Book of the Month Essay Cindy Sue Lewis Period
B3 9-15-16
The book I read
was The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien. It is fantasy, and the copy I
read has 330 pages.
Internal Conflict:
The book begins with a wizard visiting a
hobbit. Hobbits are usually home-loving,
comfort-seeking creatures. So when the
wizard Gandolph offers Bilbo an opportunity to go on an adventure – along and
dangerous one, Bilbo has to make a difficult decision. He experiences inner conflict. Bilbo is of two minds about whether or not to
go on the journey with the dwarves. “Then Mr. Baggins turned the handle and
went in. The Took side had won. He suddenly felt he would go without bed and
breakfast to be thought fierce. . . .
Many a time afterward the Baggins part of him regretted what he did now, and he
said to himself,: ‘Bilbo, you were a fool; you walked right in and put your
foot in it.’ (48)”
He agrees to go on the journey, but
sleeps in the next morning and wakes to find the dwarves already gone. “Indeed he was really relieved after all to
think that they had all gone without him, and without bothering to wake him up,
. . . and yet in a way he could not help feeling just a trifle
disappointed. The feeling surprised him.
(60)”
When it actually comes down to it though,
Bilbo runs out of the house “without even a hankerchief.” The more adventurous part of him – the Took
side – had won out in this internal conflict. The result is that Bilbo goes on the great
adventure which is told about in the rest of the book.
External conflict:
Much later in the story there is a dragon vs.
Bilbo and dwarves, then against the people of the nearby town, and then armies
fighting armies, but earlier on there is a conflict with huge spiders. The
wizard Gandolph has just left the dwarves and Bilbo as they are about to enter
a deep dark forest called Mirkwood.
Their experience in Mirkwood is partially man vs. nature as they
experience hunger and thirst traveling through the woods. But Mirkwood is also a place of dark magic,
and there is an enchanted stream. Anyone
who falls into the stream goes into a deep, lasting sleep, and that does happen
to one of their group. That is man vs.
the supernatural.
A major
external conflict that takes place in Mirkwood is the battle with the giant
spiders.
Bilbo had become separated from the group. “. . . then the
great spider, who had been busy tying him up while he dozed, cam up from behind
him and came at him. . . As it was, he
had a desperate fifth before he got free.
He beat the creature off with his hands. . . until he remembered his
sword and drew it out. (207)” Then he
finds the dwarves, trussed up in spider silk,
uses the ring to become invisible, throws stones at the spiders. and
teases them to draw them away from where the dwarves are hanging. He is able to cut the dwarves down, then
turns invisible again to help in the battle against the spiders, and “at last,
just as Bilbo felt that he could not lift his hand for a single stroke more,
the spiders suddenly gave it up, and followed them no more, but went back
disappointed to their dark colony. (216)”
There are several results of this conflict . The dwarves find
out about the ring. They now have no
idea where the path is that they were to follow, and the dwarves had “changed
their opinion of Mr. Baggins very much, and had begun to have a great respect
for him. (217)”
I read the whole book: Cindy Sue Lewis
