The Hobbit Homeschool Literature Study Guide

Strong responses will point to Chapter 1 moments such as Bilbo's instinctive hospitality toward the dwarves pulling against his horror at the thought of leaving home, or his impulsive cry of 'Took' excitement when the map and key are discussed — followed immediately by retreat into fussiness about pocket-handkerchiefs. In Chapter 2, Bilbo's decision to slip out and join the dwarves after all, or his attempt to pick the trolls' pockets despite his fear, shows the Took side asserting itself. Students should articulate that Tolkien uses this internal division not just for comic effect but to pose a genuine question the whole book will answer: which self is the 'real' Bilbo?

Students should identify a concrete moment of narratorial commentary — for instance, the narrator's wry observations about hobbit respectability or Bilbo's fussing — and make a defensible claim about its effect. A strong answer will recognize that the humor can simultaneously invite affection for Bilbo's foibles and create ironic distance; the point is to press students to argue a position and defend it with attention to tone rather than simply describe what the narrator says.

Students should recognize that the riddle game operates under rules both participants treat as binding — losing means being eaten — and that Bilbo's pocket question is not a true riddle in the traditional sense. Gollum accepts it anyway, which some readers see as fair play and others as Bilbo bending the rules to survive. The moral ambiguity lies there: Bilbo is resourceful and quick-thinking, but he wins partly by exploiting Gollum's misplaced trust in the game's conventions. This anticipates later moments where Bilbo uses cleverness rather than straightforward heroism, and students should connect this to the question of what kind of hero the book is constructing.

Students might note differences in sensory language (Rivendell is described in warm, musical, almost enchanted terms; the troll camp is grotesque and dangerous), in the dwarves' and Bilbo's emotional states, or in the kind of humor Tolkien deploys (slapstick threat with the trolls versus gentle, slightly mocking elvish song in Rivendell). The key craft insight is that Tolkien uses tonal contrast to give readers — and characters — breathing room between dangers, a pacing strategy integral to long quest narratives.

The strongest answers will resist collapsing all three moments into a single virtue. Escaping the tunnels is largely instinctive and luck-assisted; the spider episode involves a conscious decision to fight and a degree of cunning (the name-calling to distract them); the ring revelation is a calculated choice about trust and disclosure. Students who compare two carefully may argue, for instance, that Bilbo's independence is fundamentally about protecting others rather than self-advancement — which sets him apart from the more glory-oriented members of the company. Alternative interpretations (e.g., that Bilbo is still reactive rather than truly proactive) are also supportable and should be credited if well-argued.

Students familiar with the broader context may know that named swords (Excalibur, the named blades of Norse saga) are typically given by kings or lords to warriors of proven status. Bilbo names his own sword, which inverts that convention: he confers the honor on himself through action rather than receiving it from above. Even without that background knowledge, students can observe that naming the weapon marks a threshold — Bilbo begins to see himself as someone who has earned a warrior's identity. Better answers will note the irony or humor Tolkien preserves: 'Sting' is a small, almost domestic name for what is technically an elvish dagger, which is itself sized for a hobbit.

Students might point to the oppressive darkness and disorientation of Mirkwood (the enchanted stream, the sense of being watched, the pathlessness), which externalizes the company's psychological state of losing their way — both literally and in terms of morale. The first sight of the Lonely Mountain is often described in terms of both longing and dread, reflecting the dwarves' complicated relationship to their lost home. The desolation around Lake-town and the approach to the mountain can feel like a landscape that has already been defeated by Smaug — a setting that carries the weight of past catastrophe. Strong answers will move beyond paraphrase to argue what effect the description has on the reader's expectations.

Students should recognize that Tolkien is deliberately complicating the simple 'good company vs. evil obstacles' structure of the earlier chapters. The Wood-elves have defensible reasons for their actions; the dwarves are not fully forthcoming; the situation is one of mutual distrust rather than clear heroism vs. villainy. This matters for the later chapters because it establishes that the company's claims — to the mountain, to the treasure — are not automatically righteous simply because they are the protagonists. Students who connect this to the Arkenstone conflict in later weeks are thinking ahead productively.

Smaug's strategy is to make Bilbo question the dwarves' intentions — suggesting they will cheat him of his share, that he is being used as a disposable tool, and that his companions' promises are worthless. These are not entirely false claims, which makes them more effective as rhetorical moves than outright lies would be. Bilbo resists by deflecting with riddles and incomplete answers, but students should note that Smaug's suggestions do plant seeds: Bilbo later reflects on the justice of his position in the company. The key craft insight is that Tolkien makes Smaug's intelligence as threatening as his fire — the dragon is a rhetorician as much as a monster.

By shifting to Lake-town, Tolkien introduces Bard as a credible new hero and shows the human cost of the quest's consequences — a move that widens the moral scope of the story. The sacrifice is narrative intimacy: we lose Bilbo's perspective at the moment of the quest's most explosive event, which distances us from the company's emotional experience of that moment. Students might also note that keeping Bilbo away from the attack reinforces his role as witness and thinker rather than warrior, consistent with the kind of hero the book has been constructing.

For Thorin, the Arkenstone is the Heart of the Mountain — a symbol of legitimate kingship and ancestral identity; his demand for it is inseparable from his sense of who he is. For Bilbo, the stone is something he has quietly claimed as his share, and his decision to surrender it to Bard as a bargaining chip is a moral act that prioritizes preventing bloodshed over personal profit or dwarvish solidarity. Bard treats it as a fair counter in negotiation, evidence that the company's debt is real. Students might also discuss how Gandalf's return reframes the standoff. Strong answers will use the differing responses to the same object to argue a specific claim — e.g., that the Arkenstone symbolizes how the same material object can serve as a mirror for each character's dominant value.

A defense might argue that Thorin's dragon-sickness has made him irrational and that Bilbo, as the member of the company with the clearest judgment at this point, acts to prevent a war that would cost many lives — that loyalty to a person does not require enabling their worst impulses. A challenge might argue that Bilbo betrays a contractual and personal trust, that Thorin's claim to the treasure and the stone is at least partially legitimate, and that Bilbo takes a unilateral moral decision he was not authorized to make. Both positions are defensible; what matters is that students support their claim with specific evidence about what Thorin does and what Bilbo says.

Thorin's final words express regret for his greed and an acknowledgment that a simpler, less gold-hungry life would have had more value — a direct recantation of the values that have driven him and, to a degree, the quest itself. This is a significant authorial choice: the nominal leader of the heroic company dies not in triumphant validation of the quest but in moral self-correction. Students might argue that Tolkien is both honoring and critiquing the heroic tradition — the dragon is defeated, but the 'dragon-sickness' that infected Thorin proves nearly as destructive. The quest succeeds on its stated terms but not without a cost that questions those terms. Connections to the Beowulf tradition (the hero's death in the dragon fight, the ambiguous victory) are appropriate if students make them, but should not be required.

The Shire is essentially unchanged: the same respectability, the same hobbit social hierarchies, the same suspicion of anything unusual. Bilbo, however, no longer fits comfortably into it — he has lost social standing but gained something the neighbors cannot measure. Tolkien suggests through this contrast that the journey's value is internal and cannot be traded back for the comfort Bilbo gave up. Students who observe that Bilbo is now written out of the 'official' record of the quest (his name appearing in elvish histories rather than hobbit ones) are engaging with a subtle detail about how different communities assign credit and value.

This question is designed to generate genuine disagreement and to be the spine of the final essay. Students arguing for the spider episode might claim it is the first moment where Bilbo acts from deliberate choice rather than reaction, making everything afterward possible. Those arguing for the Smaug confrontation might emphasize that going alone into the dragon's lair — without Gandalf, without the dwarves — is the most extreme test of self-reliance. Those arguing for the Arkenstone might contend it is the moment where Bilbo's growth becomes ethical and not merely practical, showing that his changed self has moral priorities beyond self-preservation. All three positions are defensible; evaluate student work on the quality of the argument and use of evidence, not the conclusion reached. Encourage students to anticipate and address the strongest counterargument to their chosen position.

This metacognitive question prepares students for genuine argumentative writing. A student arguing for the Arkenstone scene, for instance, must account for the fact that Bilbo is already demonstrably braver and more capable by Chapter 12; they might argue the earlier changes are in competence while the Arkenstone marks a change in moral character. A student arguing for the spider scene must account for moments of initiative and cleverness in Chapters 4–5 that suggest the change begins earlier. The point is to help students see that literary arguments are made stronger, not weaker, by engaging with contradictory evidence rather than ignoring it.