Chapter 19

The final chapter. Not as melancholy as the last chapter of LotR. For one, the brief discussion of what Gandalf was doing (vs. the Necromancer) adds a tantalizing bit of "future adventures to come", whereas the end of LotR more or less says "all done with fantastic adventures". Moreover, Bilbo seems considerably happier at the end of "The Hobbit" than Frodo does at the end of LotR.

The addition of the trolls' treasure to Bilbo's take, helps him to buy his way peacefully back into his own home. Of note, though, is that he tried to give it all to Gandalf, who insisted that he take half of it. One wonders if the whole episode has given Bilbo a strong association of gold with "bad times where good friends die".

Rather nice luck on Bilbo's part to come back while the auction of Bag End is happening, rather than say a week later. We get a very clear hint at the very end of the chapter that Bilbo's "luck" has been divine favor, similar to what we get early on in LotR. This raises the question of how much Gandalf knew about what would happen to Bilbo as a result of him going on this adventure.

I think, judging by what was in "The Hobbit" and in the Quest for Erebor (where Gandalf tells Gimli and the four hobbits of the Fellowship how things looked from his perspective), that Gandalf had an intuition that Bilbo needed to get involved in adventuring. That Bilbo would find the One Ring, obviously, was not something Gandalf knew, but the general idea that the Shire Hobbits needed to begin engaging with the rest of the world, and Bilbo was the place to start, was most decidedly part of his plan. Of note, he wanted someone not completely Tookish (he directs a comment on this at Pippin). So, Gandalf may have yanked Bilbo out of his comfortable world and sent him off on a dangerous mission that could have gotten him killed, but he had not only a (perhaps divinely inspired) intuition that it would work out for him, but also it was part of a larger plan to pry the Hobbits out of their isolationism so that they could help out with the struggle against the Necromancer. Gandalf is still a bit of a cranky old wizard, but he has good reasons. It also turns out, of course, that having Hobbits' particular skills and strengths available (not least of which is that resistance to greed and also to lust for power, which Bilbo shows on numerous occasions) did turn out to be of great importance in Gandalf's attempts to rally resistance to the Necromancer.

As for what else we are told of Bilbo's later life, it appears that the Baggins and Took sides have found a compromise. The Took side gets more talks with his young Took cousins and fewer with the Sackville-Bagginses, occasional visits to elves, and occasional visits from the likes of Gandalf and Balin the Dwarf. The Baggins side gets to spend most evenings in Bag End. It is a nice balance, if you can manage it.

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