The Hobbit (novel): Difference between revisions

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{{quote|''[[Where It All Began|In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.]]

* [[All There in the Manual]]: ''The Quest for Erebor'' in ''[[Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth|Unfinished Talesof Numenor and Middleearth]]'' is Gandalf telling the story from his perspective (in abbreviated form) and explaining what he was doing when he wasn't with Bilbo's party.

** It was highly rumored the "second" [[Peter Jackson]] ''Hobbit'' movie would actually be an interquel covering these events. That has since been [[Jossed]] by the [[Word of God]]. Gandalf's experiences are mixed in with the original story, they don't consist an entire movie by themselves.

* [[Anti-Hero]]

** Bilbo starts off as a Type I, often left a bystander while events happen around him. However after choosing to spare Gollum, and especially in Mirkwood, he manages to become more of a straight hero.

** Thorin is probably a type III, as he is mostly noble and charismatic, but allows his greed to almost push him into starting a war, though he ultimately repents these deeds.

** Thranduil fits a type II quite well. While greedy and racist toward the Dwarves, he shows kindness to the survivors of Dale and is more reluctant to begin a war for gold than any of his peers.

* [[The Archer]]: Bard

* [[Attack Its Weak Point]]: Smaug has exactly one vulnerable spot on his whole body.

* [[Boisterous Bruiser]]: Beorn, at least [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold|once you've gotten through his defenses.]]

* [[Book Ends]]

* [[Break the Haughty]]: Thorin is something of a narcissist, probably [[The White Prince|due to his royal blood]]. He's still a likable person, though, until {{spoiler|he reclaims his family's vast long lost fortune and [[Gold Fever]] gets the better of him. If it costs him his life or if he would have been killed anyway is debatable, but he [[Redemption Equals Death|realizes the error of his ways not long before he dies of mortal wounds inflicted by goblins]].}}

* [[Butt Monkey]]: Bombur. He always manages to come last in everything, and if one of the dwarves slips and falls into a river, gets caught by an enchantment or has something unpleasant or humiliating happen to him, it'll be Bombur.

* [[Canon Welding]]: When he began writing the sequel, Tolkien moved it and ''The Hobbit'' into his Middle-Earth legendarium setting, which had already been around for over twenty years, although nothing of it had been published so far. The move brought with it some [[Retcon]] and [[Rewrite]] concerning the events of ''The Hobbit'', which was partly explained as Bilbo being an [[Unreliable Narrator]]. (Or rather, a Reliable Narrator whose lying about the recovery of the Ring was extremely portentous and whose knowledge of the Elder Days wasn't quite up to snuff.)

* [[The Caper]]: Stealing the treasure.

* [[The Chooser of the One]]: Gandalf

* [[The Chosen Zero]]: The dwarves react to Bilbo this way. Ironically he doesn't even know he's been hired as an adventurer.

{{quote|''Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion.''}}

* [[Faux Affably Evil]]: Smaug is extremely articulate when Bilbo was sneaking around, and has some enjoyment in conversing and riddling, but he would have killed him immediately if he could see and at the same time makes no attempt to hide that he's a merciless killer.

* [[Final Battle]]: The Battle of Five Armies.

* [[Food Porn]]: Oh yes. One thing Hobbits love is a good meal -- "especially dinner, which they take twice a day if they can get it."

* [[Gentleman Adventurer]]: Bilbo

* [[Gold Fever]]: The curse of a dragon's hoard. It nearly leads Thorin to war with Lake Town and the Wood Elves, and leads to the old master of Lake Town stealing most of the treasure and dying in the wilds once it's all over. Bilbo, on the other hand, is (mostly) immune.

* [[Grim Up North]]: The Withered Heath.

* [[Hair-Trigger Temper]]: Gandalf describes Beorn has having this.

* [[Literary Agent Hypothesis]]: The story is "compiled" from Bilbo's memoirs.

* [[The Lost Woods]]: Mirkwood

* [[MacGuffin Guardian]]: Arguably Smaug, though in this case he isn't serving anyone but himself.

* [[Minion Maracas]]: Thorin picks up Bilbo and "shakes him like a rabbit" when he learns that the latter has stolen the Arkenstone and given it to the Men and Elves besieging the mountain. (At least, Gandalf manages to convince Thorin to not throw Bilbo down the wall.)

* [[One Bullet Left]]: Bard shoots the dragon with the only arrow he has left. Although more justified in this case, as the one left is also a special one inherited through generations, and just before the shot Bard is told the dragon's weak spot.

* [[One Sided Battle]]

* [[Our Dragons Are Different]]

* [[Our Dwarves Are All the Same]]: The [[Trope Codifier]], though since there are thirteen of them in the main party, some of them do get one or two individual personality traits. (Thorin is pompous and long-winded, Dori is a [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]], Bombur is a [[Butt Monkey]], Balin is the nice guy, Fili and Kili are cheerful.) Partially averted, however, in that none of them seem to carry any weapons until they find some in the Troll's lair, at which point they end up not with axes, but swords. Nor are they particularly stolid: they seem like seasoned adventurers to Bilbo at first, but once on the journey they whine and grumble about things at least as much as Bilbo does (and eventually ''more'' than Bilbo does). Thorin's gang might be excused, however, from the fact that they have been technically homeless for decades; Dain's dwarves from the Iron Mountain fit the trope a lot better.