HOBBIT JOURNAL #2

HOW HAS BILBO CHANGED AND GROWN?

At the beginning of J.R.R. Tolkien’s the Hobbit, Bilbo is quite a different character than he is at the “end.” Although he has matured/”grown up” as in the other books which we read such as Catcher in the Rye, Huckleberry Fin, and I suspect David Copperfield though I have not read it yet, he matures in other ways as well. And also unlike these other books, not only does his opinion of himself change, the people around him also change the way they look at him. (Yes, this does happen to a small extent in some of the other books, but not to such a degree.) And also interestingly different is the fact that Bilbo is not a teenager who is not grown up trying to grow up, but rather a fully grown man, or hobbit if you wish, that is still struggling to find who he really is. He is 50, about 30 in hobbit years, which I think adds an interesting twist. But we’ll discuss that later, as the entire entry should not be in the introduction.

When the Hobbit starts Bilbo is very much like the heroes of our other books, but different too. I have already explained how he was the same. However, he is different because, unlike our good friend Holden Caufield and the others, he does fit in with his society. He is rich and smart, and is perfect at doing everything Hobbits like doing. (Which pretty much consists of eating, and being “phony” whenever you have guests over. To be a good “respectable” Hobbit is to pretty much be a snob, and most Hobbits like that way of life, and so does Bilbo to a certain extent. But similarly to Mulan if I may refer to a movie, deep inside he doesn’t want to be respectable. He wants to be himself, with that tookish side of him. He thinks the “norm” just kinda stinks. He has fully matured in most Hobbit’s view, but really even though he is now an adult (if that is what Hobbits call it) there is a large chunk of him that has still to grow, to mature, to come out, whatever one wishes to call it.

As for how Bilbo actually changes there are several ways. First was the adventurous part of him. As I have already said at the beginning he seemed quite content to be a boring little hobbit. When he runs out of his hobbit hole, upset because he forgot his handkerchief he really doesn’t even himself know that he wants to change. But this quickly changes for many reasons. Slowly but surely he begins to forget about his lack of food and such as the tookish side of him begins to take over. But really, Bilbo remains the same person/Hobbit until he develops in a rather ironic way….the ring. After Bilbo finds the ring and makes his “daring” escape from Gollum and the Goblins, he instantly looks upon himself as a different person. He unlike before, is now more courageous, almost looking for adventure, more confident, and such. And not only does he mature internally, but his friends, the dwarfs opinions of him change much in the same way. This is ironic as really Bilbo has not changed at all. He is still the same Hobbit, with much of the same hypocriticalness as before, as shown by the fact that he doesn’t tell the truth about the ring. The ring itself is really the object with all these new courageous attributes, not the hobbit himself. Really the way the ring changes Bilbo, other than making him invisible, is just the first step of his development.

Through the adventure after the ring, Bilbo continues to develop although I’m not going to through every one of them as Bilbo and his friends get in trouble usually right after they get out of it. Yet, I would say one can definitely see the new Bilbo emerging once the Dwarfs are captured by the wood elves. Up until this point, Bilbo may have helped, or by mostly luck gotten the dwarfs out of some tough positions but now he was leading, making the decisions for the group not just following them.

By the end of the Book, Bilbo is a completely different Hobbit. I say this because although he has not changed all too much scince the ring, he is different in that now he actually does have all those attributes, with or without a ring. (Though with the ring certainly helps.) He is now really the Hobbit he appears to be unlike when he had just discovered the ring, and his image was false. (In more ways than one.) I think Bilbo’s full growth can be seen not in any of the battles or adventures, but once he returns home, and all the Hobbits no longer find him respectful and instead find him “queer.” Yet, this does not bother Bilbo as it surely would have one year earlier.(that is when his adventure started.) He is content with who he is, and that it is the true sign that the Hobbit has grown up.