The Hero's Journey In The Hobbit

Michael Shermer, a science writer and historian of science said, “Humans are pattern-seeking story-telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.” In J.R.R. Tolkien's novel The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, the main protagonist, joins a group of dwarves to recover their lost, forgotten gold from Smaug the dragon. Joseph Campbell’s A Hero with a Thousand Faces, states that many legendary heroes follow a pattern in their adventures. Stating the hero's follow a pattern of eleven stages, Matthew Winkler has his own ideas of the heroic quest pattern. Both The Hobbit and the heroic journey have similar elements with departure, initiation and then return.

At the beginning of a story, many heroes do not

Campbell, a mythologist, and Winkler of TEDed believed the hero is called away from his ordinary life to go on an adventure where they face the unusual. The first stage of departure is call to adventure or status quo, but the hero is not always eager to go on the adventure and has to be persuaded. This happens to Bilbo when Gandalf shows up at Bilbo’s hobbit hole unexpectedly one afternoon and the next day, Gandalf shows up with the dwarves and offered him to go on the quest. As they do not create the best first impression with a rude comment from Gloin,“I had my doubts. He looks more like a grocer-than a burglar!” (Tolkien 10), Bilbo is reluctant to join them. Furthermore, the hero receives assistance, when they meet a helper, usually someone older and wiser, such as Gandalf. Into the world of the unknown, the guide leads the hero across the first threshold such as the Misty Mountains which serve as a barrier for Bilbo. After assistance comes departure, where the hero is sucked into the unknown, for example, when Bilbo encounters Gollum, a ferocious and

Campbell and Winkler believe that the final stages of the heroic quest are the result, magic flight, the crossing of the return threshold, master of the two worlds, freedom to live, and status quo upgraded. During the stages of return are when the hero finally conquers returns to their world with their guide, when they return the “transition is not easy” next, the hero is able to pass in between worlds efficiently and they live in their new found freedom with maturity and knowledge. Following the pattern, Bilbo returns back to Bag-End with Gandalf at his side, when Bilbo arrives at Bag-End he is speculated as dead and the other hobbits are auctioning off Bilbo’s possessions. Bilbo is not as respected as he was before, but that is a simple price for him being able to control his Baggins side and Tookish side. Afterwards, Bilbo is able to live his life to the fullest, since he knows what he has been missing, “he remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.” (Tolkien 123). Finally, after Bilbo’s adventure, his two sides, Baggins and Tookish are at peace and his Baggins side no longer controls Bilbo. Back at Bag-end, Bilbo has opened up, but is no longer respected, “but he was no longer quite respectable…held by all the hobbits of the neighbourhood to be 'queer'”(Tolkien 123) which shows that Bilbo is unlike any other. In the