Bilbo Baggins
Bilbo Baggins is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, and the fictional narrator of many of Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. The Hobbit is selected by the wizard Gandalf to help Thorin and his party of Dwarves reclaim their ancestral home and treasure, which has been seized by the dragon Smaug. Bilbo sets out in The Hobbit timid and comfort-loving and, through his adventures, grows to become a useful and resourceful member of the quest.
Bilbo's way of life in the Shire, defined by features like the availability of tobacco and postal service, recalls that of the English middle class during the Victorian to Edwardian eras. This is not compatible with the much older world of Dwarves and Elves. Tolkien appears to have based Bilbo on the designer William Morris's travels in Iceland; Morris liked his home comforts but grew through his adventurous journeying. Bilbo's quest has been interpreted as a pilgrimage of grace, in which he grows in both wisdom and virtue, and as a psychological journey towards wholeness.
Bilbo has appeared in numerous radio and film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and video games based on them.
Appearances
''The Hobbit''
The protagonist of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, is a hobbit in comfortable middle age. He is hired as a "burglar", despite his initial objections, on the recommendation of the wizard Gandalf and 13 Dwarves led by their king in exile, Thorin Oakenshield. The company of dwarves are on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its treasures from the dragon Smaug. The adventure takes Bilbo and his companions through the wilderness, to the elves haven, Rivendell, across the Misty Mountains where, escaping from goblins, he meets Gollum and acquires a magic ring. His journey continues via a lucky escape from wargs, goblins, and fire, to the house of Beorn the shapeshifter, through the black forest of Mirkwood, to Lake-town in the middle of Long Lake, and eventually to the Mountain itself.As burglar, Bilbo is sent down the secret passage to the dragon's lair. He steals a golden cup and takes it back to the Dwarves. Smaug awakes and instantly notices the theft and a draught of cold air from the opened passage. He flies out, nearly catches the Dwarves outside the door, and eats their ponies. Bilbo and the Dwarves hide inside the passage. Bilbo goes down to Smaug's lair again to steal some more, but the dragon is now only half-asleep. Wearing his magic ring, Bilbo is invisible, but Smaug at once smells him. Bilbo has a riddling conversation with Smaug, and notices that the dragon's armour does indeed have a gap. He escapes the dragon's flames as he runs up the passage, and tells the Dwarves about the gap in Smaug's armour. An old thrush hears what he says, and flies off to tell Bard in Lake-town.
Smaug realizes that Lake-town must have helped Bilbo, and flies off in a rage to destroy the town. The Dwarves and Bilbo hear that Smaug has been killed in the attack. The Dwarves reclaim the Lonely Mountain, and horrify Bilbo by refusing to share the dragon's treasure with the lake-men or the wood-elves. Bilbo finds the Arkenstone of Thrain, the most precious heirloom of Thorin's family, but hides it. Thorin calls his relative Dáin to bring an army of Dwarves. Thorin and his dwarves fortify the entrance to the mountain hall, and are besieged by the Wood-elves and Lake-men. Bilbo tries to ransom the Arkenstone to prevent fighting, but Thorin sees his action as betrayal, and banishes Bilbo. Dain arrives, and the army of Dwarves faces off against the armies of Elves and Men. As battle is joined, a host of goblins and wargs arrive to take over the mountain, now that Smaug is dead. The armies of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, with the help of Eagles and Beorn, defeat the goblins and wargs. Thorin is fatally wounded, but has time to make peace with Bilbo. Bilbo accepts only a little of the treasure which was his share, though it still represents great wealth for a Shire hobbit. Bilbo returns to his home in the Shire to find that several of his relatives, believing him to be dead, are trying to claim his home and possessions.
''The Lord of the Rings''
The Lord of the Rings begins with Bilbo's "eleventy-first" birthday, 60 years after the beginning of The Hobbit. The main character of the novel is Frodo Baggins, Bilbo's cousin, who celebrates his 33rd birthday and legally comes of age on the same day. Bilbo has kept the magic ring, with no idea of its significance, all that time; it has prolonged his life, leaving him feeling "thin and stretched". At the party, Bilbo tries to leave with the ring, but Gandalf persuades him to leave it behind for Frodo. Bilbo travels to Rivendell and visits the dwarves of the Lonely Mountain before returning to retire at Rivendell and write books. Gandalf discovers that Bilbo's magic ring is the One Ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron, and sets in motion the quest to destroy it. Frodo and his friends set off on the quest, finding Bilbo, now obviously old, but spry, in Rivendell. When they have destroyed the Ring, they return to the Shire, via Rivendell, where Bilbo looks "very old, but peaceful, and sleepy". Two years later Bilbo accompanies Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Frodo to the Grey Havens, there to board ship bound for Tol Eressëa across the sea.Narrator
In Tolkien's narrative conceit, in which all the writings of Middle-earth are translations from the fictitious volume of the Red Book of Westmarch, Bilbo is the author of The Hobbit, translator of various "works from the elvish", and the author of the following poems and songs:- "A Walking Song"
- "All that is gold does not glitter", based on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which uses "glisters" instead of "glitters"
- "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late", adapted from the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle", supposedly as its ancestral form
- "The Road Goes Ever On"
- "Bilbo's Last Song", describing Bilbo's contemplation of his forthcoming voyage to the Undying Lands.
Analysis
Name
The philologist and Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that "Baggins" is close to the spoken words bæggin, bægginz in the dialect of Huddersfield, Yorkshire. where it means a substantial meal eaten between main meals, most particularly at teatime in the afternoon; and Mr Baggins is definitely, Shippey writes, "partial to ... his tea". Tolkien worked in Yorkshire early in his career, at the University of Leeds; from 1920 he was a reader in the school of English studies, and he rose to become a full professor there. More specifically, he wrote the foreword to Walter E. Haigh's 1928 A new glossary of the dialect of the Huddersfield district, which included these spoken words.In addition, "Baggins", while not a name by etymology, sounds very much like one of a class of English surnames such as Dickens, Jenkins, and Huggins. These names, Shippey notes, are formed from personal names, in the diminutive form; and Tolkien uses Huggins as the name of one of the Trolls in The Hobbit.
Tolkien's choice of the surname Baggins may be connected to the name of Bilbo's house, Bag End, also the actual name of Tolkien's aunt's farmhouse, which Shippey notes was at the bottom of a lane with no exit. This is called a "cul-de-sac" in England; Shippey describes this as "a silly phrase", a piece of "French-oriented snobbery".
File:Knole, Sevenoaks in Kent - March 2009.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|Lobelia Sackville-Baggins's desire to acquire 'Bag End', Bilbo's hobbit-hole, has been compared to Vita Sackville-West's frustrated desire to inherit Knole House.
Shippey observes that the socially aspiring Sackville-Bagginses have similarly attempted to "Frenchify" their family name, Sac-ville = "Bag Town", as a mark of their bourgeois status. The journalist Matthew Dennison, writing for St Martin's Press, calls Lobelia Sackville-Baggins "Tolken's unmistakable nod to Vita Sackville-West", an aristocratic novelist and gardening columnist as passionately attached to her family home, Knole House, which she was unable to inherit, as Lobelia was to Bag End. The opposite of a bourgeois is a burglar who breaks into bourgeois houses, and in The Hobbit Bilbo is asked to become a burglar, Shippey writes, showing that the Bagginses and the Sackville-Bagginses are "connected opposites". He comments that the name Sackville-Baggins, for the snobbish branch of the Baggins family, is "an anomaly in Middle-earth and a failure of tone".