the hobbit and luck

 Since I'm a TA for a course on the Inklings this Fall, I'm having to finally get around to reading through Tolkien's corpus of work. Earlier this week, I completed The Hobbit, and I really enjoyed this engaging story of Bilbo Baggins--a simple person who never went on any kind of adventures--rising to the call of Gandalf to be courageous in battling against Smaug for Thorin's family riches. 

One thing about the story that stuck out to me was the notion of luck: it seems like Biblo was regularly looking back at major feats he accomplished in his journey and finding places in which he just got lucky. For example, when the Goblins and wolves were hunting the dwarves (or dwarfs, as Tolkien would later correct himself), the eagles come and rescue them. Or, the way Smaug dies is not by the power of Bilbo and the dwarves, but by a neighboring archer-king. Or, the fact that Bilbo just happens to find the Ring while he is feeling his way through a dark cave. It seems, then, that much of Bilbo's success can be attributed to luck.

But then it also seems that Bilbo had to do things on his own initiative to make these sorts of successes happen. When Gandalf calls him to an adventure, he has the decision to stay behind. When Bilbo meets Gollum in the cave, it took a special kind of cleverness and cunning to beat out Gollum in the riddle contest--even though Bilbo is quick to note that he got lucky a couple of times in that exchange. When Bilbo decides to give the Arkenstone to Bard so that they could join together and fight in the Battle of the Five Armies, it took a special kind of courage and risk, especially since Bilbo knew that doing this would enrage Thorin, and there was no guarantee that Bard would acquiesce to Bilbo's plan of collaboration. 

So, we have these external circumstances that seem to work out well for Bilbo, regardless of how he acts. We also have a series of events that appear to be caused directly from Bilbo's own development of character. So, is Bilbo lucky or skilled? It seems like the answer is both: Bilbo is lucky in the sense that some time his external circumstances saved him from danger he could not have escaped within his own resources, but also in very important parts of his expedition, we can attribute much of Bilbo's success to his own resources and virtues. 

This discussion makes me think of a few interesting questions: first, how much culpability does an individual have in developing certain virtues and vices? When a vice gets too strong and overcomes the individual, how culpable should we hold them in respect to their actions? Secondly, if God's providence construed as being in control of contingent object (or at least, having the capacity to do so, not necessarily using that capacity), then how does this affect individual culpability in respect to their actions? Maybe I can write on these later.