The Hobbit

Tolkien bases races of middle earth on mortality. Such as Dwarfs mine and like gold, hobbits are fat humble and happy introverts, goblins are stupid things, goblins and dragons are evil. There are no exceptions. Except for Bilbo and maybe even Gollum who doesn't seem to have a race. With the help of Gandalf, Bilbo is able to test the boundries of his own race and become more of a daring and adventures person. Something that other Hobbits would frown upon. Tolkien tries to explain that in society we shouldn't always stick to the statues quo because we may not know what other great things we could accomplish. As Tolkien writes the Lord of the Rings Trilogy there is more distinction with moral choices in racial groups. Elves are purest and Orches are evil elves that converted. Evil kings are turned into evil spirits, their is Gandalf the good wizard and Saruman the evil wizard. Their is no grey area except for the trees until they decided to help defend middle earth from Sauron. Although, the humans who live by the lake in the Hobbit are on more of the grey scale but generly dipicted, by Tolkien to be good. They will not help Bilbo's party with the dragon for they fear it to be an invincable evil, but even so they still try to defeat it when it tries to destroy their village.

In the riddle scene with Bilbo and Gollum. Bilbo outsmarts Gollum by asking "What is in my pocket?" which is not a riddle at all but Gollum is too ignorant to know this. Eventually Bilbo outsmarts Gollum again by tricking Gollum to showing him the way out. This part of the book shows that heroes are not always measured by the strength of their body, but the strength of their wit. Another time when Bilbo uses his wit it when tricking the Dragon into showing him his hard underbelly and exposing a soft batch to his heart. This information leads to the defeat of the dragon. Bilbo also grows more heroic and leadership traits through out the novel. When Bilbo kills the spiders in the the next chapters he feels more that of leader. Killing his first enemy in combat gives him confidence and developes his heroic character.