He outwits Gollum with a not-quite-kosher riddle. He’s an opportunist, willing to fudge the rules when it suits him. While he does yearn for the comforts of the Shire during his journey to the Lonely Mountain, he is no straight arrow. I find Bilbo, the hero of the earlier book, a far more engaging character. Mindlessly devoted and masochistically self-denying, he is held up as the truest expression of hobbithood. Particularly grating is Sam Gamgee, the loyal, kind-hearted servant who accompanies Frodo all the way to Mt. After twelve hundred pages of “The Lord of the Rings,” I’d had just about enough of the hobbits’ endless pining for home and their tiresome whingeing about not having a second breakfast. Hobbits, though possessed of many admirable traits, can be kind of a drag, especially in large numbers.
There’s a reason Tolkien begins both novels by getting his hobbit protagonists out of the Shire.
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