The Uses of Power
One of the major themes of The Hobbit concerns the use of power on several different levels. Gandalf has magical powers that you see him use almost immediately. As the story begins, he places a secret mark on Bilbo Baggins’ door that causes the dwarves to congregate at the hobbit-hole. He seems to know much more about Bilbo than can be explained, and he has a certain gift for prophecy. He uses a magic wand at times, and he appears and disappears at will. The full extent of his sorcery is demonstrated in The Lord of the Rings, but even in The Hobbit, Gandalf clearly has powers that exceed those of the other travelers. His magical power is reflected in his age and his wisdom.
Although much younger than Gandalf, Bilbo’s wisdom increases throughout the story and as a quest hero, he very much develops a kind of personal power. He grows from a reluctant, rather cowardly creature who complains when he is hungry or rained upon into a clever and courageous one who rescues the dwarves from the dungeon of the Elvenking, defies both Gollum and Smaug, and survives the Battle of Five Armies. He gains the respect of his companions and develops a personal authority that defines him as a leader. When Gandalf temporarily leaves the group, Bilbo becomes the leader in essential ways: He devises plans and he volunteers to go first in risky situations. Although he is the beneficiary of a great deal of good luck, Bilbo also exercises his will to take on difficult tasks, like confronting Smaug, and he makes ethical choices, like when he spares Gollum’s life. He declines heroism and chooses instead to live a relatively quiet life when he returns home, but it is a life enriched by the self-knowledge he achieves on his journey.
There are suggestions in The Hobbit that Tolkien is interested in the problem of a more worldly power than either Gandalf or Bilbo represents. At the beginning of the story, Gandalf tells Thorin that their journey requires a hero or a warrior, but he cannot find one because all the warriors are far away fighting each other. Later, in Chapter IV, the narrator explains that Goblins are so wicked they are probably responsible for inventing the machines that have since been used in war to kill many people at once. Such machines were a distinguishing feature of World War I, in which Tolkien served in France; formerly, wars had been fought much more as a series of hand-to-hand combats. As his writing of The Hobbit drew to a close, the events that would result in World War II were taking shape in Germany. Even his friend C. S. Lewis remarked that as Tolkien began writing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, political events in Europe were imitating his “history” to an uncanny degree. There is no evidence that The Hobbit was intended as an anti-war fable, however; Tolkien was adamant that he was not interested in writing allegory. Nevertheless, Chapters XIV through XVII certainly depict the flaws inherent in political power. You see the leaders of various groups committed to war for personal gain—namely Smaug’s treasure—and you see failures of diplomacy, as when Thorin refuses to parley with Bard because Bard has allied himself with the Elvenking. The personal failures of characters like Thorin, whose pride prevents him from negotiating peace, the Master of Lake-town, whose political power ultimately corrupts him, and Bilbo’s failure to buy peace, in effect, with the Arkenstone represent an attitude toward war that is both critical and resigned. The Prime Minister of England, Neville Chamberlain, signed the Munich Agreement with Adolph Hitler as Tolkien was beginning the Rings trilogy; it was not be long before “monster” became the common description for Hitler.
