The Hobbit

When Bilbo awakens, he is completely alone. Lost in a pitch black tunnel, he begins to crawl in the direction that he thinks he was previously traveling when his hand strikes a cold, round object: “what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel” (61). Slipping the ring into his pocket, Bilbo continues to crawl along the floor. Fighting off temptations to despair, he rests and thinks of home and the comfort of his own kitchen. Feeling in his pockets for his pipe (and finding it broken), his hands brush against the hilt of the sword that he confiscated from the trolls weeks ago. Drawing it out, he is surprised to see it glowing faintly; he knows it is an elvish blade fashioned to glow in the presence of one’s foes.

Slightly comforted from the discovery of the weapon, and finally recovered from the fall that knocked him unconscious, Bilbo heads down into the tunnels until, suddenly, his feet splash into cold water. Finding himself at the shore of a large underground lake, Bilbo encounters the creature Gollum. Gollum is ”a small slimy creature” (63) with dark skin and large, protruding eyes, and he spends his days rowing about the lake in a boat or wandering the tunnels of the goblins.

Upon seeing Bilbo, Gollum confronts him, at first considering Bilbo to be a possible meal, but soon made anxious at Bilbo’s boldness and his glowing sword. In an effort to delay Bilbo’s escape (and to secure a meal), Gollum proposes a game of riddles and makes a wager: If Gollum wins the game of riddles, he will eat the hobbit; if Bilbo wins, Gollum will lead the hobbit out of the tunnels to the surface. Gollum shrieks: “If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn’t answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes!” (65). After a feisty back and forth, each character posing increasingly difficult riddles, Gollum tires of the game and demands just a single riddle more.

At a loss for what to ask next, Bilbo’s fingers brush the ring in his pocket, inspiring him to ask Gollum the riddle of what Bilbo has in his pocket. Unable to guess, Gollum dissolves in a fit of rage, and Bilbo refuses to disclose the answer even after Gollum’s failed guesses. Plotting secret evil against Bilbo, Gollum finds an excuse to row back to his island; Gollum is determined to gather up a ring that he left at home, a very special ring: “He wanted it because it was a ring of power, and if you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible; only in the full sunlight could you be seen, and then only by your shadow, and that would be shaky and faint” (71). All the while, however, Gollum plots to return, invisible, to the unfortunate hobbit and throttle him.

Once Gollum arrives at his island, he finds the ring is missing. Screaming in despair and anger, Gollum suspects Bilbo is the thief. Before Gollum can reach him, however, Bilbo discerns Gollum’s murderous intent and runs back up the dark passage from which he came, slipping the ring onto his finger: “Bilbo almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight” (77). Gollum gives chase only to pass right by him, and as Bilbo begins to guess at the power of the ring—the power of invisibility—he silently gets to his feet and follows Gollum in an effort to escape the goblin tunnels, eventually sneaking right past him and a host of other goblins. He stumbles out into the sunshine and to safety. 

Having left the dark tunnels behind, Bilbo is safe but also lost—and completely alone. Wandering through the hills, he hears voices and, to his great surprise, stumbles across the company of dwarves who escaped the tunnels earlier that day. Gandalf is in the act of convincing the dwarves to go back and rescue the hobbit, when Bilbo appears right in the midst of them (having used the ring to sneak in amongst them invisibly). Bilbo shares his story about escaping Gollum and the goblin hordes, but he does not mention the ring. Impressed with Bilbo, the dwarves offer him a newfound respect, finally happy to have their burglar along.

While Gandalf suspects that Bilbo was leaving out key details in his story, he calls the company to attention: “We must be getting on at once, now we are a little rested […] [The goblins] will be out after us in hundreds when night comes on; and already shadows are lengthening” (85). Walking until dark, they are about to make camp when they hear the loud cry of wolves. Bilbo, Gandalf, and all the dwarves flee up into the trees since “even the wild Wargs (for so the evil wolves over the Edge of the Wild were named) cannot climb trees” (89). A great grey wolf, standing amid the pack, speaks to Gandalf in Warg speech, telling him that the Wargs came in support of the Goblins but that “the goblins were late. The reason, no doubt, was the death of the Great Goblin” (90). Gandalf begins to launch enchanted, flaming pinecones at the Wargs, catching the attention of the great Eagles who hear the commotion and see the sparks flying in the woods.

Suddenly, the Goblins appear in the woods as well, laughing at the chaos and feeding the flames in the trees that had been set alight by the wolves and Gandalf’s flaming pine-cone missiles. Just before a disastrous last stand, the Lord of the Eagles spies Gandalf, and at the last moment “swept down from above, seized [Gandalf] in his talons, and was gone” (94). The rest of the eagles that have accompanied their leader drop down into the trees to assist in the escape, picking up Bilbo and the dwarves and carrying them off to their nests. The company discover that Gandalf and the Lord of the Eagles are friends, and even though the eagles will not carry them the length of their journey for fear of being attacked by men (who would ”think [the eagles] were after their sheep” [96]), they agree to take the crew as far as they can once morning comes.

With dawn, the Eagles swiftly carry the company away across the mountains and to a great stone amidst a field, delivering Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves safely to the next stage of their journey. Once the eagles fly off, Gandalf tells the group that, for now, he’ll travel no farther with them because he has “other pressing business to attend to” (99). Planning to leave in the next day or two, Gandalf mentions that someone that he knows supposedly lives nearby and that they should find him: Beorn the skin-changer, who lives in a great wooden house in the forest. Beorn is a “skin-changer” because “sometimes he is a huge black bear, sometimes he is a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard” (101). Bilbo and the dwarves marvel at the possibility of meeting such an individual.

Wandering through flowering meadows, they encounter gigantic bees, and Gandalf explains they are at the edge of Beorn’s bee-pastures. They soon come to a gate in a hedge; Gandalf and Bilbo pass through the gate, warning the dwarves to wait and to come only when Gandalf whistles for them—and, even then, to come only in pairs. Gandalf and Bilbo come to a large courtyard in which Beorn stands with a hefty axe. Introducing himself, Gandalf explains that Beorn perhaps knows his cousin, “Radagast who lives near the Southern borders of Mirkwood?” (103). Beorn acknowledges that he does, inviting the pair inside his home while Gandalf relates the tale of their flight from the goblins.

Knowing that Beorn is not overly fond of many visitors, Gandalf very carefully tells of how he and the company have been traveling, and, over the course of his tale, he periodically whistles to signal the dwarves to arrive in pairs, all the while trying to assuage their host’s annoyance at the gradually increasing visitors. Gandalf’s tale, however, is effective, as Beorn’s curiosity outweighs his irritation; Bilbo realizes that the cunning Gandalf is easing Beorn into a hospitality the man would otherwise refuse. Delighted by the story, Beorn serves the finest meal they’ve eaten since Rivendell, and they listen as Beorn returns the favor and regales them with tales of his own until late into the night.

The company spends the next two days with Beorn, who leaves but shortly returns to tell them that, while he was in the woods, he caught a Warg and goblin and learned that goblins are still searching for the dwarves. Additionally, the goblins are “fiercely angry because of the death of the Great Goblin, and also because of the burning of the chief wolf’s nose” (114). Beorn agrees to provide Bilbo’s party with transportation and supplies for their journey, giving them two important pieces of advice: They must not drink from the black stream in Mirkwood, for it is enchanted, and they must never stray from the path through Mirkwood for any reason. While happy with their newfound friendship, the group was sorrowful to leave, and “their spirits sank at his grave words, and they all felt that the adventure was far more dangerous than they had thought, while all the time, even if they passed all the perils of the road, the dragon was waiting at the end” (115-16).

They soon reach the edge of the great forest of Mirkwood, and while standing at its edge, they learn Gandalf will come no farther with them. They fill their water-skins from a spring, and, bidding Gandalf goodbye, they venture into the darkness of the wood. Gandalf shouts one last warning to them: “Be good, take care of yourselves—and DON’T LEAVE THE PATH!” (120). Dismayed and in poor spirits, the company venture into the woods.