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The Hobbit Essay
Yea, So Yeon
¡°Somehow the killing of the giant spider ¡¦ He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder ¡¦¡± Flushed with victory Bilbo Baggins states, ¡°I will give you a name, and I shall call you Sting.¡± Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit, achieves enough confidence in his own abilities as a leader and hero in this act of naming his sword. As in this scene, the novel of J.R.R Tolkien , The Hobbit, presents a sense of great heroism through an adventure of a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. In the way it is presented in the novel, there are several notable aspects of heroes, such as bravery, self-sacrifice, self-confidence, leadership etc., and these features are indeed illustrated in literary works such as the novel, The Hobbit.
Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of this novel, shows an extraordinary development of heroic aspects inside himself. It can certainly be seen that the environment around him, makes his heroic aspects inside himself emerge and become a hero. ¡°What then do you propose we should do, Mr Baggins? ... What are we to do now ¡¦? Naturally the dwarves accepted the offer eagerly. Already they had come to respect little Bilbo. Now he had become the real leader in their adventure. He had begun to have ideas and plans of his own.¡± As the dwarves, which are Bilbo¡¯s companions of the adventure, gets closer to their longing treasure, they make poorer decisions and become more stubborn. In consequence they have come to rely almost entirely on Bilbo for common sense and for salvation from the results of their own mistakes. The dwarves¡¯ increasingly hardhearted unluckiness gives Bilbo no choice but to further develop his newfound qualities of heroism, courage, and enterprise. From this scene, it can be referred that the circumstances around Bilbo motivates him to become a protagonist throughout the story. Moreover, if it wasn¡¯t for Bilbo, the dwarves couldn¡¯t have made proper decisions and succeeded in solving the key problem of the story. That is, Bilbo can be considered as a character that indeed plays a significant role in this novel.
A representative aspect of heroic literatures is also described in the statement of Gollum, a strange and slimy creature who meets Bilbo during Bilbo¡¯s journey. ¡°It likes riddles, praps it does, does it? .. Riddle were all he could think of.¡± In this sentence Gollum proposes a riddle game to Bilbo. The riddle game of Gollum is itself another example of the author¡¯s interaction with epic literature in The Hobbit. That is, in many heroic literary works the riddles and riddle games are familiar features and The Hobbit also contains the common characteristic of epics.
Another essential aspect of a hero is the tranquility and resolution in leading a group, and this characteristic is indeed illustrated in The Hobbit. Thorin, the leading dwarf of the adventure, refuses to share the treasure, which the dwarves and Bilbo found. Owing to Thorin¡¯s selfish attitude, war occurs between the dwarves and the people, which are also with the elves. However in Bilbo¡¯s opinion he would gladly share the treasure, so ¡°Bilbo made up his mind.¡± and sneaks out towards the other army of people and elves. He succeeds in relieving the suspicion of people towards him and hints them a way to solve the conflict. This scene shows the sympathy and decisiveness of the hero and presents that the truly heroic path is the one that ends in peace, which is the very choice of Bilbo to leave the dwarves. Bilbo¡¯s motivations for defecting to the enemy camp were that he realized that the best way out of the conflict is a peaceful one. Therefore, it can be concluded that his defection, an independent moral choice, was one of the most courageous acts he had practiced throughout the book.
Consequently, the previously introduced novel has a number of considerable aspects of heroes. It illustrates the process of the development of the hero and the qualities of him such as heroism, courage, and enterprise. This literary work also contains some common features of epics as tranquility and decisiveness. Considering the points above, the main character of this novel can be reasonably considered as a hero, who plays a momentous role. Thus, it will be wise for us to imitate the strong points of those heroes and adjust the poor characteristics of them.
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