The Hobbit

I guarantee that I'm not going to have something new to say about the Hobbit. Tolkien's works have been poured over by many others. However, I'm going to speak my piece anyway, because even though much has been written on it, perhaps, like me, you haven't read all that. The Hobbit is quite distinct from the Lord of the Rings. In a way, it is like a stepping stone to Tolkien's more popular work, though admittedly a masterpiece of its own. Though the Hobbit has moments of darkness, such as in the tunnels of the goblins and even in the homes of the elves, it is much lighter than the story that follows it.

Despite the darkness of Mirkwood, the Hobbit is a beautiful introduction to the world of Middle Earth with smaller sections of exposition and slow narration (such as the hunt of Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli in Book III of the Lord of the Rings). The stakes, though high (the lives of Bilbo and the Dwarves), are not as high as in the Lord of the Rings where the entirety of Middle Earth and the souls of Frodo and of all those around him are. The Hobbit has its riddles with Gollum, its battles of wits with the dragon, and its peace-seeking tricks of Bilbo. Scenes of war are skipped or summed up in Bilbo's eyes. In the darkest moments of his story, instead of panicking or despairing, his mind goes into riddle-cracking solution mode and the impossible becomes possible. Instead of fighting without the hope of success (like Aragorn and Frodo), Bilbo automatically lives in the moment, especially after his dealings with the trolls. If he dies, he dies, so he considers that eventuality irrelevant. The difficulties become easier to handle with that point of view.

Another distinction between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings is in their representation of elves. The elves of Mirkwood are so starkly different from the elves of the Lord of the Rings. The former  elves are jolly, unwise, consumers of much wine and food. They throw troubled wanderers in the dungeon for mere unintentional trespassing.

At first I wondered if the reason for the difference was the evolution of Tolkien's mythology, the unwilling estrangement of the elves of Mirkwood from their kin in Lothlorien, or the setting. Tolkien spent a decade writing and editing his works with a great deal of forethought, so I would dismiss that theory. The elves of Mirkwood are not that estranged from the elves of Lothlorien yet at this point: the longevity of elves and their disinclination to change (as confirmed by Treebeard) rules out theory 2.

I think it's the third. Elves reflect their homes: Galadriel's people reflect the river Nimrodel and their golden trees and Elrond's people are tightly connected to their mysterious valley and powerful Ford of Bruinen. Mirkwood is dark, lightless, representative of, arguably, the darkest section of the book, dripping with bloodthirsty spiders and a sense of despair. Despair is the darkest feeling one can have, weakening Gimli's leg in the Two Towers in the hunt for the Uruk-hai and Frodo's trek in Mordor. Hope, despair's antithesis is what saves Middle Earth.

The elves of Mirkwood, Legolas' own people, are in part infected by the despair of their home, a despair greatly deepened at this time by the Necromancer (truly Sauron, if I am correct in my lore) and his hold in Dol Goldur in the far end of Mirkwood. Their celebrations reflect the inclination of the elves towards joy even in dark times, but despair has led to both a degree of gluttony among the servants (and the king too it seems, which might explain why his son, Legolas' father, is king in Frodo's time) as well as distrust, the source of the company's problems with the elves of Mirkwood.

However elves are so inured to change; I think the picture is not yet complete. The painting of the elves is in the eye of the beholder. The beholders are in this case dwarves and their inexperienced companion Bilbo. Is it any wonder the flaws of the elves would shine through more clearly than their great virtues? It is a superb example of POV bias.

Oh yeah, I highly recommend reading this book.