Bilbo Baggins’ Courage

The Hobbit gives us a very different hero from the ones we’ve seen in the Volsunga saga and Beowulf.

While Sigurd and Beowulf both possess large physical strength, hobbit Bilbo Baggins does not. Beowulf boasts about killing large sea-snakes with his bare hands, and murders Grendel and his mother – while strong Sigurd stabs the dragon in the heart himself. Both seem heroes without fear, without much hesitation.

Bilbo Baggins is a very different kind of hero. For one, he is hesitant to go along on the adventure, not racing after glory, and tells Gandalf: “Sorry! I don’t want any adventures, thank you. Not today”. See Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1966, p. 6.

As Shippey says: “he has no impulses towards revenge or self-conscious heroism, cannot ‘hoot twice like a barn owl and once like a screech-owl’ as the dwarves suggest, knows almost nothing about Wilderland and cannot even skin a rabbit, being used to having his meat ‘delivered by the butcher all ready to cook”. For more information, see Shippey, Tom. The Road to Middle-Earth. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005, p. 81.

For another, this adventure is Bilbo’s first real encounter with danger, with large fears. He is a reluctant hero, but when the need gets high he is able to aid his fellow expedites on multiple occasions. They first do not understand why Gandalf chose Bilbo to accompany them – but eventually they see his merit.

Thorin Oakenshield also says these words to Bilbo before his passing: “There is more of good in you than you know, Child of the West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure”. See Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit. George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1966, p. 264.

This is then seen by Tolkien as perhaps a better kind of heroism than for example Beowulf’s: no ofermod, no greed or glory, and not just physical strength, but courage and sensibility blended together.

Yet the picture is ambiguous, for Kili and Fili die defending their family member Thorin, and this is also seen as courageous – therefore both types of courage are displayed.

It is not Bilbo who slays Smaug – it is another man, Bard, who slays him with an arrow. Weapons are important in both the Volsunga saga and The Hobbit – and swords, well, they have names…