The purpose of this quest is not a black-and-white case of good vs. evil. Sure, the enemy is an evil, murdering dragon. But what the dwarves are seeking more than anything else is treasure – as Bilbo points out much later in the novel, the dwarves have thought of "no way of getting rid of Smaug" (12.33). In a book where there are good races and bad races – the elves and the goblins, respectively, the dwarves are probably the closest things we have to a moral grey area.

Here, Thorin & Co. are chilling in the lovely valley of Rivendell to gear up for their travel through the Misty Mountains. The narrator tells us that things that are good are "not much to listen to"; this lesson is as true of Bilbo's life as anything else. After all, we hear very little of Bilbo's fifty years before going on his quest with Thorin & Co. But we hear about three hundred pages'-worth of things about the one year Bilbo spends on his adventure. Do you think the things that the narrator chooses to emphasize are the same that Bilbo would dwell on in his (fictional) memoir? Are there episodes of The Hobbit that you wish the narrator had spent more time expanding?

The foolish singing of the elves seems entirely different from the elven songs we see produced in The Lord of the Rings. Why might Tolkien have decided on this more light-hearted elvish characterization for The Hobbit? What effect does it have on the pacing of The Hobbit's chapters that these songs are often presented in full? How do the elves' songs compare to those of the dwarves or the goblins? (How do you like playing Twenty Questions?)