Of the Second Chapter, Consumed with an Overlarge Chinese Buffet Meal that I Will Regret the Rest of the Afternoon (But Was Delicious at the Time)

One of the wonderful things about this book is Bilbo's unintentional growth during the course of his adventure. He's so worried about being distinguished at the start, missing his pocket-handkerchief and thinking the expedition will be comprised of riding along on Ponies in the fine May weather. And then he thinks rainy weather will be the worst thing he'll encounter. He truly has no idea what he's gotten himself into.

One of the recurring themes of fantasy is race-relations. Except instead of Black vs. White we get Dwarves vs. Elves and the like. But there is still a strong metaphor for real interpersonal dynamics in many of the better books. I won't really go into that here, but it stood out to me that even the monstrous trolls are referred to as, "three very large persons."

Hehe: . . . before they were fighting like dogs, and calling one another all sorts of perfectly true and applicable names in very loud voices.

Considering the dwarves are supposed to be much more worldly and experienced than Bilbo, they're generally rather useless and do some pretty stupid things, such as wandering one at a time into a troll camp and letting themselves be captured.