side, and a precipice and death on the other, and with fire consuming the trees they are hiding in, the company are about to die.  Gandalf feels it too, which makes the reader sure it is going to happen. The rescue by the Eagles isn’t too much of a Deus Ex Machina, but the moment before it happens is one of the most exciting in the whole story.

3 – An Unexpected Party

The very best chapter in the whole book, from beginning to end, is the very first chapter. Where other chapters have really good scenes, the one that shines the most and the longest is the first chapter.  It begins with a chance meeting with some old fireworks peddler and ends with Bilbo leaving without an handkerchiefs. 

2 – My Precious!

In his misadventures in the Goblin tunnels in the Misty Mountains, Bilbo runs across a little known creature called a Gollum. They riddle in the dark – the stakes being the means to survival (for poor, tasty Bilbo) and death (by being eaten).  I isn’t so much the chapter itself, but the character of Gollum that is timeless. 

1 – The Spiders of Mirkwood

What?  Gollum isn’t the number one?  This has to be some sort of a joke?  Except it isn’t. Gollum is awesome and all, but the Spiders of Mirkwood outshine him, at least in the Hobbit. They can talk, first of all, and they don’t like name calling – which I think is just too awesome. And it is the fight against them that Bilbo suddenly gains a great deal of individual agency. Still, if it wasn’t for Sting and the One Ring, even poor Bilbo would have been powerless.

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The Hobbit is a great story.  But it is not perfect (Don’t send me death threats yet). As I said earlier, I was reading this book with a class  of 10-year-olds and in so doing, a few different issues came up.

Archaic English

With language being a fluid, living thing, it is inevitable that the books had become dated.  What doesn’t help is that Tolkien wrote it the novel as a literary rather than genre novel, using complicated and unusual sentence structures even for his age. My class struggled to read the book, especially the latter chapters, where some of the paragraphs were very dry and complicated to read. 

Diversity and Identity

The Hobbit was written by a white man for white boys and as such lacks any major female characters and any characters of diversity. This isn’t a bad thing, a sign of the times that the author lived in.  However, it is hard for some people to see themselves reflected in any of the characters in the story. In addition, some unhealthy stereotypes do exist in the narrative – with poor fat Bombor being fat-shamed more than once. 

Video Adaptation

Those damn awful films – Peter Jackson did a real disservice to the book in his adaptation of the Hobbit.  For various reasons (gone into much more depth in various reviews) the films added too much, changed too much and moved the emphasis of certain parts of the tale and the end result was a mish-mash of recognisable scenes and made-up hogswash (I mean, why would you add Radagast in the Hobbit even after he was left out of Lord of the Rings).  Anyway, I just hope that these films are not the main way that the Hobbit is remembered by following generations.

But the main thing?

The main thing I learned in reading the Hobbit was something I need to remember as a writer: Give the main character AGENCY.  Bilbo has no agency in much of the first half of the book. He can’t resist the dwarves in chapter one. He is caught straight away by the trolls. His only real agency at all comes in riddles in the dark where he has to face Gollum. And in Mirkwood he begins some sort of transition into a pulp hero immune from failure.  The thing is, in my recent reread of the book, I found Bilbo irksome at first because he was so passive. By the time he was fighting spiders I cared about him more. He mattered more when his actions meant something, he was important to the story. The more agency my character has, the more interesting he will be as the plot unfolds. 

In any case, the Hobbit is well worth a read. 

Erratic.