Loss, Longing, Hope, and Home

The four-part harmonic of the Tolkienian mode in The Hobbit

There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

The Hobbit

In the story of The Lord of the Rings, Middle-earth is passing from the third age into the fourth, much that was fair has been lost and is being lost and will be forever lost, not only because of the regular passage of time, but because of the quest of resignation that Frodo must accomplish. Great leaders and great civilizations are diminishing and fading away, and those people and things that come in the stead, good though they may be in themselves, are not as great as that which came before, thus leaving Middle-earth and us readers with a sense of Loss and a pulse of Longing for what can never be again.¹

In a 1968 BBC Documentary, Tolkien said, “"Stories – frankly, human stories are always about one thing – death. The inevitability of death." In stories, the death is not always an actual death; it can be a significant loss or something that functions in the story as a metaphorical death, that is, an event or an end that has finality and permanence resulting in some kind of change (for better or worse) in the life of a character. In Tolkien’s works, this Loss is always in the company of Longing.

Tolkien incorporated these threads of Loss and Longing not only into his greater works, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, but in his smaller works, too. All his short stories and fragments all have some sense of loss and longing about them. Even a short story as lighthearted as Roverandom has this harmony ringing through it - the dog loses his physical being and is exiled from his home, forced to go on a quest and discover who he truly is. At first, he longs only to be restored as he was before: a normal dog. But as the story progresses, he learns to long for better things, i.e., his place in the life of the boy to whom he belonged and who loved him best. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.

The Hobbit, which is lighter in tone than it’s larger sequel, also has these dark gleaming threads of Loss and Longing running through it. The thread of Longing, however, is, I think, more interesting and more nuanced in the story, and is woven in alongside two other primary colors Tolkien so often uses - the colors of Hope and Home.

Loss and Longing in The Hobbit

The first example of Loss and Longing we have is in The Hobbit is seen in chapter one, in the song of the dwarves. When we first meet him, Bilbo Baggins seems to be little more than a common, ordinary person (Hobbits are cousins of men, though shorter and more woolly-footed) primarily (only?) concerned with maintaining his routine and protecting his comforts. Yet when he is confronted with the World Beyond, with that which is outside of and Other than his native Shire and above his little routines and comforts, something within him resonates profoundly in response. It might even be that Bilbo here experiences a moment of sehnsucht:²

“…when Thorin struck [his beautiful golden harp] the music began all at once, so sudden and sweet that Bilbo forgot everything else, and was swept away into dark lands under strange moons, far over The Water and very far from his hobbit-hole under The Hill. …

“As [the dwarves] sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up - probably somebody lighting a wood-fire - and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr Baggins of Bag-End, Under -Hill, again.”

The song of the Dwarves is a song of loss and longing for their home, real and terrible loss and longing that has only grown stronger with the lengthening years. Bilbo’s response to their story is very like the response to a good fairy-story:

“It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the “turn” comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.
”Even modern fairy-stories can produce this effect sometimes. It is not an easy thing to do; it depends on the whole story which is the setting of the turn, and yet it reflects a glory backwards. …[P]owerful and poignant is the effect in a serious tale of Faërie. In such stories when the sudden “turn” comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.”

Thus wrote Tolkien at the end of his essay, “On Fairy-Stories”. And thus we see acted out in Bilbo through the song of the Dwarves; a gleam comes through. He has a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart's desire, and he longs to rend his comfortable web and go forth to meet it.

But only briefly, and this is the wonderful nature of The Hobbit; as much as Bilbo is lifted above the mundane world and into wonder and the Wilderland, he always has one toe on the ground and one eye on Bag End. He is not some hobbit-turned-Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girl. He is Bilbo and remains Bilbo throughout the story. What changes is not his nature but his perception. Home is dear to him at the beginning of the story; it is made still more dear by all that comes after he leaves it, all the way up to The End.

Home in The Hobbit

A case could be made that the heart of The Hobbit is Bilbo’s love for home. At least 21 times in the course of his journey with the dwarves we are told that Bilbo thinks something like,

‘“Bother burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!” It was not the last time that he wished that!’

If it isn’t his hobbit hole that is referenced directly, it is homey comforts. Tea kettles, armchairs, handkerchiefs - Bilbo is a homebody, and it is a part of him that never diminishes as the story goes along. The only place we are told he could have stayed without regretting his home was The Last Homely House in Rivendell. Apart from this, his affection is firmly for his house in the hill and this affection for his natural place keeps him safe from a variety of enchantments in the course of his story, especially the enchantments of dwarvish dreams and dragon sickness and weary despair. His homeward focus functions as a kind of shield to his experience in the wide world of Middle Earth. It is a compass pointing True North as he journeys in the land of Faerie.

As The Hobbit progresses, so does Bilbo's longing for home. He never desires to stay forever in the Wilderland (Rivendell excepted) though he appreciates the homey comforts he finds in the houses of rest throughout the story, especially in Beorn's house with its enlarged (literally) pastoral feel and emphasis on food. This home is mentioned by Bilbo when he is walled in the Lonely Mountain with the Dwarves, I think because it is the last real homely experience he had. Beorn’s house, like Elrond’s, shares the same essence of Home that he longs for in Bag End.

Up until the end, it is the comforts of home on which he is most focused. We sort of chuckle to ourselves as we read again Bilbo’s petulant fussing for his own space and his own things and the comfort of his routine. But Tolkien is writing a Faerie story and though we have seen death threatened and imminent, we have not yet experienced it as an event that moves Bilbo. With the death of Thorin, and especially with moving deathbed reconciliation of Thorin and Bilbo, and with a list of casualties that includes dwarves we have traveled with and come to care about through the course of the story, death enters the fairy story with all its dark terrible weight.

Why? Why wouldn’t Tolkien, the advocate of the Consolation of the Happy Ending as a reason Fairy Tales are necessary and good for the modern reader, why wouldn’t he allow Thorin to turn, to revive? Why couldn’t Gandalf save him? Why did he have to die?

His death sounds a deep resounding note that gives The Hobbit a weight and a depth that would simply not be there without it. We love the story more because of the pain we feel at Thorin’s loss and at the helplessness of standing beside Bilbo, unable to ease his grief in any way. It is realism intruding into Faerie, darkening its shadows.

But Faerie also gilds the realistic touches. Bilbo’s journey homeward with Gandalf is passed over with generalities, but one thing that stands out is that it is a journey of remembrance. Every place that is recognizable is a place made sacred because the company had been there, the company as yet unsundered, untouched by Death. They still live in Bilbo's memory.

Hope in The Hobbit

The journey home is also the culmination of the long-held hope of return. Throughout the story, the torch of hope has passed from hand to hand. When the Dwarves give up hope, Bilbo become newly positive, active, and takes the lead. When Bilbo gives up hope and sits moping on the Dwarves’ doorstep, the Dwarves take up the attitude of hope and keep busy until Bilbo revives. It is an interesting and subtle but true-to-life exchange. “Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul” and one could say, that flits from soul to soul to sing its bring song back and forth.

In both of their cases, their hope is rooted in their respective homes. Bilbo has to complete the quest in order to go home and the Dwarves are on a quest to reclaim their home. The hope of home is made more rich and necessary after the final Battle and the loss of Thorin and members of the company. Bilbo grows tired of the epic world and his eyes that have long been glancing back in the Shire’s direction are now fixed on it. His love of his homely comforts and routine is given a new vitality and depth by all he has experienced.

And it is all this, this four-fold chord sung out in the narrative, that finally results in the culmination, the climax of Bilbo’s narrative. The battle was the climax of the company’s journey, but Bilbo’s greatest point I think is when, on the edge of the Shire and the Wilderland, he suddenly stops and sings the song he has composed on his return journey. And what is absolutely fascinating to me is that his song is not in praise of armchairs or kettles or close-kept routines. It is a song in praise of the Road, the Road that took him far away from home and led him into dangers and darkness, and through deep sorrows. Now that the Road has brought him back home, he can see that it was this Road which goes ever on that taught him the true value of home. It was time on the Road that revealed the meaning of what home actually is - not a place to keep all our creature comforts but a sanctuary of peace in a wide, wild world. That is the beginning of the poetic vision in Bilbo. He see the Road and at the same time all the Road means. He has attained the poet's double vision. It's flower is his song to the Road.

So it is with us. Though we may never write a verse in our lives, we all ought to cultivate the poetic vision of life - seeing what is and what is behind and beneath and above it. Throughout The Hobbit, Tolkien is sketching for us the portrait of a soul moving from the two-dimensional to the three-dimensional, from a life lived in the empirical to the transcendent. Stories like The Hobbit can awaken this double vision in us precisely because of the sorrow they invoke. They invite us to set our foot on the Road that goes ever on and see for ourselves the poignant beauty made possible through loss, longing, hope and home.

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Matthew 6:21

1. This complexity is only one reason - but a main reason - why those who love Tolkien/The Lord of the Rings love his work/it so passionately. As I hope to show in the essay, this four-part harmonic chord of Loss, Longing, Hope, and Home, so variously and frequently sounded in his works, are why people return to them again and again.

2. Sehnsucht is “the longing for that unnameable something, the desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of, The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.” Pilgrim’s Regress