.. p from Smaug in the Lonely Mountain. The next most notable group were the spiders. Playing the part of a man with distinguished valor was indeed Bilbo.
With the help of the ring that he found earlier on, Bilbo was able to make battle with the spiders and end victorious. He was faced with the challenge of saving the rest of the dwarves from the evil spiders. First of all, courage is demonstrated by Bilbo when he decides to throw rocks at the pernicious spiders. The first thrown rock was at the spider beside Bombur: The stone struck the spider plunk on the head, and it had dropped senseless off the tree, flop to the ground, with all its legs curled up (p. 157). He next used his skillful throwing skills against a spider sitting in the middle of a big, thick web: taking off the spider sitting in the middle of it (web), whack, dead (pp.
157-158). Bilbo also uses this to his advantage when he is later faced with the challenge of saving his fellow dwarves from the wood elves. He must think quick and react to what he sees. An example is when all the other dwarves are placed in barrels, ready to be thrown into the water. Bilbo can not put himself into a barrel so he reacts quickly and decides to grab on to the last barrel (with his ring obviously on) as it is being thrown: In despair and not knowing what else to do, poor little Bilbo caught hold of it (the last barrel) and was pushed over the edge with it (p. 183).
The next courageous exploit by Bilbo was when he had to find a way to distract the spiders other than throw rocks. Bilbo decided to infuriate and lure the spiders toward him. He also did this to let the dwarves hear his voice: Old fat spider spinning in a tree! Old fat spider cant see me! Attercop! Attercop! Wont you stop, Stop your spinning and look at me! (p. 158) Using his superb riddle creating, Bilbo was able to distract the spiders and have them moving into a direction opposite of the dwarves.
He kept moving them further and further away until he felt it was time to quietly lurk past the spiders and save the dwarves. Bilbo uses this technique in the Lonely Mountain when he is face to face with the baneful Smaug. He uses riddles with Smaug so that he could primarily intimidate him: I am friend of bears and guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider, went on Bilbo beginning to be pleased with his riddling (p.
221). Bilbos final courageous accomplishment with the spiders was when he at last freed his fellow dwarves. Bilbo knew he had precious little time. Using his heroic qualities, Bilbo was able to climb the long branch where the bundles of dwarves were dangling.
Bilbo arrived to the top, only to meet an old slow wicked fat-bodied spider who had remained behind to guard the prisoners, and had been busy pinching them to see which was the juiciest to eat (p. 160). Before the spider knew what was happening it felt his sting and rolled off the branch dead. Bilbo began to free Fili using Sting the sword. Once Fili was freed, he helped rescue more of the dwarves until all were free.
There was one more little problem that Bilbo had to face and that was the spiders. They were all coming back. Bombur who was on the ground, was beginning to be tied up again and dragged a way. With the help of Sting, Bilbo charged through the spiders in front of him killing about half a dozen.
The rest of the dwarves jumped down from the trees to assist Bilbo in the battle. Closer and closer, hundreds of spiders surrounded the dwarves but they continued to fight back. Anytime a spider got closer to Sting, Bilbo would swing and kill them. This battle went on for a couple of hours until the spiders were so scared of Bilbo and Sting that they finally gave up. Bilbo ended up triumphant again. Bilbo gained a great deal of confidence from the spiders.
He played the part of a worthy leader which seemed to be a great asset in the end. They prepared him for what was awaiting him in the Lonely Mountain. At this stage Bilbo learns techniques and ways of battle. The spiders greatly advanced Bilbos confidence and prepared him for Smaug. The final and most valuable group were indeed the dwarves. The dwarves helped Bilbo a lot.
Bilbo took advantage of the positive words that were said by the dwarves. As for the negative words, Bilbo just accepted these and tried to improve his performance so that those negative words would soon change to positive. An example of some contrary words were when Bilbo was about to sneak up on the trolls and steal a wallet. The dwarves did not talk positively to him: You must go on and find out all about the light and what it is for now scuttle off, and come back quick If not, come back if you can (p. 34).
The dwarves wording was not all exactly very polite. You will also notice that the dwarves did not ask him to snatch a wallet from the trolls. Their simple instructions were just to go in and find out whats going on. Once Bilbo arrived there, he decided that, he could not go back to Thorin and Company empty-handed (p. 36). After a bit of thinking, Bilbo decided to pick the pocket of one of the trolls.
The hobbits intent in doing this was to prove to the rest of the dwarves that he was in fact a useful asset to Thorin and Company. This could have also changed the dwarves beliefs and feelings about Bilbo. Although Bilbo is unsuccessful in stealing the wallet, he uses the words of the dwarves to his benefit by trying to prove his worthiness. It took a while but Bilbo did indeed prove his worthiness. It wasnt until the battle of the spiders when the dwarves had begun to show great respect for him: From which you can see that they had changed their opinion of Mr.
Baggins very much, and had begun to have a great respect for him (as Gandalf had said they would) (pp. 164 – 165). Bibliography Tolkien, J. R.
R. (1989). The hobbit. New York: Ballentine Books. English Essays.
