The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien is a prequel to Lord of the Rings and it tells the story of a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who is suddenly taken from his stable world and thrust into a quest for stolen treasure. Read on to find out about some of the subversive themes in this much-loved book.

The story begins in Hobbiton in the home of Bilbo Baggins. He is well off, lives alone and has a comfortable life in his hobbit hole:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

After describing the well appointed hobbit hole (which includes port-holes), the book introduces Bilbo Baggins himself:

This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses have lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is the story of how a Baggins had an adventure and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected.

Bilbo is unexpectedly taken in an adventure to recover the gold belonging to dwarves stolen by a dragon. He leaves his home quickly, without an opportunity to take any of the comforts of home with him. He is soon in unfamiliar environments and situations. Not having any real skills to offer and doubted by the rest of the travellers, he has to fall back on his own inner resources and becomes the burglar of the adventure. As the burglar, he has to steal into dangerous places and ends up getting the other travellers out of trouble on more than one occasion.

As time goes on, he is no longer worried and attached to the comforts of his home but becomes more confident. His achievements are recognised and valued by the rest of his party.

When Bilbo eventually earns his share of the massive treasure and returns home, he finds that everything that he owns is being auctioned and he is presumed dead. Once he establishes that he is in fact alive, he finds that the perception of him is changed:

Indeed Bilbo found he had lost more than spoons – he had lost his reputation. It is true that forever after he remained an elf-friend, and had the honour of dwarves, wizards, and all such folk as ever passed that way; but he was no longer quite respectable.

A major theme of this book is about an ordinary person (or Hobbit) who left their comfortable but limited life and had a big adventure that pushed them to the limits. They found that they had abilities that they previously didn’t know that they had, did things they never dreamed of and earned respect from those whose opinions mattered and gained untold wealth. The only price for living life large was loss of respectability from those who never left their narrow existence.

So the subversive tip of this book is to seize opportunities that come along to live an uncommon life, forget about being respectable and aiming to do great things instead of expected things. There are other themes in this book, but this is the Regaining Freedom website, not The Hobbit website!

Tags: Self-actualization, subversive

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 17th, 2010 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Daily subversive tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.