Why Bilbo?

[McDLT]

Why do you think, out of all the hobbits, that Gandalf chose Biblo for the adventure?

Why not a hobbit from Buckland or from Bree?

Or why even a hobbit; why not someone else with more skill?

Curious as to what others think. :grin:

[Mirkgirl]

The closest to explanation we get is in the Unfinished Tales... there's the story which Gandalf told to the hobbits and Gimli after the coronation in Minas Tirith... The best is if you can read it yourself, but I can add a couple of quotes...

"How would you select any one Hobbit for such a purpose? I had not time to sort them all out; but I knew the Shire very well by that time, although when I met Thorin I had been away for more than twenty years on less pleasant business. So naturally thinking over the Hobbits that I knew, I said to myself: 'I want a dash of the Took' (but not too much. Master Peregrin) 'and I want a good foundation of the stolider sort, a Baggins perhaps.' That pointed at once to Bilbo. And I had known him once very well, almost up to his coming of age, better than he knew me. I like him then. And now I found that he was 'unattached' – to jump on again for of course I did not know all this until I went back to the Shire. I learned that he had never married.

As to why a hobbit... Gandalf has been interested in hobbits for some time, when Thorin finds him he is on his way to the Shire.. guess the elements just fitted right...Asked by Gimli whether he knew what'd happen with the ring and all, Gandalf replies: "I do not know the answer. For I have changed since those days, and I am no longer trammelled by the burden of Middle-earth as I was then. In those days I should have answered you with words like those I used to Frodo, only last year in the spring ... To do that I used in my waking mind only such means as were allowed to me, doing what lay to my hand according to such reasons as I had. But what I knew in my heart, or knew before I stepped on these grey shores: that is another matter.
The conventional explanation, the one Gandalf used to persuade Throrin too: Suddenly in my mind these three things came together: the great Dragon with his lust, and his keen hearing and scent; the sturdy heavy-booted Dwarves with their old burning grudge; and the quick, soft-footed Hobbit, sick at heart (I guessed) for a sight of the wide world. I laughed at myself; but I went off at once to have a look at Bilbo, to see what twenty years bad done to him, and whether he was as promising as gossip seemed to make out.


My personal opinion is that the things just fitted, helped by fate (or Eru's will, or the things Gandalf knew in his heart)... the right coincidences... and Bilbo was odd for the other hobbits, no wonder he was the one.