Clarke Murphy
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien
Fantasy
Just Right
277

1) Right now Samug is flying Towards Lake town to seek revenge on the people there. The people in the town see the dragon from a distance so they prepare for his arrival with archers and a lot of water to douse the flames Samug will put on the town. Their preparation didn’t do much though, the archers arrows bounced off of Samug’s skin and the people don’t have enough water to extinguish all the flames Samug caused. Bard who is the leader of the archers has one last arrow, a bird lands on his shoulder and tells him to find the dragon’s weak spot, he does and he kills Samug with one arrow, unfortunately the falling of the dragon destroyed everything he hadn’t already.

2) So far I think this is a pretty good book. I wasn’t expecting much from the book but I am surprised I have really liked it. I am usually not into these far fetched tales because I have a hard time getting passed all the flaws in this genre. However I think Tolkien put a lot of action in the book and it is keeping me pretty into the book. I have liked all the character development too, in this book you really get into the characters and it makes it very interesting.

3) A theme I have noticed lately in the book is race. Race was a theme that really started only taking action in the second part of the book; it wasn’t really in the beginning. What I mean by race is there are trolls, elves, dwarves, and goblins. They all differ both mentally and physically. Parts of their mental differences are a result of their physical differences. Also with racism stereotypes are starting to emerge like all goblins are evil and all elves are good. The elves use nature to their advantage and treat it like their friend but the goblins don’t. The book makes it seem like the “good” races are closer to nature.

4) My favorite character is Bilbo. This is because he is the little guy that overcomes big challenges. He started off as a coward but as he is progressing throughout the book he is becoming braver and he isn’t so scared of life anymore, he is beginning to take risks. He is starting to become one of those characters like Gandalf who always comes in and saves the day, but I don’t think Bilbo is quite there yet. I think my favorite part about Bilbo is that out of all the characters he has progressed the most in the book.

5) My least favorite character right now is Thorin. I don’t like him so much because he is becoming very stubborn. Also he was one of the reasons that Samug just attacked the town. Samug stole their treasure and Thorin tried to be the hero and go get it back, now he is a pretty good warrior but he wasn’t ready for it. Their confrontation was ugly and after that Samug hated his town and then he went to get revenge on it, thus making him the cause of the destruction.

6) I think that next in the book; the lake town is going to be put under some other threat. I don’t know why but I feel like they just have something coming to them. I may not be correct but I think they will be attacked again. I also don’t know if Samug has really died. I think he may have somehow lived and then he will strike terror on the town again. But this time they wont be so lucky.