Dark and Light Imagery Within the Hobbit

At the beginning of the adventure, Bilbo was a timid, little hobbit with no idea how to steal or survive outside of his little hobbit hole. When Thorin and the rest of the dwarves first meet Bilbo, they question

The Hobbit is a novel that is actually a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster explains a vast amount of archetypes. I will be applying the archetypes in the book “How to Read Literature like a Professor” to Bilbo Baggins’ journey.

Bilbo, was an ordinary character in his community at the beginning of his journey. He lived in his nice home. “It was a Hobbit Hole, and that means comfort.”(3) He maintained a comfortable lifestyle; a tidy home, one with paneled walls, and tiled floors. Hobbits, were known for being respectable, because they were rich, but also because “they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected.”(3) He was a Baggins. A Baggins never forgot their handkerchief, or their walking stick, or any other of their comfort items when they left home. It was their ordinary calm life. He loved it,

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

To me, both Tolkien and movie producers in Hollywood captured many of the different aspects and angles of the timeless classic The Hobbit. Although I pictured some scenes and characters different in my mind, both the movie and the book outdid themselves with lovely yet gruesomely fascinating detail. I myself am not sure if I favor the movie or the book better. Each did a great job of benefiting details to the story by either giving great descriptions of high quality imagery. Both the movie and the book both portrayed the story perfectly in their own ways.

Bilbo had gone inside of Smaug’s home which he thought he wanted to steal from caused a vivid argument. In an excerpt from, The Hobbit, J.R.R Tolkien uses a wide array of rhetorical devices to convey the tone of the discussion. At the beginning of the excerpt, Tolkien uses imagery, personification, and alliteration to describe the moment when Smaug discovered Bilbo inside of his house. At first, we could imagine Smaug “…fast asleep, almost dead and dark…” with the use of visual imagery which assists the reader by creating a context for the story’s action.

One little hobbit’s life shall change forever with adventure lurking by for tea. Bilbo displays three archetypes throughout his adventure. One of them is ‘the call to adventure’, where's ‘the Tookish side’ of him awakens, and Gandalf presents Bilbo with an adventure, though without giving him an alternative. A second one is ‘the magic item’, for instance the magic ring. And ultimately, the ‘supernatural aid’ , patently Gandalf for he is a wizard. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End, Under Hill has invariably led a quiet and ‘boring’ life. Well, at least he did until thirteen dwarves came rapping at his door.

The Hobbit, written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, describes a quest that Bilbo Baggins and his friends made. Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of the novel, was one of the many

“The Hobbit”, a thrilling novel with numerous amounts of varying characters, contains so many different archetypes. Ranging from dwarves to dragons, “The Hobbit” has such a large variety of characters starting with Bilbo Baggins who gets led into an adventure by a wizard named Gandalf. Along with the aid of dwarves, Bilbo must go on a journey to defeat Smaug- the large dragon who guards the treasure. Together they face many struggles along the way, but they finally defeat the dragon. And a large amount of characters and archetypes are introduced in this novel. They include Bilbo who shows growth and bravery, Gandalf who invites Bilbo to the hero’s journey, and Smaug who symoblizes fear and challenges Bilbo’s courage. In “The Hobbit”, Bilbo Baggins plays the

The Hobbit written by JRR Tolkien is a fantasy novel that follows the quest of sensible hobbit Bilbo Baggins and the thirteen dwarves to win a share of the treasure guarded by the dragon, Smaug. Bilbo's journey takes him from isolated surroundings into more threatening territory. Throughout the novel Bilbo changes dramatically, he develops a greater understanding of the world around him, he gains a sense of adventure and he also develops a desire to live a comfortable life without the thought of others. Throughout the novel Bilbo changes remarkably, one of the most remarkable changes he makes was his greater understanding of the world around him.

At the beginning of the book, he was a comfort loving hobbit who, even though he agreed to the adventure, was somewhat cowardly and often hapless. He is constantly in need of saving and help. For example Gandalf had to save Bilbo and the dwarves when they got in trouble with the trolls and when Dori had to carry him while they were escaping because he was slower than the others. At the end of every adventure at the first half of the book, Bilbo would always dream of his comfortable hobbit home and would always regret the adventure. However as the story line developed, Bilbo learned to be more adventurous and brave.

In the novel The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, the main character, Bilbo Baggins, experiences dramatic change as he leaves his peaceful home to embark on a dangerous quest. Bilbo battles spiders, goblins and trolls hoping to help a company of dwarves reclaim their home from a dragon. He travels across Middle Earth and meets many different people along the way. The situations Bilbo is placed in define many of the elements of the story.

Throughout chapter five, Bilbo finds himself gaining more bravery, but also more self-confidence. Once Bilbo opened his eyes in the dark cave he "could not think what to do; nor could he think what had happened; or why he had been left behind' or why, if he had been left behind, the goblins had not caught him" (26). Bilbo gets the confidence to get up and start moving around even though it's basically pitch black. While making his way through, Bilbo "crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel" (26). The tiny cold ring is what started his encounter with Gollum, and it was a "turning point in his career, but he did not know it" (26).

After beginning his adventure, Bilbo faces one of his most difficult challenges in The Hobbit when Bilbo Baggins faces the Inmost cave stage he fights with Gollum in the cave. Holmes describes the Inmost Cave as “the abyss. This is the greatest challenge that faces the hero” (Holmes). This stage is literally in a dark cave, one that provides a morally challenging and terrifying experience for Bilbo. In the cave, he deals with the Gollum and finds the Ring, changing his character forever. Only once he suffers through his riddle battle with Gollum, he recovers The Ring, a ring that grants its wearer invisibility as they wear the Ring. Bilbo has to deal with a moral dilemma when he must face Gollum and must decide on whether or not to kill Gollum. While in the cave with Gollum, Bilbo put on the Ring, which make him invisible and had to deal with what to do about Gollum in Bilbo’s panic and terrified state: “Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him” (Tolkien 86). He was forced to lose some of his innocent and face the reality of life and death situations. For this difficult battle in the cave, Dorothy Matthews reported in The Psychological Journey of Bilbo Baggins, “In this underground scene he must face an important trial; he must make a decision whose outcome will be a

Bilbo is quite a cunning and observing protagonist who with his skills gets out of messy situations from the elve’s prison to the dragon’s cave the reader can observe this behavior. The surroundings such as his home lets out a comfortable scenario to be in. In the darkness of the forest the style in which confronted made Mr. Bilbo Baggins apply the ring that made his easy escape happen. The author unleashed this quest by including Gandalf to start the whole journey which was putting a symbol towards Bilbo’s door in order for the dwarves to realise who is the last piece for this mission. The sequence from where the dwarves were released from the grasps of the trolls they found treasure which made them have more plentiful amounts of Gold, silver, and other objects at the turn of events.