Journey is the Destination

For this post I wanted to talk about two things: The Hobbit hole as an idea of comfort, and the contrast of the two journeys in this story.

Firstly on comfort; I think it quite curious that the description of Bilbo's hole - in - the ground invokes an idea of comfort. Several thoughts come to me when reading this description. First, I believe that this idea of comfort isn't necessarily that of richer living. Yes Bilbo may own lots of things but I see it as more of a middle class kind of comfort. Of course even middle class America is richer than most of the world. What I'm saying is that the comfort in this description is lacking many of the things that we as American's today believe are necessities; we don't see Bilbo reclining in his chair surfing on his Ipad or laptop/ This is of course because many of those things weren't invited at the time of The Hobbit's publication, but still.  I guess what I'm trying to get at is the importance of this tale in relevance to today's culture. Maybe Tolkien's description of comfort has implications that comfort isn't dictated by what a culture deems necessary for living.

Secondly I wanted to talk about the contrast of the journeys of Bilbo and Oakenshield. We had talked about in class about the deviation of two of our main character's stories.  How Bilbo leaves on a journey not knowing what he is looking for, while Thorin leaves knowing exactly what reality he wants to see. I think it's interesting to note that for Bilbo, his journey sort of becomes his destination. He becomes a person entirely different than who he was when he left. While there are specific points of his journey that are milestones, the journey in general is what changes him. One could argue that the finding of the ring is what defines his story, but the ring would not have come into his possession were it not for the journey. In contrast to this there is Thorin who knows exactly what he wants. Possibly both types of journeys are real. Maybe sometimes we leave knowing what we want, while other times it's quite the other way around.

At any rate, I think that Bilbo's journey is quite representative of our lives. Many times we do not leave knowing what we want to see, and yet it's the process that makes us who we are. Perhaps we should focus more on the journey and not the destination. Joy is not found in the finishing of something but of doing it.