Week 6 - The Hobbit (6 points)

     I had only had the privilege of seeing The Hobbit movie prior to taking this course. So naturally I was excited to read the actual book to compare how accurate the movie was to the original text. I found the sheer world building and hyper descriptive nature of Tolkien's writing to be like nothing I had experienced prior. I am a Motion Design major here at Ringling, so a large part of my job in many projects I take on is to create a visual narrative to represent lets say a voice over of someone, and how that would be animated to connect the viewer to the narrative on both a spoken aloud and visual level. So naturally, during the course of my reading, the visuals of what I was reading were popping off the charts! More important than that, what also relates to what I do as an artist, is story telling and developing a satisfying arch to a visual story that leaves the viewer feeling that everything was well connected and conveyed. One aspect in The Hobbit that I found to perfectly illustrate that is the character development of Bilbo Baggins. 

    A popular characterization of Bilbo's character is "the hero's journey." This entails a hero that takes course on a grand adventure to most of the time achieve some grand victory and then goes out and achieves said victory against all odds. That is most certainly the case with Bilbo in The Hobbit. Along with the grand detail of the elves, dwarfs, humans, goblins, trolls and wargs of The Hobbit. Bilbo started off as a type of character that I'm sure a lot of people could deeply relate to on a personal level. The one who lives a very "safe" and "uneventful" life that seems to be waking up each morning and simply hopping on the cyclical "hamster wheel of life" as I call it. Never really progressing or taking risk in their day to day life and tasks. That is, until adventure comes knocking, and in The Hobbit, adventure came banging down the door! 

    In the end, Bilbo emerges victorious in the adventure of a lifetime the dwarfs set him off on. Along with many other readers of The Hobbit, the main takeaway I got was a reminder of not just suggestion, but requirement of taking risks we must hold ourselves to and be reminded of every now and then. While we can't be promised a grand adventure through the fantasy world of Tolkien sadly, we must view the little risks in life in just the same light. For if we don't, we'll simply move through life never knowing the true joy of what lies belong Hobbiton.    

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