Bilbo Baggins: The perfect unlikely or reluctant hero

For this weeks reading I read J.R.R Tolkien's The Hobbit. I had previously seen the films but never actually read the book and throughout any changes that may have been made for the on-screen adaptation I feel that Bilbo Baggins' character stayed more or less the same. Bilbo is the perfect "unlikely" or "reluctant" hero and a character that is easy for most anyone to identify with. It's very easy to look at Bilbo and say "well, he's just an average guy, not some fantastical hero" but that is the key to the "unlikely" hero trope. Unlike other heroes who desperately want to prove themselves heroes and/or have prophecies foretold about them, Bilbo initially doesn't even want to be bothered out of his cozy little hobbit hole. Once he is coerced into this journey, he consistently voices his desire to be back home throughout most of the first part of it. It isn't until he rises to the challenges presented in unlikely ways that he breaks the mold of what a Hobbit is supposed to be. Hobbits aren't meant to want action and adventure, they're meant to want a peacefully average life, yet that is exactly what happens to Bilbo as the story progresses. Again, due to all of this, I think Bilbo is the perfect "unlikely hero". I also believe that the "unlikely hero" trope is one of the best tropes of all when it comes to heroes as these characters tend to be more relatable and thus even more inspiring to the people that read these stories and I believe this is one of the many many reasons that J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books are so popular to this day.