The Hobbit 1065ship position earlier taken by Gandalf, and he has
now matured sufficiently to assume the surrogate
father role. He organizes the dwarves’ escape from
the elves and becomes the primary figure in defeat-
ing the dragon and regaining the gold, though
he does not play the heroic role of dragon slayer.
Instead, Bilbo’s passage to maturity is marked not by
a climactic heroic achievement but by a willingness
to sacrifice his own share of the reward, and even his
friendships and his own safety, to avert war. He has
grown from a figure primarily concerned with his
own material needs to one who sees that the world
is far more complex than he had thought and who
sees that there are more pressing matters than full
larders and full bellies. Gandalf acknowledges, “You
are not the hobbit that you were.” Bilbo’s physical
adulthood is now coupled with psychological and
moral adulthood.
Dominick Grace
commodIFIcatIon/commercIaLIzatIon
in The Hobbit
From the moment Bilbo Baggins greets Gandalf
the Wizard by referring to his wizardry as his
“business,” language with economic and commer-
cial implications permeates The Hobbit. While the
word business is commonly used metaphorically to
describe any occupation or pastime, its repetition
and other factors associated with commerce make
economic matters an important thematic element
of The Hobbit. The effect is partly humorous, as epic
deeds described in terms of economic exchange are
satirized to some extent. However, the commercial
elements also contribute to the novel’s deeper the-
matic interests.
Humor is predominant at first. It renders the
seriousness of questing to regain gold stolen by a
dragon somewhat comic and therefore less frighten-
ing. Bilbo puts on his business face, asking about
expenses, remuneration, and so on, as the expedition
is planned, which creates a humorous clash between
the expectations of heroic action and those of mer-
cantile reward. Humor remains a feature of the
novel throughout. Part of Smaug’s strategy against
Bilbo, for instance, is to make Bilbo consider the
pragmatic realities of transporting his share of the
treasure home, what additional expenses the dwarves
may charge, and so on. Such matters of prosaic real-
ism are incongruous in heroic literature. The humor
is present even when Bilbo negotiates with the army
besieging the dwarves by again assuming his “best
business manner” and discussing “interest,” shares
and contracts, reducing the conflict to its essence: It
is a squabble for money.
While this aspect of the novel is humorous, it
also hints at the novel’s serious meditations about
commerce. The nature of property and the transfer
of wealth are problematic from the beginning, since
Bilbo is being hired as a burglar to steal back wealth
that was already stolen once. But the story the
dwarves tell of themselves as they were even before
their gold was stolen suggests some problems. The
novel contrasts the dragon’s materialistic value of
wealth for its monetary worth, and as something to
be hoarded, with the dwarves’ aesthetically complex
recognition of the beauty of treasure and their abil-
ity to shape and fashion it and use it for exchange.
However, the dwarves themselves are touched by
the value of treasure for its own sake. Even before
Smaug devastated their kingdom, we learn, they
had become over-reliant on wealth in monetary
form, choosing not to produce other goods, includ-
ing food, for which they could trade. Money’s value
is as a medium of exchange, and wealth ceases to
be of any use if possession of money becomes an
end in itself. Bilbo’s interest in material comforts
such as food serves as a quiet reminder of this
point throughout the novel. Its serious ramifications
become clear in the final chapters, when the elf king
suggests the besieged dwarves may eat the gold on
which they sit, having no other food, and when the
Master of Lake Town absconds with a portion of the
treasure, only to starve to death in a desert, where his
money cannot serve as food.
As the novel progresses, it becomes less a tale of
heroes fighting off evil villains and more a tale of
conflicting financial interests. Even the encounters
with villains such as the trolls, goblins, Gollum, and
giant spiders comment implicitly on consumerism,
notably by literalizing the concept: The heroes are
literally threatened with consumption. The encoun-
ter with the wood elves marks a shift in tone, since
the elves are clearly not evil creatures, and their inter-
est in the dwarves is financial. They march to join