Importance Of The Hero's Journey In The Hobbit

Every hero goes through certain stages in their valorous journey. Some stages are more important in a hero’s journey compared to others. In The Hobbit, the most important stage of the hero’s journey is stage 6, tests/challenges. This is because the hero, Bilbo (a friendly hobbit), learns how to make decisions based on his mistakes and work individually, he learns new tactics and strategies and he earns possessions and answers after accomplishing them. Bilbo learns to make his own decisions when he sees trolls ahead in their way and he must decide whether to warn the dwarves or steal from the trolls. We see Bilbo learn new tactics and strategies when he must win a riddle-contest against Gollum. Bilbo earns an answer when he plans and outsmarts

Tests are important in Bilbo’s heroic journey because he picks up how to make decisions situated from his own mistakes and how to act individually. When walking through the cave with the dwarves, they saw a light. The dwarves had decided that Bilbo should go see what it was. Bilbo observed that there were trolls. Consequently, he did not know whether to warn the dwarves or try to steal from them “either he should have gone back quietly and warned his friends that there were three fair-sized trolls at hand in a nasty mood, quite likely to try roasted dwarves; or else he should have done a bit of good quick burgling” (Tolkien, page 42). Bilbo makes decisions when he is figuring out what to do and how to do it. Throughout this, Bilbo makes his decisions reflecting from his own mistakes. For instance, he was caught by the trolls when

In addition, many of them can be earned by completing certain tests. As explicated in the previous paragraph, Bilbo is lost in the dark tunnels and meets Gollum. Subsequently Bilbo won the riddle-contest, Gollum made excuses to not show Bilbo the way and refused to keep his promise “we can’t go up the tunnels so hasty. We must get some things first, yes, things to help us” (Tolkien, page 94). The invisibility ring was owned by Gollum, even though Bilbo had it. When Bilbo ‘magically’ disappeared, Gollum predicted that Bilbo had the ring in his pocket “the Baggins has got it in its pocketses” (Tolkien, page 99). In addition, Gollum assumed Bilbo came to the tunnel to steal the ring and wasn’t really lost. He inferred that Bilbo ran out the tunnel. Therefore, Gollum ran towards the exit of the tunnel to get to Bilbo “with a spring Gollum got up and started shambling off at a great pace” (Tolkien, page 101). Thus, Bilbo ran behind him with the invisibility ring and followed him out the tunnels. To conclude, heroes need to complete tests to earn possessions and answers, just like how Bilbo earned the way out the tunnel by outsmarting