Everything that Bilbo learns on his journey, he passes on to Frodo. They are part of the same storytelling universe, after all, even if the tone of the two novels is completely different. The Hobbitīilbo's role in the Lord of the Rings series is to provide a strong sense of continuity between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. He's both a good and bad model for Frodo to follow. But Bilbo also gives us hope that a person can carry the Ring and survive its damage. The fact that kindly, generous Bilbo has so much trouble giving up the Ring foreshadows Frodo's own, much worse difficulties with this terrible object. It takes all of his and Gandalf's combined mental strength to get him to let the Ring go. But Bilbo really, really doesn't want to. With Gandalf's help, Bilbo gives up the Ring before going on his long journey to Rivendell. Poor Bilbo has no idea of the extent of the Ring's power or evil (or else he certainly would not have left it to his nephew and heir, our hero Frodo Baggins). Of course, as we find out pretty quickly, the reason for Bilbo's surprising preservation is his evil, ancient Ring, which he has been holding on to as a harmless keepsake of his journey and a handy tool to avoid meetings with people he doesn't want to see. It's unnatural not to age at all, no matter how nice a Hobbit you are. He looks mostly the same, even though he is now over a hundred years old. In fact, Bilbo is almost exactly the same guy he was sixty years before the start of this book, when he originally returned from his first round of adventures with the Dwarves at Lonely Mountain. When we meet Bilbo again at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, he's pretty much the same guy – funny, wise, and experienced in the world of adventure – but even more out-of-his-mind-with-boredom living in the Shire. When last we saw Bilbo in Tolkien's The Hobbit, he was a poetry-reciting burglar, a friend to Dwarves and Wizards, and just a bit out of place in the pleasant but boring Shire. (Click the character infographic to download.)
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