In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Chapter 1, An Unexpected Party – The Hobbit

Fifty years ago, when I first read this book, I didn’t imagine I’d still be reading it so many years later. Heck, I doubt I could have even imagined being as old as I am now. But I do reread it every few years. When I revisit The Hobbit, my journey is bathed in nostalgia as much as with the simple enjoyment caused by reading a charming book that I happen to know inside out, from the opening line above on through to the very end.

In my initial article on half a century of reading Tolkien back in January, I described my dad trying to get our first color tv in time to watch the Rankin & Bass The Hobbit. Remembering that again last week left me thinking more of my dad, now gone nearly 24 years, than the book. He was ten years younger than I am now when the movie first aired, which makes me feel incredibly old at the moment. For such a conservative man,  he was excited to see it — admittedly, in a restrained way. I think we liked it well enough, but leaving out Beorn irked us both. Beyond Tolkien’s books, our fantasy tastes rarely coincided (I’ve got a shelf full of David Eddings books he bought, if anyone’s interested), but with The Hobbit and LOTR, we were in complete agreement.

What’s there to say about The Hobbit here on Black Gate? Nothing, really. I imagine most visitors here have read it, many more than once, and have their own ideas on it. It’s one of the most widely read books in the world. Instead, I’m going to discuss some adaptations of the book. But first, a summary.

Hobbits are Tolkien’s slightly comical take on the staid British country folk. Their homeland is so British in nature, it’s even called the Shire. They prefer comfort and predictability and tend toward stoutness. Bilbo Baggins, the only son of wealthy parents has settled into a very predictable and very comfortable middle-age. When Gandalf, a wizard known fondly for magnificent fireworks and less fondly for occasionally leading young hobbits off on some adventure, appears at his doorstep, Bilbo’s life takes a drastic turn. The wizard has come to bring Bilbo on an adventure. Despite the hobbit’s denial of any interest in such an undertaking, Gandalf leaves a mark on his door so a throng of dwarves can find their way their the next day.

The dwarves, led by Thorin Oakenshield, are survivors of the Lonely Mountain. Once a mighty and wealthy dwarven stronghold, one hundred and seventy one years earlier, it was sacked by the great dragon Smaug and its citizens killed or driven out. Save Thorin and one other, the dwarves are miners and smiths, not fighters. Still, the band is determined to reclaim their mountain and their treasure, despite having neither a plan nor the means to remove the dragon.

Succumbing to a repressed ancestral taste for adventure, Bilbo joins the dwarven company on its quest. Soon, Bilbo finds himself on the wrong side of hungry trolls, angry goblins, and, perhaps worst of all, Gollum.

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum—as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the  side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he  thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind, if they ever came down alone anywhere near the edge of the water, while he was prowling about. They very seldom did, for they had a feeling that something unpleasant was lurking down there, down at the very roots of the mountain. They had come on the lake, when they  were tunnelling down long ago, and they found they could go no further; so there their road ended in that direction, and there was no reason to go that way—unless the Great Goblin sent them.  Sometimes he took a fancy for fish from the lake, and sometimes neither goblin nor fish came back.

 

Just prior to his encounter with Gollum, Bilbo finds a plain golden ring, a Ring that will come to prove of vital importance in later years. After discovering it turns its wearer invisible, Bilbo uses it to his advantage to escape from the goblins, and to save the dwarves on several occasions, once from giant spiders and once from elven prison cells. Eventually, he even uses it to allow himself to engage in some dangerous banter with the dragon.

“Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!”
But Bilbo was not quite so unlearned in dragon-lore as all that, and if Smaug hoped to get him to come nearer so easily he was disappointed. “No thank you, O Smaug the Tremendous!” he replied.
“I did not come for presents. I only wished to have a look at you and see if you were truly as great as tales say. I did not believe them.”
“Do you now?” said the dragon somewhat flattered, even though he did not believe a word of it.
“Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities,” replied Bilbo.
“You have nice manners for a thief and a liar,” said the dragon. “You seem familiar with my name, but I don’t seem to remember smelling you before. Who are you and where do you come from,  may I ask?”
“You may indeed! I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen.”
“So I can well believe,” said Smaug, “but that is hardly your usual name.”
“I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.”
“Lovely titles!” sneered the dragon. “But lucky numbers don’t always come off.”
“I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me.”
“These don’t sound so creditable,” scoffed Smaug. “I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider,” went on Bilbo beginning to be pleased with his riddling.
“That’s better!” said Smaug. “But don’t let your imagination run away with you!”

By hands other than their own, the dwarves find themselves rid of the dragon. This leaves them in control of the mountain and the treasure. Part of the treasure, though, is sought, not unreasonably, by the dragon’s slayer, among others. Dwarves, being dwarves — “dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money” — have no intention of giving up one farthing of their hoard, and soon the stage is set for a great battle. Bilbo makes it home, but only after having to commit an act of great moral bravery. The hobbit who returns home is not the same as the one who left, which of course, will turn out to be of the greatest importance for Middle-earth in the years to come.

The first and best adaptation I’m familiar with is the audio version performed by Nicol Williamson for Argo Records in 1974. Lasting nearly four hours, it has the room to tell most of the story. I remember my mother bringing it home from the library and realizing how long and complete it was. I listened to all of it on a Saturday and loved every minute of it.

Williamson himself did many of the edits, removing the most of the ‘he saids.’ He used various regional UK accents to differentiate the various characters. Williamson was one of the great stage actors of the last century, possessed of an absolutely magnificent and captivating voice. I haven’t listened to all of Andy Serkis’ unabridged presentation of the book, but as good as what I’ve heard is, Williamson’s is still the winner. Here’s Part Two of Williamson’s version, starting with Bilbo’s encounter with a wonderfully ghastly sounding Gollum.

The video clip above of Bilbo and Smaug in the summary is from the second adaptation, the 1977 Rankin and Bass animated The Hobbit. The character designs were by Lester Abrams who had illustrated the Bilbo-Gollum confrontation for Children’s Digest. Arthur Rankin had seent he illustrations and liked them enough to engage Abrams for the movie. The animation was done by the Japanese company Topcraft (which would later go on to do Miyazaki’s first movie, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and become part of the foundation of Studio Ghibli).

I love the movie, despite its too-rapid pace, the elimination of Beorn, and overall simplification. The painted scenery and backgrounds are wonderful, presenting Middle-earth in warm, muted colors.  It looks at once realistic and fantastic.  The voice acting, if not of Williamson’s caliber, is first-class, with Orson Bean as Bilbo, John Huston as Gandalf, Hans Conreid as Thorin, and, most wonderfully, Brother Theodore as Gollum.

It’s far from perfect, but it succeeds better than anything else at conveying a sense of real wonder with each new encounter Bilbo has with the increasingly strange and dangerous denizens of the Wilderlands east of the Shire. Rankin had declared that there would be nothing in the movie that wasn’t in the book, and he proved largely true to his word. It also makes good use of Tolkien’s songs. I admit to not loving Tolkien’s songs and poetry in The Lord of the Rings, but in The Hobbit, he provides some solid children’s poetry and it carries over well in the film. That it remains a children’s film and not some tarted up action movie is its greatest strength. Bilbo is a likeable and brave, and the scary bits are just scary enough for young viewers. At 78 minutes, it’s also the perfect length to get exposed to Middle-earth and JRR Tolkien.

I haven’t much to say about Peter Jackson’s three, interminable, cacophonous movies save “I give up!” I feel like I watched them for penance for any and all sins I’ve ever committed and will yet commit. Martin Freeman is fine enough, if far too thin, as Bilbo, but everything else is awful. Instead of the episodic charm of JRR Tolkien’s actual book, Jackson delivered three movies totaling nearly eight hours of sodden, CGI-infested stuff, packed full of things JRR Tolkien could never have conceived of.

Like with his LOTR trilogy, the films diverge from their sources the further they move along. While the first, An Unexpected Journey (2012), largely follows the form and shape of the book, the second, The Desolation of Smaug (2013), adds an unbelievably poor romantic entanglement and hints of municipal corruption in Lake Town. The dwarves Rube Goldberg plan to encase Smaug in molten gold had me wishing I had more hair to pull out of my head. By the third chapter, The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), all bets are apparently off. Even though I hate Jackson’s desire to turn the the titular battle into a gigantic spectacle, I understand it. The shenanigans of the the Master of Lake Town, however, are awful and nothing anybody who’s at all interested in the fate of Bilbo and the dwarves will be at all interested watching.

Oh, and I haven’t mentioned the terrible-looking and slog that is Gandalf and the White Council’s battle with the Necromancer, aka Sauron. No more than a plot device to extract Gandalf from the story, Jackson turned it into a great, big thing. It was fun to imagine just what happened while reading the book, but on the screen, it’s just one more great big distraction from what should be the only focus — Bilbo and the dwarves. And bird crap-covered Radagast and his bunny-draw sledge is stupid.

The great thing about the Jackson’s movies is that you don’t have to watch them if you want some sort of theatrical presentation of The Hobbit. Just go listen to Williamson (or Serkis, if you prefer) or watch the Rankin and Bass. Both are clearly works of love and respect for JRR Tolkien’s actual book and almost as much fun as reading the book itself.

Next month, I think it’s a time for something special; a visit to the Harvard Lampoon’s tremendously funny and offensive parody (and excellent pastiche) of Lord of the Rings, the Harvard Lampoon’s 1969 Bored of the Rings.

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part One

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Two – The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Three — The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

Half a Century of Reading Tolkien: Part Four — The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

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Fletcher Vredenburgh writes a column each first Sunday of the month at Black Gate, mostly about older books he hasn’t read before. He also posts at his own site, Stuff I Like when his muse hits him