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I hadn't actually read The Hobbit in several decades and had forgotten how some of it goes. Some observations:
Tolkien sets us up to believe that the defeat of the dragon Smaug will be the climax of the story, but it actually only opens the last act, which I'd largely forgotten the details of, but which was the most interesting part on this reading. For a while, Tolkien seems to be setting up the tragedy of Thorin Oakenshield: the would-be King under the Mountain's unwillingness to give up any of the mountain's treasure, even a reasonable amount as aid in the wake of a disaster he was involved in causing, to help the people who actually killed the dragon, comes very close to starting a new war with the Men and Elves. If Shakespeare were writing this, that is how it would go. Instead, Tolkien seems to want to avert it at the last minute by a kind of diabolus ex machina: they all get attacked by goblins and wargs, and end up uniting after all in the Battle of Five Armies. Thorin still dies, but it's straightforwardly heroic, rather than as the tragic hero, and he's clearly come to his senses. I suppose Tolkien wants to dial back on the tragedy because it's a kid's book, but it's interesting that he actually does this by increasing the amount of violence.
Fili and Kili also die at the end, but this gets tossed off almost in an aside. It might have been a mistake to put so many dwarves in there. Most of them don't get strongly differentiated as characters.
I'd forgotten how many talking animals are in this story--it gives it a more fairy-tale quality than The Lord of the Rings, which goes a bit lighter on them. It's been observed many times that ubiquitous cell phones killed a lot of thriller plots because people can communicate, and even before that was true in the real world, the writers on Star Trek kept having to come up with contrivances to separate the away team from their communicators. But here, Tolkien really seems to want his characters to carry cell phones--a lot of things require the rapid transmission of information to distant people, and he uses... talking birds! In particular, it's how Bilbo can be crucially involved in the killing of Smaug even though he's nowhere near the guy who does it and hasn't met him.
Tolkien sets us up to believe that the defeat of the dragon Smaug will be the climax of the story, but it actually only opens the last act, which I'd largely forgotten the details of, but which was the most interesting part on this reading. For a while, Tolkien seems to be setting up the tragedy of Thorin Oakenshield: the would-be King under the Mountain's unwillingness to give up any of the mountain's treasure, even a reasonable amount as aid in the wake of a disaster he was involved in causing, to help the people who actually killed the dragon, comes very close to starting a new war with the Men and Elves. If Shakespeare were writing this, that is how it would go. Instead, Tolkien seems to want to avert it at the last minute by a kind of diabolus ex machina: they all get attacked by goblins and wargs, and end up uniting after all in the Battle of Five Armies. Thorin still dies, but it's straightforwardly heroic, rather than as the tragic hero, and he's clearly come to his senses. I suppose Tolkien wants to dial back on the tragedy because it's a kid's book, but it's interesting that he actually does this by increasing the amount of violence.
Fili and Kili also die at the end, but this gets tossed off almost in an aside. It might have been a mistake to put so many dwarves in there. Most of them don't get strongly differentiated as characters.
I'd forgotten how many talking animals are in this story--it gives it a more fairy-tale quality than The Lord of the Rings, which goes a bit lighter on them. It's been observed many times that ubiquitous cell phones killed a lot of thriller plots because people can communicate, and even before that was true in the real world, the writers on Star Trek kept having to come up with contrivances to separate the away team from their communicators. But here, Tolkien really seems to want his characters to carry cell phones--a lot of things require the rapid transmission of information to distant people, and he uses... talking birds! In particular, it's how Bilbo can be crucially involved in the killing of Smaug even though he's nowhere near the guy who does it and hasn't met him.