Bilbo Baggins
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Bilbo Baggins is the title character and protagonist of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, as well as a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's narrative conceit, in which all the writings of Middle-earth are translations from the fictitious volume of The Red Book of Westmarch, Bilbo is the author of The Hobbit and translator of various "works from the elvish" (as mentioned in the end of The Return of the King).
Appearances
The Hobbit
In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit in comfortable middle age at 50 years old, was hired in spite of himself as a "burglar" by the wizard Gandalf and 13 dwarves led by their king Thorin Oakenshield on a quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and its treasure from the dragon Smaug. The adventure took Bilbo and the companions through the wilderness, to the elf haven of Rivendell, across the Misty Mountains and the black forest of Mirkwood, to Lake-town in the middle of Long Lake, and eventually to the Mountain itself. Here, after the dragon was killed and the Mountain reclaimed, the Battle of Five Armies took place.
In his journey, Bilbo encountered other fantastic creatures, including trolls, elves, giant spiders, a man who can change shape into a bear, goblins, eagles, wolves and a slimy, murderous creature named Gollum. Underground, near Gollum's lair, Bilbo accidentally found a magic ring of invisibility, which he used to escape from Gollum.
By the end of the journey, Bilbo had become wiser and more confident, having saved the day in many gruesome situations. He rescued the dwarves from giant spiders with the magic ring and a short Elven-sword he acquired. He used the ring to sneak around in hostile environments, as well as his wits to smuggle the dwarves out of the elves' prisons. He was able to hold his own in conversation with the wily Smaug. When tensions arose over ownership of the recovered treasure, he tried unsuccessfully to bring the opposing sides to compromise, using a stolen heirloom jewel as leverage. This strained his relationship with Thorin, but the two were reconciled at Thorin's deathbed. At the end of the story, Bilbo returned to his home in the Shire only to find that several of his relatives, believing him to be dead, were trying to claim his home and possessions. In addition to becoming wealthy from his share of the dwarves' treasure, he found that he had traded respectability for experience and wisdom.
The Lord of the Rings
The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, begins with Bilbo's "eleventy-first" (111th) birthday, 60 years after the beginning of The Hobbit. The main protagonist of the novel is Frodo Baggins, Bilbo's kinsman, who celebrates his 33rd birthday and legally comes of age on the same day.
In T.A. 2989 (S.R. 1389), Bilbo, a lifelong bachelor, adopted Frodo, the orphaned son of his first cousin Primula Brandybuck and his second cousin Drogo Baggins, and made him his heir. Though Frodo was actually "his first and second cousin once removed either way",[1] the two regarded each other as uncle and nephew.
All this time Bilbo had kept his magic ring, with no idea of its significance, using it mostly to hide from his obnoxious cousins, the Sackville-Bagginses, when they came to visit. Gandalf's investigations revealed it to be the One Ring forged by the Dark Lord Sauron. The Ring had prolonged Bilbo's life beyond the normal hobbit span, and at 111 he still looked 50. While the Ring did not initially corrupt him as it had its previous owners, it was beginning to affect him; over the years, it had begun to prey on his mind when out of his sight, and he lost sleep and felt "thin, sort of stretched … like butter that has been scraped over too much bread," as he said to Gandalf.[1]
On the night of his and Frodo's birthday, Bilbo announced his intent to turn his home and estate over to Frodo, put on the Ring and vanished from sight. As Bilbo prepared finally to leave the house, he reacted with panic and suspicion when Gandalf tried to persuade him to leave the Ring with Frodo. Bilbo refused to give up the Ring, referring to it as his "precious" – just as Gollum had in The Hobbit. Gandalf lost his temper with his old friend, talking some sense into him. Bilbo admitted he would have liked to be rid of the Ring, and he left it behind, becoming the first person to do so voluntarily. He left the Shire that night, and was never seen in Hobbiton again.
His earlier adventure, his eccentric habits as a hobbit, and his sudden disappearance lead to the enduring figure of "Mad Baggins" in hobbit folklore, who disappeared with a flash and a bang and returned with gold and jewels.
Freed of the Ring's power over his senses, Bilbo travelled to Rivendell, where for the next 17 years he lived a pleasant life of retirement: eating, sleeping, writing poetry, and working on his memoirs, There and Back Again, known to us as The Hobbit. He became a scholar of Elven lore, leaving behind the Translations from the Elvish, which forms the basis of what is known to us as The Silmarillion.
When Frodo and the other Hobbits stopped in Rivendell on their quest to destroy the Ring, Bilbo was still alive but now visibly aged, the years having caught up with him after he surrendered the Ring. Upon seeing the Ring again, he suddenly tried to take it from Frodo; he returned to his senses when a terrified Frodo backed away, and he broke down in tears, apologizing for bringing the burden of the Ring onto Frodo.
After the quest to destroy the Ring was fulfilled in The Return of the King,, Gandalf and the four Hobbits visited Rivendell on their way back to the Shire and found Bilbo still living there. He gave Frodo a set of manuscripts that later became Translations from the Elvish, and also gave Samwise Gamgee a small bag of gold that represented the last of his share from Smaug's vast hoard. Two years later Bilbo accompanied Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Frodo to the Grey Havens, there to take ship for Tol Eressëa across the sea, on 29 September, T.A. 3021. He had already celebrated his 131st birthday by this time, surpassing the Old Took by one year and becoming the oldest living Hobbit ever in Middle-earth. (The average life expectancy of hobbits who survive to adulthood is about 100 years.)
The Appendices
According to Appendix C of The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo was born to Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took in T.A. 2890, or S.R. 1290. The Lord of the Rings gives the date of Bilbo's birthday as September 22,[1] but the actual date in the Shire calendar was Halimath 22; Tolkien tells us in Appendix D that he "used our modern names" for the months "to avoid confusion, while the seasonal implications of our names are more or less the same," so that Halimath is translated as September, but that "the Shire dates were actually in advance of ours by some ten days, and our New Year's Day corresponded more or less to the Shire January 9."[2]
The Bagginses of Bag End were one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most respectable hobbit families in Hobbiton until the year 2941 (SR 1341), when Bilbo inexplicably disappeared on his adventure and was thought dead.
Poems and songs written by Bilbo
- "A Walking Song"
- "All that is gold does not glitter"
- "The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late"
- "The Road Goes Ever On"
Bilbo's Last Song
Tolkien's posthumously published poem "Bilbo's Last Song", illustrated by Pauline Baynes, describes Bilbo's contemplation of his forthcoming voyage to the Undying Lands. The illustrations evoke his last ride in the company of Elrond from Rivendell to the Grey Havens, as described in The Lord of the Rings.
Portrayals in adaptations
In the 1968 BBC Radio serialization of The Hobbit, Bilbo was played by Paul Daneman.
Nicol Williamson portrayed Bilbo with a light West Country accent in the 1974 performance released on Argo Records.[3]
In the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit, Bilbo was voiced by Orson Bean. Bean also voiced both the aged Bilbo and Frodo in the same company's 1980 adaptation of The Return of the King.
In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo was voiced by Norman Bird. Billy Barty was the model for Bilbo, as well as Frodo and Sam, in the live-action recordings Bakshi used for rotoscoping.
In the BBC's 1981 radio serialization of The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo is played by John Le Mesurier.
In the 1993 television miniseries Hobitit by Finnish broadcaster Yle, Bilbo is portrayed by Martti Suosalo.
In Peter Jackson's films The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) Bilbo is played by Ian Holm, who had played Frodo in the BBC radio series 20 years earlier. For the film series The Hobbit, also directed by Jackson, the young Bilbo is portrayed by Martin Freeman[4] while Ian Holm reprises his role as an older Bilbo.
Fictional family tree
| Balbo Baggins | Berylla Boffin | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Laura Grubb | Mungo | Pansy | Fastolph Bolger | Ponto | Mimosa Bunce | Lily | Togo Goodbody | Largo | Tanta Hornblower | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bungo | Belladonna Took | Belba | Rudigar Bolger | Longo | Camellia Sackville | Linda | Bodo Proudfoot | Bingo | Chica Chubb | Fosco | Ruby Bolger | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Bilbo Baggins | Otho Sackville-Baggins | Lobelia Bracegirdle | Falco Chubb-Baggins | ? | Dora | Drogo | Primula Brandybuck | Dudo | ? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lotho | Poppy | Filibert Bolger | Frodo | Daisy | Griffo Boffin | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Namesakes
The International Astronomical Union names all colles (small hills) on Saturn's moon Titan after characters in Tolkien's work.[5] In 2012, they named a hilly area "Bilbo Colles" after Bilbo Baggins.[6]
See also
References
- ^ a b c Tolkien, J. R. R. (1954a). The Fellowship of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. "A Long-expected Party". OCLC 9552942.
- ^ The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D.
- ^ Nicol Williamson on IMDB
- ^ White, James (22 October 2010). "Martin Freeman Confirmed As Bilbo!". Empire. Retrieved 28 November 2010.
- ^ "Categories for Naming Features on Planets and Satellites". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. International Astronomical Union. Retrieved 29 December, 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Bilbo Colles". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. International Astronomical Union. Retrieved 14 November, 2012.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help)
External links
- Template:Imdb character
- For an alternate, fuller, version of Bilbo's family tree see Rodovid Engine.
- A brief character study of Bilbo Baggins
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