Middle earth: A narrator’s escape from reality

            Throughout The Hobbit the narrator uses “of course” and awful lot. Implying that we know something we do not know. Here I think that the narrator using “of course” to make our minds wonder if we have in fact every heard of that. Kind of like trying to bring back a suppressed memory we have. Like we haven’t learned something new at all, that it is just something we have forgotten over the years. It gives us a sense of middle earth being a reality. I think it is one of his tactics to get our imaginations, hearts, and critical minds deeper involved.  

                Tolkien talked as though middle earth was indeed a real place with dwarfs and elves and hobbits. Throughout the book we wonder if the narrator is Gandalf, a separate person, or Bilbo’s subconscious recalling the parts of the stories that only the back of his mind remembers. I like to think (as I can when I read The Hobbit) that the narrator is an outside person, he is Tolkien. Tolkien being the teller of this story, and believe so deeply in his middle earth, I think it is a story that he is retelling. Suggesting that it is something from his memories and telling us. This is why the narrator would use “of course” while he is educating us. He is reminding himself of the stuff that he once forgot.