The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien
1937
Rating: 10

Most of the reading of books I’ve done was on the subway to and from work. When commuting to work stopped due to the COVID outbreak, on March 13, I stopped reading books, which was distressing, although not as distressing as the widespread suffering caused by COVID.

After a few months of not reading books and hating myself for not reading books, I realized I needed to pick something up that would be fun, and that I knew I’d like. Enter The Hobbit, which I last read in 2006. The prospect of some escapism was appealing, in light of the varied catastrophes the country and my timelines have been clogged with.

It’s a bit odd, the idea of rating and ranking The Hobbit, because I’m measuring it against adult fiction. I’ve seen it referred to as children’s literature as well, but that seems misguided. It’s a 272 page book with beheadings. It also seems weird to pigeon-hole it as YA fiction and/or as fantasy, as it has transcended those categories.

The weirdness of the exercise aside, I had a few thoughts and observations. I admire several of Tolkien’s choices in writing The Hobbit, which made the book richer and more complex. For example, having an off-brand hero (a short, physically timid and vulnerable, risk-averse hobbit) and also having the completion of the hero’s journey result not in a cliched happy ending, but in the hero’s diminishment in and estrangement from his community. There’s a lot to chew on in The Hobbit in terms of what it says about social hierarchies and heroism.

The Hobbit did have two mostly forgivable problems: Thorin’s development and motivations, and Tolkien’s handling of the logistical considerations around the gold. And these two problems are somewhat connected.

Let’s tackle the character motivation issue first.

At some point, maybe a third of the way into the book, I became confused about why the dwarves wanted to travel to the mountain. I didn’t remember if it was (a) just to snatch the treasure, or (b) to snatch the treasure and to kill the dragon and/or to regain the throne under the mountain.

The primary goal, it seems, was to snatch the treasure. In the song the dwarves sing they profess their desire to “seek”, “claim” and “win” the gold. No mention is made of regaining political power. Another passage suggests that they do not intend to rekindle the dynasty.

On page 16, Thorin says:

We shall soon … start on our long journey, a journey from which some of us, or perhaps all of us … may never return.

The plan is to return, not to rule, although I suppose “some of us” not returning might refer to Thorin hanging out in the mountain to rule, rather than not returning due to being dead.

There may also be some ambiguity around killing Smaug. “Win” in the song lyric leaves open the possibility somehow defeating Smaug rather than merely fleeing with the treasure. And on page 23, Thorin says the dwarves want to “bring our curses home to Smaug, if we can.” This phrasing suggests that mixing it up with Smaug is on the table, but it’s not a mandatory.

It’s hard to imagine Thorin being interested in the gold, but not in regaining his ancestral home and power. Thorin’s apparent ambivalence about ruling could have worked if this question had been addressed, even obliquely, and some reason given for this ambivalence, but it’s not addressed.

The degree to which the dwarves blithely cede control of the agenda to Gandalf is also odd, strains credibility, and pulled me out of the story.

In chapter 1 we learn that the dwarves had previously approached Gandalf to seek his help finding another member of their mountain party, for the sole reason that they numbered 13, an unlucky number. We learn in an off-handed comment from Gandalf that he has made a crucial call as to what will happen once they show up at the mountain. On page 14 — and this passage should have been struck, because I think it undermines the entire story — Gandalf, after one of the dwarves has suggested going through the front door into the mountain, says:

“That would be no good, not without a mighty Warrior, even a hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands.”

“I tried to find one” indicates that Gandalf — contrary to the dwarves — initially viewed killing the dragon as being integral to the mission, but settled on burglary (and Bilbo) as a plan B due to a shortage of warriors. You can kind of imagine the dwarves, based on their nature, and maybe Bilbo, due to his inexperience, adopting a “let’s just get there and see what happens” approach to the adventure, but this sentence suggests Gandalf too is not thinking clearly or carefully about the means or the ends, in matters of life and death, and that is not consistent with his character as a wise wizard.

This is also a very puzzling statement in light of Thorin mentioning on page 22 that dragons may have a “loose scale on their armor.” No one in the room suggested trying to find someone to put an arrow through a loose scale?

I suppose, by making the acquisition of wealth Thorin’s only goal, it sets up an opportunity to develop his character, and provides an opportunity for him to achieve an individual moral and political awakening, which is what happens with Thorin, but not in a good way.

The second problem, a minor one, is Tolkien’s treatment of the post-dragon treasure logistics.

On page 198 the party is on the side of the mountain, Bilbo has returned from inside the mountain with a cup, and they’re trying to figure out how to handle Smaug. Bilbo, after the dwarves grumble at him, complains that they didn’t give adequate thought to the plan, and that they did not tell him how much treasure there was.

However, Thorin did tell Bilbo early on about the amount of treasure, stating that his “…grandfather’s halls became full of armour and jewels and carvings and cups.”

And we know that Thorin (and Bilbo) know that the vast treasure hasn’t gone anywhere: “Dragons,” Thorin tells Bilbo, “guard their plunder as long as they live … and never enjoy a brass ring of it.”

If that’s not clear enough, he then says to Bilbo on page 23, in reference to the treasure, “Probably, for that is the dragon’s way, he has piled it all up in a great heap far inside, and sleeps on it for a bed.”

Bilbo (and Tolkien) seem to do some second-guessing about the planning for the trip, but it seems odd to have the characters agree to get to the mountain and see what happens, but to then retroactively criticize their previous planning. By common agreement, there was no previous planning. There is a distinction is between forgetting to make a plan versus making a conscious choice not to have a plan, and this distinction gets a bit fuzzy on pages 198 and 201, although this may also be due to the dragon casting a spell on Bilbo. Tangentially, this conversation between Smaug and Bilbo is also a deft piece of writing, with more happening below the surface than is apparent, and is an example of why it’s not crazy to think of The Hobbit as capital L literature.

One of the other odd features of the book is the large number of dwarves. Why did Tolkien write 13 dwarves into the story? It seems like too many dwarves! The dwarves, aside from Thorin, are almost totally undeveloped as characters. And the lack of development goes further than “fully rounding them out.” Maybe half-way through the book it occurred to me that I had no idea who the dwarves were in relation to Thorin. Later we learn that Fili and Kili are his nephews, which is grand, but what about the other 10 dwarves? Tolkien never tells us if they are friends or family. The assumption has to be that they are not family, because Tolkien spells out that two of them are family.

It is either a glaring omission in the story, or it was intentional. Maybe they are not developed as individuals because Tolkien intended that they serve as symbols, and not giving them any biographies is a way of shouting at the reader that they are symbols. That doesn’t really hold much water though, as symbolism and character development don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

Tolkien intended for the dwarves to represent Jews, so maybe the erasure of the dwarves in the story is meant to highlight that. The topic of Tolkien, dwarves, and Jews is a lively one, I’m not going to wade into it, but, leaving aside the question of what Tolkien may or may not have been trying to say about Jews in The Hobbit, it’s hard to see how their presence, combined with their absence, furthers the story.

Speaking of absences, I also realized at the end of the book that, with the exception of a brief early mention of Bilbo’s mother, there is not a single female character. In that regard The Hobbit is very much a document of its time.