Small folk, big decisions: Tolkien’s hobbits change the world

THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEYJ.R.R. Tolkien may have created a vast fantasy world in which the footsteps of gods and monsters made its history tremble, but when it came down to the works he is best known for, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the choices that carried the most weight were ultimately made by some of the smallest people in it: hobbits.

Although Tolkien began his rich history, cosmology, languages, and geography of Middle-earth in the myths that would be published posthumously as The Silmarillion, he gave special attention when writing The Hobbit to a scene which could have been just one of many episodes in the story.

Middle-earth music: The Return of the King

Soundtrack - The Return of the KingComposer Howard Shore draws from the themes he created for previous films in Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings for The Return of the King, and this score caps the trilogy off superbly.

Of barrow-wights and the Balrog: Tolkien brings horror to Middle-earth

Much is made of the differences in tone between J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and its eventual sequel, The Lord of the Rings.  One was written for children, the other clearly was not.  But what is the defining characteristic of Tolkien’s epic (and there may be more than one) that sets it apart from its child-friendly origins?

I’d venture to say it’s that Tolkien brings horror to Middle-earth.