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I’ve been acquainted with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
books for most of my life, having been blessed with lovely patient dedicated
readers for parents and an older brother who asked to listen to them at the
mature age of 5. But it can be disturbing when you’re 4 years old to hear
the darkness of The Lord of the Rings—and so at the time I remember liking The
Hobbit much better. And rightly so—The Hobbit was written by
Tolkien for his children, after all, and takes place in a considerably less
oppressive time in the world of Middle Earth than that of the later books—evil
isn’t quite as pervasive and good isn’t quite so small against it.
In The Hobbit: or There and Back Again, Tolkien introduces his readers
to Middle Earth by telling how Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit by race (hobbits are
respectable, unadventurous little folk that live in tidy underground dwellings
in a place that sounds remarkably like England, though Tolkien hated allegory
and so would by all accounts never admit such a thing) gets unexpectedly swept
away, and assigned the unsavory role of Thief in an adventure party largely
composed of treasure-seeking dwarves. From his hobbit hole in the Shire, Bilbo
travels with his companions across rivers and mountains and forests to the Lonely
Mountain, where the dragon Smaug presides over an ancient hoard that the dwarves
want to win back. Of course on the way there (and back again) Bilbo encounters
many more uncomfortable events than he wants—and shows a bit of what hobbits
are made of, along with incidentally happening upon a long-lost magic ring,
a small event that is the major connection to the later books.
Just to warn you, Tolkien is a marvelous storyteller, but this and the other
books are as much about a world, with its own history and languages (Tolkien’s
written most of them) and culture, as they are about the story, and he can get
a bit sidetracked at times. But on the whole, The Hobbit is a wonderful
book—and a great warm-up for the later story (you’re introduced to Bilbo,
Gandalf, Elrond, orcs, dwarves, and, of course Gollum) as well as a great stand-alone
book.
Although I appreciate the later book as well as The Hobbit now—and
highly recommend the Lord of the Rings—The Hobbit is still
my favorite of the books. I was disappointed when I found out that they
weren’t making a movie of it as well as the others—and I am even more
disappointed when I find out that someone who’s reading the books because
of, or along with, the movies has skipped The Hobbit to go straight to
The Fellowship of the Ring.
