History LIterature / TheHobbit

* AllTrollsAreDifferent: The three Bilbo encounters are fairly standard as far as being and brutish, but they are unusual amoung Tolkien's other works in that they talk. The narration also alludes to trolls with [[MultipleHeadCase multiple heads]], an idea that does not appear anywhere else in the canon.

** After Bilbo manages to get the dwarves into barrels, he realizes that he didn't put one aside for himself and there is no one to seal him in even if there was. This is lampshaded by the narrator saying the readers likely saw the fault in the plan before Bilbo did but then challenges the readers if they could have done any better.
** In his conversation with Bilbo, Smaug points out the obvious futility of Bilbo's mission: Without a way to get rid of the dragon, stealing the hoard piece by piece under the eyes of the dragon would take "maybe a hundred years", and even then there would be no chance for Bilbo to get his promised share of the hoard (a fourteenth) safely home to Bag End. Bilbo is completely stumped, having never thought this far ahead. When he mentions it to the dwarves shortly after, they say that they hadn't thought of it either.
** Both Gandalf and Bilbo point out several times that at no point had the Dwarves ever given serious thought to how they would actually get rid of Smaug.
* DidYouJustFlipOffCthulhu: With the help of the Ring and a little riddling talk, Bilbo manages to have an almost civil conversation with Smaug, but just before he leaves he makes a parting shot about Smaug needing his rest since ponies take some effort to catch when they have a head start, "And so do burglars." As the [[LemonyNarrator narrator]] notes, "It was an unfortunate remark," since Smaug [[DoNotTauntCthulhu almost roasts him alive]] as he runs up the tunnel up to the secret door and [[NiceJobBreakingItHero then goes off and burns down Laketown.]]

** The One Ring is merely treated as a powerful and unique magical item that grants the wearer invisibility with no other ill effects or connections to a wider world. (This still works, though, since only Gandalf has any inkling of what the Ring could even be, and the other dwarves aren't too concerned with it at present.)
** Elves in general are portrayed as far more whimsical than the more stern and mysterious race they would become; Elrond's characterization is the only one that is comparatively consistent.

** A few passages mention "giants", most notably in Chapter 4, where "the stone-giants" are out playing in a thunderstorm throwing rocks at each other. The danger of being "picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football," is one of the reasons the Company seeks out a cave to weather the storm in. Barring a clearly apocryphal legend mentioned in the ''Lord of the Rings'' appendices, giants don't appear in any of Tolkien's other Middle-earth works. A very early draft of ''Lord of the Rings'' had Treebeard as an evil giant that captured Gandalf[[note]]the role played by Saruman in the final book[[/note]], but as time went on, Tolkien changed just about everything about Treebeard but his name, making him into a separate creature called an Ent. This has left many people wondering what the stone-giants in ''The Hobbit'' were--some scholars lean towards it being an alternative term for trolls, but Gandalf's dialogue in one scene implies that they are nowhere near as universally evil (he speaks of being able to talk a more benevolent giant into blocking the entrance to Goblin-Town, implying that such giants are fairly common).
** Orcs are almost always referred to as "goblins", despite being the same creature in canon. (Certain lines in ''[=LotR=]'' imply that orcs are especially large goblins, but most of that text reads as though "orcs" in ''[=LotR=]'' is a name-swap for "goblins" in ''The Hobbit''.)
** At one point, the text notes of dwarven morality that "dwarves are not heroes", and defines even good-aligned dwarves as "[[DamnedByFaintPraise decent enough people, if you don't expect too much.]]" This comes as a contrast to most future works, particularly ''Lord of the Rings'', which depict dwarves as consistently on the side of good (at worst, they may be opposed to individual groups for personal reasons, but they never joined the Enemy) and feature a number of genuinely heroic and brave dwarves. It also claims that dwarves have "a great idea of the value of money", when Gimli instead says that dwarves value things primarily based on aesthetics, to the point of leaving natural caves containing valuable materials untouched so as to not spoil the cave's beauty.

** A few passages mention "giants", most notably in Chapter 4, where "the stone-giants" are out playing in a thunderstorm throwing rocks at each other. The danger of being "picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football," is one of the reasons the Company seeks out a cave to weather the storm in. Barring a clearly apocryphal legend mentioned in the ''Lord of the Rings'' appendices, giants don't appear in any of Tolkien's other Middle-earth works. A very early draft of ''Lord of the Rings'' had Treebeard as an evil giant that captured Gandalf[[note]]The role played by Saruman in the final book[[/note]], but as time went on, Tolkien changed just about everything but Treebeard's name and made him into a separate creature called an Ent. This has left many people wondering what the stone-giants in ''The Hobbit'' were--some scholars lean towards it being an alternative term for trolls, but Gandalf implies that enough giants are good-natured that he felt safe in assuming he could find one to block up the entrance to goblin town.

** A few passages mention "giants", most notably a brief sentence where Bilbo sees a pair of them playing catch with rocks while crossing the mountains. Barring a clearly apocryphal legend mentioned in the ''Lord of the Rings'' appendices, giants never again appear in any of Tolkien's Middle-earth works. A very early draft of ''Lord of the Rings'' had Treebeard being an evil-aligned giant, but as time went on, Tolkien changed just about everything but his name and made him into a separate creature called an ent. This has left many people wondering what the giants were--some scholars lean towards it being an alternative term for trolls, but Gandalf implies that enough giants are goodnatured that he felt safe in assuming he could find and seek service from one, which this matches poorly with.

*** Giants rarely feature in the rest of the Legendarium. Tolkien seems to have dropped them wholesale during the development of ''Lord of the Rings'', as early surviving drafts mention them, but the published version removes these.

The precursor to ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', ''The Hobbit [[EitherOrTitle or]] There and Back Again'', is a Children's {{High Fantasy}} {{Adventure}} Novel by Creator/JRRTolkien. It tells the story of Bilbo Baggins, a simple, respectable [[{{LittlePerson}} Hobbit]] who is content with his sleepy life in a small corner of Middle-Earth known as [[GhibliHills Hobbiton]] until a crafty old wizard named Gandalf and thirteen dwarves offer him the chance for a grand adventure to slay a dragon and win back a lost treasure in the Lonely Mountain, forcing him to grow out of his comfortable little world. Along the way, he encounters merry elves, ferocious trolls, wicked goblins, giant spiders, and other fantastic characters and creatures before coming face to face with the terrible dragon ''Smaug'' himself.

*** Giants rarely feature in the rest of the Legendarium. Tolkein seems to have dropped them wholesale during the development of ''Lord of the Rings,'' as early suviving drafts mention them, but the published version removes these.

** The moon runes and SundialWaypoint clues to Erebor's secret entrance are fantasy-flavoured versions of similar clues in Creator/JulesVerne's ''Literature/JourneyToTheCentreOfTheEarth''.

* SpidersAreScary: Tolkien's son Christopher was terrified of spiders as a child. The descriptions of Mirkwood's massive, gluttonous, and malicious spiders draws from that (although their dialogue makes them a bit less scary than Ungoliant and Shelob).

* SpidersAreScary: Tolkien nearly died of a dangerous spider-bite as a child. The descriptions of Mirkwood's massive, gluttonous, and malicious spiders draws from that (although their dialogue makes them a bit less scary than Ungoliant and Shelob).

** At one point, the text notes of dwarven morality that "dwarves are not heroes", and defines even good-aligned dwarves as "[[DamnedByFaintPraise decent enough people, if you don't expect too much.]]" This comes as a contrast to most future works, particularly ''Lord of the Rings'', which depict dwarves as consistently on the side of good (barring exceptional circumstances) and feature a number of genuinely heroic and brave dwarves. It also claims that dwarves have "a great idea of the value of money", when Gimli instead says that dwarves value things primarily based on aesthetics, to the point of leaving natural caves containing valuable materials untouched so as to not spoil the cave's beauty.

[[caption-width-right:230:Click[[labelnote:here]][[quoteright:350: https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/j_r_r_tolkien__the_hobbit_7.jpeg]] [[/labelnote]] to see the Pocket Hardback Edition based on the first edition cover.]]

* AluminiumChristmasTrees: In the chapter "The Gathering of the Clouds", Balin wishes the thrush was a raven so that he and the other dwarves could understand it, and he also tells Bilbo that the crows circling around the Lonely Mountain were rude and calling them ugly names as they travelled up the mountain. Some species of corvids, including crows and ravens, are actually capable of mimicking human speech in RealLife, though not to the extent that Roäc demonstrates later on.

** When the evil worgs chase the party, they are described as having [[GlowingEyes shining]] red eyes.

* ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming: Gandalf and most of the dwarves are named after dwarfs mentioned in one of the poems in the ''Litearture/PoeticEdda'', as is possibly Bilbo as well - the poem mentions dwarfs named Billingr and Bildr.

* CanonWelding: When he began writing the sequel, Tolkien moved it and ''The Hobbit'' into his Middle-earth Legendarium setting, which had already been around for over thirty years, although nothing of it had been published so far. The move brought with it some {{Retcon}} and ReWrite concerning the events of ''The Hobbit'', which was partly explained as Bilbo being an UnreliableNarrator. (Or rather, a Reliable Narrator whose lying about the recovery of the Ring was extremely portentous and whose knowledge of the Elder Days wasn't quite up to snuff.) It also led to profound changes in the wider yet-unpublished Middle-earth stories at the time. This material would also be shaped further by ''The Lord of the Rings'', and it was finally published posthumously in 1977 as ''Literature/TheSilmarillion''.

* BreakingSpeech: Thorin gives Bombur an exceedingly nasty one because he’s annoyed about Bombur crying about being sick and in pain. It's cut from nearly all adaptations, except for a graphic novel adaptation, which notably leaves out the bit about Thorin telling Bombur that they would have abandoned him if he hadn't woken up when he did.

* BreakingSpeech: Thorin gives Bombur an exceedingly nasty one because he’s annoyed about Bombur crying about being sick and in pain. It's cut from nearly all adaptions, except for a graphic novel adaptation, which notably leaves out the bit about Thorin telling Bombur that they would have abandoned him if he hadn't woken up when he did.

** A literal example are the eagles of [[PhysicalGod Manwë]], who save the day out of nowhere on multiple occasions; in his private writings Tolkein himself called them a "dangerous machine", lampshading this trope. At one point they save the day when the group is trapped on trees at the edge of a cliff; later on, they arrive out of nowhere to tip the scales in the final battle.

** A literal example occurs when the group is trapped on trees at the edge of a cliff, and Gandalf has to directly ask [[PhysicalGod Manwë]] to send his eagles to save them.

* DeusExMachina: Gandalf's main role for most of the book. The dwarves are about to be eaten by trolls? He shows up and rescues them. The whole company is caught by goblins? He kills the Great Goblin and helps them escape. After being absent for most of the book, he shows up again at the climax when the Men of Laketown and the Elves are about to fight Thorin's dwarven allies and reveals that an army of goblins is on the way to kill all of them.

* TheCaper: Morally grey MainCharacters "stealing" the treasure from Smaug, one of an AlwaysChaoticEvil race of Satanic monsters who stole it from its original owners.

*** Again with the trolls, they are shown to possess some kind of enchanted talking ''wallet'' which squeaks out "'Ere, 'oo are you?" when Bilbo tries to pinch it. As mentioned, magic is quite scarce in Middle-earth by this time in later instalments, and what magical objects there are tend to be ancient and often dangerous relics which have either been lost or locked away. In that context, the idea of three backwoods trolls having an enchanted mundane object as some form of security system is pretty bizarre.

*** The trolls are also portrayed as intelligent (well, they can talk) and with personalities; later instalments would uniformly depict trolls as [[TheBrute mindless, snarling brutes]]. However, it's possible that's only because every other time we see a troll, they're usually marching under either Morgoth's or Sauron's banner. The trolls we see in this book may just be what happens when trolls go "feral" and are left to their own devices with no master to serve.

* TheLostWoods: Mirkwood is a sea of huge, ancient trees, under which there is perpetual darkness, and the sky cannot be seen at all. There are very few paths through it, and crossing it takes several weeks. The few sources of water there are may be enchanted. If you get lost (which is awfully easy, as the wood is apparently under a spell), your best hope is to be captured by inhospitable elves before you starve, the giant spiders get you, or (still worse) you stumble into the realm of the Necromancer. All things considered, best don't go there at all.

* BreakTheHaughty: Thorin is something of a narcissist. He's still a likable person, though, until [[spoiler:he reclaims his family's vast long lost fortune and GoldFever gets the better of him. If it costs him his life or if he would have been killed anyway is debatable, but he [[RedemptionEqualsDeath realizes the error of his ways not long before he dies of mortal wounds inflicted by goblins]].]]