Summary

=Summary= The Hobbit was written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the early 1930s, and published on 21 September 1937  by //George Allen & Unwin.// He wrote down the story while he told it to his sons, which has had a clear infuence on the story and narrative style. The story takes place in a world Tolkien already had planned and worked on for years, and he later adjusted and corrected some errors to make it fit better in. Thus, as the rest of his works, it is heavily inspired by Norse mythology and the Finnish Kadevala, and heroic epics like Beowulf. It is a fantasy novel, but compared to Tolkien's later works, it is written more like a fairy-tale.

The book starts like this: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Tolkien wrote this all of a sudden on a blank page, and at this point, he had not planned how the story was going to evolve. The hobbit is named Bilbo Baggins. The story begins when Gandalf visits Bilbo at his home, wanting him to join him and thirteen dwarves in their quest to reclaim their treasure in the Lonely Mountain from the dragon Smaug. Bilbo refuses, but Gandalf and the dwarves still manage to trick Bilbo into their party. It becomes an epic journey, and they face great dangers and challenges. The story is told as an episodic quest, and most chapters take us to a new place and introduce us to a new creature. In the last part of the book, many of these creatures take part in the Battle of Five Armies, the story's climax. A central moral in this story is the battle between the good and the evil, which has its peak in this great battle. But also how great deeds a little, simple, good-natured hobbit can do in a huge world, like when he saves the dwarves several times and when he before the battle, takes the highly regarded dwarven heirloom Arkenstone and uses it to negotiate with the elves and the men to avoid further conflict between them and the dwarves. Another important theme is greediness and selfishness, which is shown through the whole story by the high desire for food and valuable objects, like when the dwarf Thorin turns on Bilbo as a traitor after the action where he steals this most ancient relic from the dwarves in order to keep the peace.

Through the book we are introduced to many new characters. We are introduced to brave heroes with peculiar characteristics, like the wizard Gandalf, or the skin-changer Beorn, a man who can take the form of a giant black bear, or Gollum, one of the most complex and incomprehensible characters in the book. We are also introduced to the different races of the Free People - the simple hobbit farmers, the honorable dwarves, the men of Dale, the elves of Rivendell and the elves of Mirkwood, both the puckish ones and the more serious warriors.

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