The moral lessons of The Hobbit

After having defended Peter Jackson’s Hobbit from some of its most common critiques, I shall now turn to some of the things I enjoyed the most about the movie. Most of these come from Tolkien’s Hobbit, but again, just because a story sounds good in one mode does not automatically mean that it will “click” when told in a different mode.

The great challenge in a visual depiction of the Quest of Erebor is this: this is an event on a much smaller scale than the War of the Ring. For viewers who are looking for epic set-piece battles (or as a little birdie put it to me, for those “who don't necessarily share the love for the books and just walked in to see Orlando Bloom buckle his swash”), there really isn’t anything in the Quest of Erebor that provides this, except for the climactic Battle of the Five Armies. Even the One Ring, which is mildly important for the War of the Ring, plays a minor role here. Its importance wasn’t even recognized by most people at the time of the Quest!

But as Tolkien repeatedly tells us, small does not have to mean insignificant, and this applies to everything, from the hobbits to the Quest itself. 

We see this embodied most clearly in Jackson’s Hobbit in the figures of the three Istari—Curumo, Olórin, and Aiwendil, better known as Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast, respectively. [This is one reason I thought his depiction of Radagast was actually well done.] Saruman seeks to strive directly with great evil, for which he seeks great power; Radagast seeks to avoid all conflict, and devotes himself to the most helpless little animals and birds of Middle-earth; Gandalf strikes a balance between the two. He does not forget at any point the size of the evil confronting them, but neither does he forget about the little things and the little folk who prove essential to the successes of the great powers. There lies a deep lesson in this: 

From small seeds may grow mighty mellyrn.

The Quest is perhaps the most significant event of the Third Age after the Disaster of the Gladden Fields (in which the Ring was lost); although small, it forms an essential link in a vast chain of events that leads, ultimately, to the eucatastrophe at the climax of the War of the Rings. 

Peter Jackson thus faced an extremely difficult balancing act, especially since he had already depicted the War of the Rings: he had to portray the Quest of Erebor in a manner befitting its (relatively) small scale, while at the same time depicting its essential function as a link between the events at the beginning of the Third Age (nearly three thousand years before it) and the War of the Ring (which lies sixty years in its future). And of course, the whole plotline of the One Ring is in fact incidental to the Quest itself!

One thing that I thought Jackson did exceptionally well was to situate the events of the Quest of Erebor in the greater context of the Third Age of Middle-earth. He pulled these off with flashbacks to a reworked Battle of Azanulbizar and to the halcyon days of Erebor and Thrór as King-under-the-Mountain. The latter, in particular, was spectacularly done: we got to see the full glory of the Dwarven kingdom of Erebor, and the gradual gold-madness overpowering Thrór, before everything ended with the coming of the last of the great fire-drakes, Smaug. This was absolutely brilliant: without ever seeing anything more tiny glimpses here and there of a darting wing, of glistering golden scales, and of tawny flames, we witnessed the utter destruction wreaked upon the most powerful Dwarf-lord in Middle-earth by a solitary dragon. But as a battle, it’s a bit of a damp squib (if anything near Smaug can be described that way), for the dwarves are immediately put to flight (again, begging Smaug’s pardon) and forced into exile.

And thus is set the scene for one of the most powerful themes of all of Tolkien’s legendarium: 

Home and Away

This occurs over and over and over again, at every level of the entire cosmos:

• The birth of evil occurred when Melkor chose to “exile” himself from the Music of the Ainur, and thus from the harmony of creation itself; although he would likely not have thought of it in these terms.
• The Valar originally dwelled on the island of Almaren at the center of the world, but this was destroyed in their battles with Melkor, and they then left for Valinor in the far west.
• The Elves awoke far to the east, at Cuivienen, but a large portion of them were brought to Valinor, away from their place of birth and from some of their kin, by the Valar, in what was intended to be an act of compassion.
• The Noldor departed in rage from Valinor in pursuit of the Silmarils, and were then exiled by the Valar from ever returning to Valinor.
• Among the Noldor in Middle-earth, the tales of glorious kingdoms established and destroyed, sometimes from without by force, but usually from within by corruption and decay, are too many to list.
• The Dwarves of Middle-earth lost virtually every single one of their ancestral homes: Gundabad (where Durin the Deathless first awoke, and where the orcs now breed their “pet” wargs), Khazad-dûm or Moria the Black Pit, and Erebor being but three of them. Gundabad was conquered by Sauron’s orcs at his peak power, but both Erebor and Khazad-dûm ultimately fell due to greed.
• Among Men, Elendil and his sons—the Dúnedain—were forced to flee the destruction of Númenor and to come to Middle-earth.
• The Dúnedain of the North led the lives of wandering exiles, Rangers of the North, after the destruction of Arthedain.
• Among individual Men, the greatest example of a homeless exile is Turin Turambar, who led a most pitiable life.
• Gollum too suffered enormously, being exiled from his people, his home, and most tragically, from his own good-natured side, by his own actions, amplified by the Ring.

The Quest of Erebor is but one more instance of this principle: a group of exiles, trying to return to the Promised Land. Unlike Moses, Thorin walks into his ancestral kingdom; like Moses, he does not live to see it re-established. (Of course, An Unexpected Journey hasn’t arrived at this point yet.)

This pattern is terribly important because Bilbo Baggins, unlike anybody else I can think of in the entire legendarium (including his nephew Frodo), chooses entirely of his own volition—unmotivated by any evil or any desire to undo evil—to leave his comfortable armchair, well-stocked larder, spotless handkerchiefs, and pipeweed and to “go on an adventure”. There is enough of the Took in him to motivate him to go a-wandering, but as I read it, his real reason for going is his full and implicit faith in Gandalf. 

Gandalf doesn’t mislead Bilbo about the real dangers of the journey—death from decapitation or evisceration or incineration, yes, but also alienation, Sehnsucht followed by Wanderlust. Once you leave home behind, voluntarily or involuntarily, you can never go back to being the way you were. You are no longer that which you were before you undertook the journey; whether you grow or shrink during your journey is a consequence of the actions you take and the choices you make along the way. Bilbo shrinks from this at first, but then decides to go ahead. It is possible he does it because he does not comprehend the ways in which he will change; but he does undertake the journey, and he does transform in the process.

This, incidentally, allows me to respond to the “violence” critique by bringing up the “moral” aspect. It is utterly false that Bilbo comes to be accepted by the Dwarves because of his skill with the sword. His incompetence with Sting remains clear at all points: first, in his lucky attempts to parry with the orc in the cave of the Goblin-king; second, in his inability to pull his sword out of the warg (which is the first time he has clearly killed in this fashion); third, in his brave-but-futile efforts to fight off Azog’s orcs. (Yes, this scene would not have fit into Tolkien’s Hobbit, but it is a violation of the letter and not of the spirit of the work.) 

Bilbo is accepted by the Dwarves for two reasons: First, because he finally begins to comprehend their reasons for undertaking the Quest—because he realizes that if he were ever exiled from Bag End and the Shire the way these Dwarves have been from Erebor, he would do anything to get back. Second, because he demonstrates “loyalty, courage, and honor” in rushing to Thorin’s defense. What makes this second reason so powerful is because Bilbo has just had two encounters with violence: first, his killing the warg (almost by accident, but it still counts); and second, his sparing Gollum. Bilbo has learned first-hand the real lesson a sword teaches you: it is “easy” to casually mete out death; it is profoundly difficult to know when to take a life. There is no place for pacifism in Tolkien’s legendarium; homes are to be defended, hearths are to be protected, hordes of evil are to be defeated. There is no place for rank sentimentality; not all those who are good survive, and not all those who survive are good. But there is, as there always will be, a place for compassion; wisdom lies in knowing when, and upon whom, to exercise it.