The Hobbit, or There and Back Again in Overdue Podcast

Aug 31, 2011 Tracey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, old-favorite, inklings

From my blog.

I said on a different edition that it was impossible for me to review The Hobbit. I don't know if this will count any more as a review than the parody I posted there does, but here, at the least, are some thoughts on a reread.

It's been a very long time since I read The Hobbit, and having read LotR over and over (and over) in the meantime made it particularly interesting to take note of the seeds for the later story planted liberally throughout this smaller story. (Funny - I alway From my blog.

I said on a different edition that it was impossible for me to review The Hobbit. I don't know if this will count any more as a review than the parody I posted there does, but here, at the least, are some thoughts on a reread.

It's been a very long time since I read The Hobbit, and having read LotR over and over (and over) in the meantime made it particularly interesting to take note of the seeds for the later story planted liberally throughout this smaller story. (Funny - I always think of it as a short little book, but the page count is in the same general neighborhood (or at least zip code) as FotR, TTT, and RotK (after you've subtracted the appendices and indices).) There's the Necromancer, driven out – to recoup and begin a rise later as the Dark Lord. Elrond ponders the future; he doesn't expect it all to happen as quickly as it did. There are the Eagles, as yet unnamed. Rivendell, and Bilbo's happiness there; cram, and even some giant spiders; the Ring, of course, and Bilbo's constant use of it. I wonder how much of it was retro-fitted.

Another fascinating thing was how very much Tolkien's writing and the entire setting of Middle-earth matured between The Hobbit and LotR. Not that The Hobbit isn't a confident and beautifully written story – it surely is, and I took an absurd amount of pleasure in reading the first several chapters (softly) out loud. There is a joy to it, an exuberance, that is muted in LotR, which feels like the youth of LotR's adulthood.

That being said, in Tolkien's letters he states that, although its origins were at the bedsides of his sons and daughter, The Hobbit's publication was not aimed at an audience of children. This is a little undermined by the tone of the book, the language of the narrator, which is often very much a chatty "don't worry, it all comes out lovely in the end" "Princess Buttercup doesn't get eaten by the Eels at this time" sort of thing, very British-children's-book. On the other hand, some of the content is very un-children's-book-like, at least by today's standards. While there are the walking-on-hind-legs ponies and other creatures of Beorn's acquaintance, a strong children's book element – indeed, all of the talking and almost-talking animals have that feel – still, the intrepid troupe of gold-seekers goes through one hell of a lot of ponies. The baker's dozen +1 borrowed from Beorn makes it home safely – but every time you turn around in this book there goes another batch of ponies down something's gullet. Good thing they weren't all named like Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail and Bumpkin, and White-socks my little lad... Also, strong drink flows copiously, and everyone smokes – so very un-PC - and all the talk of smoke rings almost make me want to take up a pipe.

More, though, an underlying theme of the book is that greed, gold-lust, is one of the most powerful forces there is. Thorin is never a very nice person, but give him a glimpse of gold, the hint of the presence of the Arkenstone, and he would all but toss his brother's sons Fili and Kili into Smaug's mouth to claim it. Well, maybe not Fili or Kili, but probably Bombur, anyway. Even Bilbo succumbs a bit to the gold-lust. In a way it's a foreshadowing of the power of the Ring.

(I sincerely apologize for the unintentional dwarf-tossing in the previous paragraph.)

There are no real stereotypical heroes in The Hobbit. The main characters - primarily Bilbo, and then Gandalf, and then the thirteen dwarves - are engaging and entertaining companions, but none of them perform the major heroic acts of the book, at least not "onscreen". Yes, Gandalf kills the chief goblin, but it's not a definitive act: it doesn't do much to help the cause, throwing the goblins into confusion but not stopping them. Bilbo is, over and over, an almost accidental hero - and a true one, in that he conquers his deep, deep fears and saves his friends – but what struck me is that the arc of the story is about going to reclaim the hoard from the dragon, and the pivotal action of killing the dragon is not performed by any of the fifteen main characters. In the ultimate battle, the Battle of the Five Armies, the pivotal moment is not so much the entry of Thorin and Company but that of Beorn. It surprised me a little; LotR is in so many ways a very different sort of story. ...more

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May 26, 2012 Angela rated it liked it

Coming at this after having read The Lord of the Rings trilogy several years ago, I was pretty disappointed. The Hobbit seemed very unpolished by comparison, and I was not as captivated by the story in the same way that I remember being with LOTR.

I don't mean to imply that this was not a good story, though; it had many of the characteristics of the trilogy that I enjoyed, but told in a much simpler, less engaging way. The book felt like it had been written for much younger readers--and It proba ...more

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