The Hero's Journey

This week, I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit for the first time. While I had seen both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies, as well as read the original trilogy, I had never read the prequel before. Luckily, I had the opportunity to do so this week.

It quickly became apparent to me that the tone of The Hobbit is much different than that of The Lord of the Rings, despite the similar tones between the movies. The Hobbit book is much lighter in tone. Although aspects of The Hobbit continue on into the main trilogy, such as the ring and Gollum, The Hobbit lacks the sense of urgent and all-encompassing darkness that the main trilogy had. Reading The Hobbit after already being acquainted with the main trilogy, The Hobbit seems to have a sense of blissful naiveté, kind of like the calm before the storm. Bilbo and his company cannot possibly have any idea of what their journey will eventually lead to.

This aspect of The Hobbit— that it is a prequel to a much larger and darker series— makes it an interesting and different example of the Hero’s Journey. Just as in the traditional Hero’s Journey storyline, there is a call to action (from Gandalf), a road of trials one after another, acquirement of “boons”, a gradual change in the main character, and ultimately a victory and the “freedom to live” for Bilbo back in the Shire. However, this “freedom” turns out to be very short lived, since Bilbo’s original Hero’s Journey sets in motion a series of events which threaten to plunge the world back into darkness. This, of course, necessitates the beginning of a second Hero’s journey, which can be read in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since a large part of the Hero’s Journey trope is the total resolution—of plot, of character development, of loose ends—the fact that The Hobbit leaves much unresolved (until the main trilogy) sets it apart from a typical, by-the-book Hero’s Journey tale. While Bilbo’s journey is certainly resolved at the end of The Hobbit, the overall Hero’s Journey cycle of Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories is still just in the beginning, in the “innocent world of childhood.”