the hobbit

i'm currently taking a fantasy literature class for school, so of course i was assigned to read something by the father of the fantasy genre, tolkien.

the hobbit is a culmination of everything in the fantasy genre that i dislike put into one single book. but this novel is also meant for children, an age range that i fall outside of. therefore, the overall arching theme of this review is that the hobbit just was not made for me and that's completely okay. it's impossible to cater to all audiences simultaneously, even for the legend of tolkien. 

tolkien's pacing for the hobbit is pretty slow. i was honestly surprised to find that such a slowly paced book was meant for children considering how often i felt bored, but then again, orcs, goblins, dwarves, wizards, and dragons don't really interest me. plus, i assume that children want as much adventure as possible in the media that they consume, and that's exactly what tolkien gives them. with that being said, the pacing of this book is episodic. the novel separates one hardship from the next through chapters. for example, one chapter bilbo faces goblins, the next chapter bilbo faces spiders, and the next chapter bilbo faces a dragon. personally, episodic pacing always feels more like list of events placed on a timeline rather than a fluid story. but like i've mentioned a handful of times now, the hobbit is meant for children. the oversimplification of pacing in this book would make sense for a younger reader. 

now the one thing i really liked about the hobbit was bilbo. bilbo is the unexpected hero. he's easily frightened, constantly wishes to be back home in bag-end, and always in need of others to save him. in the traditional sense of heroism, bilbo does not fit the model. while it's technically pretty easy to figure out that bilbo is going to become the hero of the story, since he's the main character, it's endearing to witness his character development. through saving his friends on multiple occasions and being able to enter smaug's den, bilbo's heroism is an essential component of the plot.

unfortunately, i can't say the same for any of the other characters in the hobbit. there are multiple dwarves who are with bilbo on his quest to reclaim the mountain, and yet i can't remember most of their names and couldn't tell you how many of them there are. their personalities, if they even had any, started to blend into each other to the point where they felt like copies of each other. it was difficult to individually distinguish most of them since they were probably implemented for comedic purposes. there are a handful of them i could name, but they overall lacked any and all depth, even thorin. i understand that he's not the main character of the book, but he's still supposed to be the leader of the group and yet, he often faded into the background. it's only at the end of the story when the arkenstone starts to complicate his character that thorin becomes more compelling.

as for the ending of the hobbit, it left me very unsatisfied. while i was glad that i was almost finished at that point, it didn't leave me content. one of the reasons is because of how the battle of the five armies was written. bilbo is gone for the entirety of the battle from being hit on the head with a rock. i get that this book is meant for kids, so tolkien couldn't have too much violence, but then he either shouldn't have put a full-scale war in the book or handled it in a smoother fashion. by the time bilbo wakes up on the next page, the war is just over and thorin is about to die. it was an awkward way to censor the war's violence. 

another reason i didn't like the ending was because of my personal qualms with the hero's journey structure that is often used in popular media, think of the marvel movies for example. the concept of the hero's journey narrative is to essentially spin the audience a whole 360° through placing the main character in the same place that they were at the beginning of the story but they've changed in some way. i know that some people enjoy this style of story, but i do not. what was the point of me enduring everything with bilbo just for him return to bag-end like nothing happened? the potential answers to this question aren't lost on me, but i just don't care. regardless of whether it was for bilbo to satisfy his tookish need for adventure in order to live contently or to emphasize the importance of sticking to one's roots, it was not what i would have preferred. 

in totality, i think that the hobbit is an excellent book for its intended audience of children and fantasy fans, but i'm neither of those, so it's not surprising that i didn't enjoy this novel.