Style plays a large part in the whimsy and charm of fantasy, especially in the context of children’s novels, therefore, the way in which an author writes affects the way the narrative flows and how the audience connects with the story. J.R.R Tolkien uses distinct stylistic choices to bring his writing to life and to enhance the fairy-tale-like magic of his books. The Hobbit is perhaps his finest example of using style to enchant and relate to an audience. Tolkien’s aforementioned novel draws on many of the same patterns that lend themselves to fairy-tales, one of the most prominent being the anaphora and parallel structure commonly attributed to riddles. Chapter 12 includes several examples of this:
“I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led / I am the friend …show more content…
The way a sentence is formulated in itself, whether its diction or grammatical choice, creates mood, tone, and purpose. Written primarily for children, The Hobbit’s word choice is semi-conversational and quite direct. “Smaug certainly looked fast asleep, almost dead and dark, with scarcely a snore more than a whiff of unseen steam, when Bilbo peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out on to the floor when he caught a sudden thin and piercing ray of red from under the drooping lid of Smaug’s left eye. He was only pretending to be asleep! He was watching the tunnel entrance! Hurriedly Bilbo stepped back and blessed the luck of his ring.” (Tolkien 222) Short, concise sentences with exclamatory punctuation play on the excitability of a young audience, focusing their attention on a sentence in the middle of a paragraph that may otherwise be glanced over. Tolkien further uses this economical structure to lay out a setting without sounding unnecessarily