hannabelle

It may be tempting for some readers to skip this and jump straight into the first chapter; doing so would not limit your ability to understand the book proper. But Tolkien makes good use of his prologue to ease us into the coming narrative. The first paragraph suggests that Middle-earth is not some fantastical land sprung from the imagination of an author, but rather our own world, separated from us only by time. The Hobbit was not a fictional novel for children; it was taken from an account written by Bilbo Baggins himself in the Red Book of Westmarch. This sense of history not only encourages our suspension of disbelief, but pervades the book thematically as well. As we will learn throughout the story, the events of ages past weigh heavily on the present time of The Lord of the Rings . The history of the Hobbits detailed here, including a section devoted entirely to pipe-weed that heavily quotes Meriadoc Brandybuck’s Herblore of the Shire , further blurs our reality with that of Mid...