Reread The Hobbit for the first time since i was a kid and i think i read a different book
I'm not exaggerating. I remembered this as a cozy adventure story with a dragon and some dwarves. Fun, simple, good for children. I picked it up last month and i genuinely don't know what happened.
The first chapter alone. As a kid i just accepted Bilbo as the main character who goes on an adventure. Reading it now the whole thing reads like a very specific character study of someone who has spent their entire life constructing an identity around comfort and respectability and then having that identity fall apart in real time because a wizard and thirteen dwarves show up and don't care about any of it. I found it genuinely uncomfortable. Did not expect that from The Hobbit.
Thorin i remembered as grumpy but heroic. Reading it now knowing where his arc goes, the early scenes feel completely different. The dragon sickness doesn't come out of nowhere, it's kind of there from the beginning if you're looking for it and i kept stopping to go back and reread things.
Gandalf as a kid was just the helpful wizard. Now he reads as someone who is clearly running his own agenda, shows up when useful, disappears when convenient, and nobody in the book ever fully questions this. That's a weird and interesting character that i completely missed at eleven.
I don't know if i changed or if the book just has more in it than a kid can get to. Probably both. Either way it's not the book i thought i remembered becuase the one i just read was genuinely strange and melancholy in places and i mean that as a compliment.