KidLit Forum

Tolkien is also accused of using negative stereotypes. Discuss this in terms of 1. macho (sexisms) – no female characters; 2. Medievalism – the world centered on monarchy; democracy is not fun in children’s books; a world of privilege.

All his characters have a certain root. They have features that defines them being good or bad characters. Tolkien alway polarizes excessively Good and Evil. This is way characters can be divided from this perspective.
The female characters are absent in the book. All the actions of the characters are describing boys activities. This is way I didn't like the book.

I think there's nothing wrong with the fact that The Hobbit is a masculine book. For me it's very simple to follow, men's world is always simpler: they fight and if they don't fight, they prefer to eat or rest.

We encounter a lot of prideful characters, because men have a thing for pride: the dwarves (standing for little people nowadays) have a problem with their height so they are always a bit rigid and edgy or grumpy. They want to be brilliant, great. Their masculinity has to be shown somehow, someway. Of course, not all the dwarves are the same, but their leader, Thorin, represents these statements.

Smaug (standing for rich and famous) is very proud of himself because he has a lot of gems underneath his huge carcass and this makes him a winner for the fact that he earned this with his own force and he isn't going to give up on what he has. (like the politicians nowadays, they'd rather die, than give their money away)

As for cute, little Bilbo, all that I can say is he needs his teacher/father/tutor (whatever in this categories) to become a real man, but real means to have guts, to be brave. I feel that Gandalf is trying to give his son a lesson: with great power comes great responsability. All you have to do is gain that power and learn what it is and use it for the good of other, in this case, men. And he really does a pretty good job, also being lucky, or he is really good at what he does. So Bilbo stays at the other side of manhood: not a boy not yet a man.

I feel that democracy is not fun at all. The forgotten and set era of medievalism has its own allure, magic and prestige. The era where a man needed to prove his strenght and powers for real and in many dangerous situations. Being brave was a part of their lives, because there was nothing else left. With no internet or other means of communication, they had to go out there and get it (life, women, power etc). Maybe this sounds a bit dreamy, because in that time there was a lot of poverty and dirt, few doctors and insalubrious dwellings, I can't even call them houses. So medievalism can't be considered healthy, but it was good for manhood and the prestige gained in the battles was worth it. They also needed a powerful man as their king to trust in and to be guided, again to bravery acts. He was the image of a domn-to-earth God who undertands them and becomes more human, helpes them develop.