The Hobbit - University of North Georgia Press

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“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” (Tolkien 1).

Because, hey, why not? The movie comes out this Friday (well, the first movie; apparently it’s being split into three films, presumably because Peter Jackson justifiably fears the nerd-riots that’d ensue if he left anything out), and I haven’t read the book in probably over a decade. Most of my memories come from the cartoon rather than the novel (which, by the way, should still be on YouTube in six parts, although it’s buried under piles and piles of trailers for the new film).

I grew up with this book; it’s mainly responsible for me liking fantasy in the first place. That said, I went into it yesterday with some pretty low expectations. One, because it was written in the 30s, and older books tend to have really slow pacing by today’s standards and focus on weird things like spending pages and pages describing furniture and food. Two, because—and here’s the big one—almost everything Tolkien wrote seems cliché now. That’s not his fault, but rather the fault of everyone who robbed him blind for decades after his initial success. This old man defined a good three-quarters of modern fantasy, and Conan the Barbarian filled in the rest. As such, everything in The Hobbit has been reproduced in other books, then subverted, then done ironically, then subverted ironically because even the subversions are overused. There’re whole tropes about defying the tropes Tolkien created. If you write a book today about near-immortal and wise-yet-kind-of-frivolous elves, greedy-yet-noble dwarves, always-evil goblins, and humans that’re encroaching on the magical world around them to bring in a modern age at the cost of supernatural creatures, you won’t even get a rejection letter from the publisher. Editors will pay out of their own pockets to come to your home and laugh in your face.

So Tolkien’s success has kind of come full-circle and eaten him, or would have if he wasn’t, you know, beloved world-over by fantasy nerds and firmly resting on a pedestal of silver and gold right by Shakespeare, Dante, and Chaucer. Before starting The Hobbit and during the initial pages, though, I suspected that if you took the cover off and gave the novel to someone who hadn’t read it, they’d find it pretty laughable without having Tolkien’s reputation influencing their opinion. I mostly changed my mind by the end, but I’ll get to that.

Maybe I should take a minute and describe the actual plot, just in case one of you somehow doesn’t already know it (I assume you’re a bear reading this review on the iPhone of the hiker you just ate). In essence, it’s about thirteen bearded misers and a grotesquely unprepared glutton travelling across the world under the manipulative guidance of an old man who gets sadistic pleasure out of seeing them face threats he could easily handle without making them risk life and limb, all to murder a giant talking lizard who in turn murdered more bearded misers and whose death brings about more murder and mistrust, thus symbolizing the futility and endlessness of revenge cycles as well as how greed can break apart almost all social bonds.

Ok, charitably, it’s about a coming-of-age story crossed with a midlife crisis in which Bilbo Baggins decides to go out and experience the world he’s thus-far missed during a life of drinking tea and smoking pipe tobacco (at least, he says it’s tobacco; the guy eats six meals a day, seems really mellow, and freaks out at unexpected intrusions, so I have my suspicions). The story shows his gradual transformation from a bumbling little creature who’s honestly more trouble than he’s worth to his travel companions into a capable, strong character with good judgment. Throughout the process, he still retains his original down-to-earth-ness, common sense, and general lack of greed and great ambition, which helps ground the frankly crazy dwarves who seem determined to get themselves killed for bits of shiny metal, as though they’ll be able to spend it in the afterlife if they’re still clutching the coins in their bloody fingers when they die. Their behavior, as well as that of Smaug the dragon and to a point the wood elf king, brings about the first theme: greed is bad and potentially destructive. Secondly, Bilbo’s relationship with the dwarves even when they don’t agree brings in the power-of-friendship theme.

Unsurprisingly given its core morals, The Hobbit is at least kind of a children’s book. The narrator talks to you, so that’s also a technique generally aimed at kids. For example, during Bilbo’s riddle contest: “All the same it was a poser for poor Bilbo, who never had anything to do with water if he could help it. I imagine you know the answer, of course, or can guess it as easily as winking, since you are sitting comfortably at home and have not the danger of being eaten to disturb your thinking” (76).

While I’ve got that quote, I’ll mention the writing style and language. It’s very 30s and very British (just what the hell does “poser” mean in this context, anyway?). Still, the word choice is simple enough for most kids to understand without being stupidly monosyllabic, and I only got confused by a couple of terms (seriously, what’s “poser” mean here?). The language is also sometimes unintentionally hilarious, like when Bilbo is taunting the giant spiders that’re trying to eat his friends. He calls them a few names, including “Tomnoddy,” which “of course is insulting to anybody” (159). Oh no, not Tomnoddy! The spiders were right to all go chasing him through the forest, the rude little bastard.

So, the change in standards over the past eighty years or so makes it hard for me to tell how hardcore the book was originally supposed to be. Violence in the story is especially tame when compared to modern fantasy; if you gave Tolkien A Song of Ice and Fire, I’m pretty sure he’d spontaneously combust. The Hobbit does have its share of action, but it’s sparsely described. We only get the broad overview without any gory details; the most it specifically says is things like “Bilbo came at it before it could disappear and struck it with his sword right in the eyes. Then it went mad and leaped and danced and flung out its legs in horrible jerks, until he killed it with another stroke…” (154). This is compared to, say, R. A. Salvatore, a fantasy author who writes battles with the same love and care that most people reserve for their wedding vows.

The light violence is probably a plus for a semi-children’s book, though; you don’t really want your kid’s bedtime story to have gore-covered characters carving their way through screaming enemies who’re begging for mercy and swearing they’ve got a family. Children aside, serious violence just wouldn’t fit with the overall feel of The Hobbit. I can best describe that feel as charming.

It’s a fairy tale, at the end of the day, and whether or not a nonbiased adult enjoys The Hobbit separate from Tolkien’s legacy depends on how much they like fairy tales. Personally, I (to my surprise, honestly) liked the book. It’s got a Muppets Treasure Island sense to it, something that I’m not in the mood for every day but is a lot of fun when I have the right mindset. Come to think of it, The Hobbit is probably a great book for the winter holidays, when most people read and watch old, lighthearted, nostalgic things.

Now I want to talk about the pacing, because it defied all my expectations by being good. Not just good, but great. I had to immediately mark down the page where I read a quote that every author needs to get tattooed inside their eyelids: “Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway” (51). Tolkien then skims over several days he knows would be dull to describe in detail and gets back to things that people actually want to read about. I’m not exactly saying that something’s got to be horrible to be entertaining, but I will argue that you shouldn’t write about every little stupid thing your characters do because you’re afraid that if you don’t, some readers will assume you don’t know your details and they’ll make fun of you for it. No, George R. R. Martin, I don’t want to read about the heroes plodding along mile after damn mile; I want you to skip ahead to where something important happens. Tolkien genuinely shocked me by understanding that people read fantasy to be entertained, not to get an encyclopedic lesson of medieval life.

I’ll finish this up by saying a bit about the upcoming movies. I’m not sure how well they’re gonna turn out. Don’t take that entirely as a negative expectation; my concern is that they’re just not going to be like the book, despite all the effort that probably went into copying every scene from the novel to keep from pissing off the fans. I predict that the tone of the films is going to be radically different from the book even while the actual plot is step-by-step exact. To illustrate, here’re some of the characters:

That’s Thorin. Would you have guessed he’s a Tolkien dwarf, if you just saw the picture randomly, minus the text? I doubt it. But Thorin’s got to be a dangerous badass, so like hell are they gonna make him look like the book probably intended. For reference, this is what The Hobbit seems to be describing when it talks about its dwarves:

Sweet Anubis, can you imagine three long films where thirteen of the fifteen protagonists all looked like that? You wouldn’t be able to hear the dialogue in theaters because of all the laughter. Even Gimli from The Lord of the Rings was comic relief at least half the time in the movies. Modern American audiences just couldn’t take The Hobbit seriously if its heroes looked like kegs covered in braided hair—and I think Peter Jackson wants us to take it seriously. I’m guessing that the films won’t be fairy tales. They’ll be prequels to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, with all that entails. Have a look at Bilbo too:

Yeah, that’s a guy who eats six meals a day, smokes regularly, and only exercises by taking the occasional walk. For reference, here’s Bilbo from the cover of my old copy:

I’ll bet you a year’s salary that if you dig up Tolkien, he’d say that’s a lot closer to his vision than Martin Freeman. But Peter Jackson’d get laughed out of Hollywood if he made the films entirely true to the book. I’m pretty sure he wants to make a memorable fantasy action movie, not Muppets Treasure Island: the Dragon Edition, and to do that, he needs heroes that actually look like heroes to us. The snag is that I think The Hobbit is less about heroes than unlikely heroes, the little guys who manage to succeed largely through luck and desperate effort.

I’m not complaining—not really. I just want to point out that even a well-made adaption, done by fans who love the novel, probably won’t mesh all that well with The Hobbit. It’s old, for one, and we’re bound to mold it into a more modern form. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not. Most likely, some diehard fans’ll be disappointed, but they always are; there’s no pleasing everybody. On the other hand, I expect that even if you never read the book, or if you did and didn’t like it, you can probably have fun with the films. That was the case with The Lord of the Rings. Maybe Peter Jackson deserves credit for that, bringing new people into Tolkien’s world; I doubt he could do that if he exactly reproduced the original material for today’s audiences.

Concerning The Hobbit on its own merits, I can’t help but laugh at the elves and dwarves and goblins, because I’ve just read those portrayals so many times. Still, the book has that charming tone, surprisingly nice pacing, well-written character development, decent enough (if well-worn) themes, and a pretty tight, focused plot that neatly comes full-circle when Bilbo eventually makes it home. I’ll probably read it again eventually, maybe in the next two years before each of the upcoming films. So rest easy, Tolkien: your legacy isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Finally, and as a reminder, campus (and therefore our Press) is shutting down for about two weeks, starting Friday. Expect new reviews in January. Happy holidays!

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