With the imminent release of the first of Peter Jackson’s three-part adaptation of “The Hobbit,” I revisited J. R. R. Tolkien’s 1937 novel, which I had not opened since I was a teen-ager. Re-reading “The Hobbit” turned out to be something of a revelation. Formerly, I’d seen it as nothing more than an appetizer for the big feast of “The Lord of the Rings.” Now, I realized, it was a perfectly balanced meal of its own—one that left you feeling sated rather than gorged. A good case can be made that “The Hobbit” is a better and more satisfying read than its gargantuan successor. Herewith, some arguments in the little book’s favor:
1. Only one hobbit.
There’s a reason Tolkien begins both novels by getting his hobbit protagonists out of the Shire. Hobbits, though possessed of many admirable traits, can be kind of a drag, especially in large numbers. One is plenty. Four is too many. After twelve hundred pages of “The Lord of the Rings,” I’d had just about enough of the hobbits’ endless pining for home and their tiresome whingeing about not having a second breakfast. Particularly grating is Sam Gamgee, the loyal, kind-hearted servant who accompanies Frodo all the way to Mt. Doom—and insists on calling him “Mr. Frodo” the entire time. Mindlessly devoted and masochistically self-denying, he is held up as the truest expression of hobbithood. No thanks. I find Bilbo, the hero of the earlier book, a far more engaging character. While he does yearn for the comforts of the Shire during his journey to the Lonely Mountain, he is no straight arrow. He’s an opportunist, willing to fudge the rules when it suits him. He outwits Gollum with a not-quite-kosher riddle. He steals the Arkenstone from Smaug’s hoard and uses it as a bargaining chip; and he hides the magic ring from his companions as long as he can. Next time I re-read “The Lord of the Rings,” I am sure to ask myself, What would Bilbo do?
2. Lots of dwarves.
I propose a rule: the ratio of dwarves to hobbits is directly proportional to the quality of the tale. Wagner and Walt Disney understood this. Pompous and irritable, industrious yet bumbling, dwarves are much more enjoyable to read about than hobbits. Though motivated always by gold, they are makers as well as takers. Skilled blacksmiths, miners, and engineers, they are responsible for many of the wonders of Middle Earth. Moria is to a hobbit hole as the Pyramids are to a thatched-roof cottage. There is just one dwarf in “The Lord of the Rings”: Gimli. He is the son of Gloin, one of Bilbo’s companions in “The Hobbit.” (Gloin does make a brief appearance at the Council of Elrond, but that hardly counts.) Having one dwarf in your epic fantasy novel is like having one acrobat in a circus. You need a troupe! Poor Gimli is charged not only with protecting the ringbearer, but also with providing much of the comic relief in the trilogy. By contrast, “The Hobbit” features a dozen dwarves and is the richer for it. Who can’t sympathize with a group of grumpy, bearded refugees who have been evicted from their homeland by a greedy despot? The fact that they squabble, refuse to listen to directions, and end up starting a war only makes them more fun to read about.
3. Just enough Gollum.
Like the hobbits, Gollum gets to be pretty annoying by the final pages of “The Lord of the Rings.” You close the book and never want to see the word “precious” again. A glance at the chronology at the end of “The Return of the King” reveals that, by the time Bilbo takes the ring from him in “The Hobbit,” Gollum has been living on his slimy little island in the Misty Mountains for some five hundred years. The ring, obtained by murder, has made him crazy and crazy people—as anyone who lives in New York City can attest—wear you out after a while. In the “Hobbit,” we must endure Gollum’s third-person self-babble for a single chapter, but in “The Lord of the Rings,” he accompanies Frodo and Sam through hundreds and hundreds of pages. “This creature is in some way bound up with my errand,” Frodo tells Faramir in “The Two Towers.” It’s the understatement of all time. Frodo could have done everyone a big favor by letting Faramir’s men kill Gollum at the Forbidden Pool. Come to think of it, Bilbo probably should have offed him in the first book.
4. A dragon.
No image is more central to the literature of fantasy than the dragon sitting on a pile of gold. For all the magnificent creatures in the “Rings” trilogy, there is no beast as grand and imposing as Smaug, the ornery winged lizard who has dispossessed the dwarves of their home and their treasure hoard. Tolkien, who had a way with names, never came up with a better one. His stroke of genius, though, was making Smaug a character, not a monster. Smaug combines the haughty condescension of a one-per-center and the killer instinct of an apex predator. He’s Gordon Gekko with a flamethrower. Smaug uses guile as well as fire in dealing with his enemies and it is ultimately a very human character flaw—arrogance—that undoes him.
5. No Tom Bombadil.
Wisely cut by Jackson from the “Rings” movies, Bombadil is the Johnny Appleseed of Middle Earth—an idealized, rustic man who is also one of Tolkien’s most irritating characters. Identified as “the Master of wood, water, and hill,” he lives with a woman named Goldberry in an enchanted house in the forest and provides assistance and shelter to the Hobbits early in their journey. Bombadil combines many of Tolkien’s worst traits as a writer: an over-idealization of the natural world; the effusive love of song and verse; and the complete lack of a libido. (You can’t really imagine Bombadil ever getting it on with Goldberry.) Bombadil first announces himself to the Hobbits as if walking onstage in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera:
He is also, as you can see, an over-user of the exclamation point—always a suspect trait. By contrast, “The Hobbit” features Beorn, a more complex character who serves many of the same functions as Bombadil. Beorn gives Bilbo and the dwarves shelter on their journey and shares Bombadil’s deep connection to the natural world. Yet he is believably drawn as both short-tempered and somewhat sinister. “He can be appalling when he is angry,” Gandalf warns the dwarves. Beorn may be a vegetarian, but he is also “a skin-changer,” who becomes a menacing black bear when not in human form. You can’t help thinking he could kick Tom Bombadil’s ass.
6. Don’t mention the war.
“The Hobbit”’s plot couldn’t be simpler: Over the mountains and through the woods to Smaug’s house we go. Kill the dragon, get the gold. It is the very essence of an adventure story. Toward the end of novel, things do get a little political, as Bilbo and the dwarves find themselves at the center of a war between the Lake Men, the Wood Elves, the Goblins, and the Wargs, but the source of all this hostility is easy to understand: treasure. Compare this to the “Rings” trilogy, which has been freighted with all kinds of real-world allegories. Sauron is Hitler. Saruman is Mussolini. The Fellowship is the Allies. The One Ring is the Atomic Bomb. The ghastly battles of Minas Tirith and Helm’s Deep are drawn from Tolkien’s own service in the trenches. The Hobbit, written before the Second World War, belongs to a more appealingly innocent world.
7. No love interest.
As noted with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry above, sex and romance are not Tolkien’s forte. “The Lord of the Rings” features a number of not-quite-convincing affairs of the heart: Aragorn and Arwen; Eowyn and Aragorn; Sam Gamgee and Rosie Cotton, etc. “The Hobbit” dispenses with all of that. In fact, “The Hobbit” dispenses with women altogether. Bilbo, Gandalf, Beorn, and the dwarves are unencumbered by the need to woo and win damsels. This may be a failing in real-world terms, but it plays to Tolkien’s strengths as a storyteller: mystery, suspense, and action. Not for nothing did Tolkien relegate the full story of Aragorn and Arwen’s romance to an appendix at the end of “The Return of the King.”
8. Nine hundred fewer pages to read.
My first reading of “The Lord of the Rings” took place during a cross-country car trip when I was fifteen. It’s the perfect book for youthful summer vacations—or a stay in solitary confinement. These days, with children, career, and much else to worry about, a twelve-hundred-page novel (especially one containing Tom Bombadil) is too much to contemplate. But, three hundred pages, I can do. I breezed through “The Hobbit” in a week, reading it mostly after my kids went to sleep. There is only one story line to follow. You don’t have to learn scads of history or remember lots of names. And the excitement never really stops. All of which means you still have plenty of time to read (or re-read) “The Hobbit” before the movie opens on December 14. You’ll be glad you did.
Illustration by Istvan Banyai.