The Hobbit: What Did Bilbo Baggins Learn on His Journey

The Hobbit: What did Bilbo Baggins Learn

At the beginning of the adventure, Bilbo is a conservative, careful hobbit, blind to the adventurous side of his world. The Tookish part in him has been buried deep as a result of his community, and their narrow-minded view on life. We can see this when Gandalf arrives at his house, and begins talking to him and he says, “We don’t want any adventures here, thank-you!” thus implying that it is not directly his opinion.

Throughout the journey, he becomes progressively independent, although at first he is more a problem than an asset to the group. As the journey starts, Bilbo seems to be flipping between his two sides. At first he feels excited about what he is seeing, but whenever life begins to get uncomfortable, he immediately wishes to be back in his warm house.

His first encounter of danger is with the trolls, we see him having to be rescued by Gandalf. Later on in the story, it is he who has to save his friends! When the spiders capture the dwarves, Bilbo battles them, and this is one of the first moments in the story where they begin to respect him, and believe he has earned his place in the team. This is a crucial point in the story, as shown in the passage below.

“Somehow the killing of this giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark . . . made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach.”

This is when he begins to look out for the team, instead of acting in his own self-interest.

Another example of his increasing bravery when the elves imprison the dwarves, and he uses his intelligence to construct a plan for their escape!
My favourite examples of his intellect and courage are when he talks to Smaug and uses flattery to trick him into showing his underbelly; and when he talks to Gollum, further showing his skills by using riddles to buy time.

Bilbo is always loyal to the group, and his heart leads him to do the right thing. Even when he gives the Arkenstone to Bard, he is doing this because he feels Thorin has been overcome with greed, and he is not seeing the situation clearly.

At the end of the journey, I feel Bilbo has learnt self-confidence, and is no longer the hobbit he was. The Tookish part of him has come out very clearly. He may of lost respect from his fellow hobbits, but he has made many friends along the way, and is no longer as simple as he was before. He has grown to be self-reliant, resourceful and has come out from this adventure a “very different hobbit from the one that had run out without a pocket-handkerchief from Bag-End long ago.”