The Hobbit

2 Pages 505 Words

I choose to read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” for my first book report. This story takes place in a far away land; long, long ago. It is the story of a small, humble hobbit named Bilbo Baggins and his great and dangerous adventure. A hobbit is a hairy, fat man about half our size, and this particular one lived in a comfortable hobbit hole in a quiet community where adventures were unspoken of. One quiet and peaceful morning Gandalf, a kind and powerful wizard, came knocking at Bilbo’s door. Gandalf wanted Bilbo to join in on a great adventure that he was arranging. After days of negotiation Bilbo uneasily decides to join in on the adventure along with 13 dwarves, to raid the treasure of Smaug, a large and dangerous dragon.

This story is packed full of surprise, suspense, mystery, conflict, dilemma, and foreshadowing throughout the chapters. A great example of this usage is near the end of Bilbo’s great adventure, when the time had come for him to advance forward and confront the dragon Smaug. Bilbo had been chosen to go forward into the dragons’ lair to seek the treasure. During this process an outstanding example of suspense was played out. As Bilbo walked further and further into the lair suspense starts to build dramatically from the author’s descriptions of heat, steam, and sounds coming from the end of the passage. At the moment before Bilbo’s encounter with the dragon “he knew that going on from there was the bravest thing he’d ever done”, as quoted in the book. This part of the book exhibits only one of many great examples of mystery and suspense from the story.

The protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is truly a dynamic character. As described at the beginning of the book he was a very humble and peaceful hobbit that had no time for adventures. The first example of change happened when he accepted to go on Gandalf’s adventure. But Bilbo still changed throughout the book as described by one of his dwarf co...