“There
is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West.
Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us
valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a
merrier world.”
Thorin speaks these words in Chapter 18,
just before he dies, asking Bilbo’s forgiveness for his harsh words
to him before the Battle of the Five Armies. Thorin acknowledges
that, though in his greed he has looked on Bilbo’s simple goodness
with contempt, the world would be a better place with more Bilbos
and fewer Thorins. This quotation places the book’s contrast between
the simple life of modernity and the grim heroism of the ancient
epic in a new light. Bilbo initially felt that the rigors of heroism
would force him to abandon the complacency of his simple life at
Hobbiton. At the conclusion of the novel, we see that if everyone
led a simple, hobbitlike life, the world would be free of evil,
and heroism would, in effect, be unnecessary. This new understanding
lies behind Bilbo’s decision to return to Hobbiton at the end of
the book and is Tolkien’s closing moral position in The
Hobbit.