Similes In The Hobbit

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This story begins with a small fellow by the name of Bilbo Baggins. This fantasy story was written in 1956 by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is about a hero’s journey through the dangers and wonders of Middle Earth. Although it was not meant to become such a well-known book, it is filled with much literature. Throughout the book, Tolkien uses literary devices such as repetition, similes, and metaphors to develop the theme of cunning and cleverness. Repetition exaggerates a feeling of desire and mercy in the beginning of the book. For example, in Chapter 1, describing the dwarves’ singing, the author states that Bilbo “felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him” which implicates that foreign and unknown things are cunning and magical; interfering with Bilbo’s ordinary world. The repetition of the passage brings up past memories to the dwarves, but creates a new opening for the curious hobbit. Additionally, in the next chapter, Bilbo asks for mercy by begging to the trolls, “please don’t cook me, kind sirs! I am a good cook myself, and I cook better than I cook, if you see what I mean” which shows …show more content…

For instance, in Chapter 5, the passage describing Gollum, Tolkien states, “Gollum was watching Bilbo now from the distance with his pale eyes like telescopes”, guiding the reader to picture Gollum as a lurid creature in the dark, snooping on someone out of pure interest. The simile compares Gollum’s eyes to telescopes because he had very vigilant eyesight from living in the dark for such a long period of time. Another example of Tolkien’s use of similes takes place when Bilbo successfully tricks Smaug into revealing the dragon’s weak spot to him. Bilbo exclaims, “‘there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!’”, which portrays that every dragon has some type of vulnerability, which is an equivalent to the Achilles Heel for

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