6: Fantasy

Wealth, Greed and Death: A Literary Analysis of The Hobbit

Alfred Hitchcock coined the term MacGuffin. A MacGuffin is the thing that the hero or heroine of a film is looking for. It could be anything: a weapon, a family heirloom, a letter, whatever. The important point about the MacGuffin is that it's what keeps the plot going. What keeps the plot going in The Hobbit? The most blatant and obvious response would be treasure; treasure in The Hobbit is our MacGuffin. It keeps Bilbo and the Dwarves on their quest and makes for a pretty cool adventure for the reader to submerse himself or herself into. Wealth is the driving force in the plot of Tolkien’s The Hobbit. But why? What is Tolkien trying to tell us with these themes of wealth and greed? What is he trying to tell us about ourselves? The answers might lead to the realization that this simple tail is more relevant even now than we might have actually thought.

At the beginning of the novel we are presented with treasure, a lot of treasure, a whole mountains worth to be exact but there’s a catch. A huge terrorizing dragon guarding over it and the whole integrity and worth of a race is dependent on the repossession of it. The odd thing about the dwarves' treasure is that everyone desperately wants a piece of this MacGuffin except Bilbo. The little Hobbit is genuinely not greedy, comfortable and rid of any concern. Treasure provides the reason for Bilbo's quest with the dwarves but Bilbo doesn't seem to have any real interest in money. So we have to ask ourselves, what is Bilbo on this adventure for?

As the story progresses we get a pretty big lesson about the destructive nature of greed and to know about greed in the hobbit we should familiarize ourselves with the term “Dragon-sickness.” Dragon-sickness is used to diagnose a particular person overtaken by greed specifically in The Hobbit for treasure. Smaug in The Hobbit has pretty clear goals, he wants treasure because he likes it and doesn’t want anyone else to have it. He is the epitome and embodiment of greed and so the term is coined after his species. He serves as a reminder of greed a looming and ever-present reminder to the reader and a haunting entity to the dwarves. Thorin being the most prone to dragon sickness, leading to his eventual death.

Now that we have familiarized ourselves with greed being a theme in The Hobbit lets delve a bit deeper. Let’s tie greed with another theme, self-destruction and if you think that this idea of greed and self-destruction only apply to Thorin and Smaug I would have to disagree. When the three trolls get turned to stone at the beginning of the novel it’s easy to just assume that Gandalf came to the rescue and saved the dwarves but the truth is that the Troll’s tendency to fight amongst themselves allowed Gandalf to turn them to stone and so the Troll’s were defeated by their own evil. This serves as the earliest use of foreshadowing in the book. By the end of the book at his death bed Thorin finally realizes that obsessing over treasure and material possessions meant overlooking more important values such as wisdom and courage and admits to Bilbo that he had nothing to blame for his death other than himself serving as the biggest example of self destruction in the novel.

So why does Bilbo join the crew. He does it because he has nothing to lose. You see like us the people of middle earth even the elves at times must come to terms with the idea of death. Death is eminent and ever present but sometime we forget that our lives must come to an end and we turn to material possessions for comfort. Bilbo is the epitome of comfort and just as the dwarves on their journey for self worth and retribution Bilbo too wanted to be more than just another Hobbit. He goes against everything he ever knew risking his own life to grow as a person. Bilbo out of the entire cast of characters ends up being the most human. Life is short and sometimes we must remember to look beyond our own wants and needs so that we can fully fulfill our destiny as living breathing beings. That’s why The Hobbit is so inspiring and relatable to many, it serves as lesson that we all must come to terms with. Even if you possessed all the riches in the world you can’t take any of those riches with you when you die.

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien