HOBBIT AND HERoISM
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
"In a hold in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty,
dirty, wet hole,
filled with the ends of worms and oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare,
sandy
hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a
hobbit-hole, and
that means comfort" (Tolkien 15).
This long, rather rambling, sentence begins one of the most
interesting and
unusual tales in heroic literature. If you look for "The
Hobbit" at your
local book store, you will probably find it under
"fantasy," however, "The
Hobbit" reads more like a myth or a fable than a fantasy
(Straus: O'Leary
29). In many ways, the story of a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins and his
adventure fit the criteria of a mythical heroic journey, yet it also
deviates from the typical pattern of such a journey in several
significant
ways, which serves to give the story a deeper, richer metaphorical
meaning.
As Giddings and Holland assert, for example, that there is a
distinction
that is frequently overlooked or misunderstood, which is that the
"affinity
of a particular literary work with mythology often goes quite a bit
further
than a discernible parallel with specific myths of the ancient
world" (18).
This observation is particularly true when applied to "The
Hobbit." Yet, to
understand how Bilbo's adventure differs from the prototypical hero
story,
it is necessary to first examine what characteristics are typical of
this
genre.
According to Joseph Campbell, the renowned expert on mythology, there
is a
standard form to heroic tales in all cultures. The typical scenario
for a
mythological adventure that centers on a hero follows the formula for
a rite
of passagei...