Bag End

Bag End, Hobbiton, the comfortable underground dwelling of Bilbo and later Frodo Baggins, constructed for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film series.
Tolkien's painting The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water, watercolour, 1938[1] showing its ideal position near the top of the Hill at Hobbiton, with less-favoured Hobbit-holes lower down.[2]

Bag End is the underground dwelling of the Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. From there, both Bilbo and Frodo set out on their adventures, and both return there, for a while. As such, Bag End represents the familiar, safe, comfortable place which is the antithesis of the dangerous places that they visit.[3] It forms one end of the main story arcs in the novels, and since the Hobbits return there, it also forms an end point in the story circle in each case.[4]

Tolkien described himself as a Hobbit in all but size. Scholars have noted that Bag End is a vision of Tolkien's ideal home, and effectively an expression of character.[3] Peter Jackson built an elaborate Hobbiton film set including a detailed Bag End in New Zealand for his The Lord of the Rings film series.

  1. ^ Holmes, John R. (2013) [2007]. "Art and Illustrations by Tolkien". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 27–32. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Brooke 2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Honegger 2004 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Midsummer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).