Blog #6

4 Reasons why the Hobbit and chronicles of Narnia are not similar

Tolkien and Lewis were in fact members of The Inklings.

Tolkien is the author of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Lewis is the author of the Chronicles of Narnia. An even more interesting note to add on to this would be that Tolkien and Lewis were close friends. So when they became members of The Inklings, their works became more and more similar. It is said that in the Inklings both Tolkien and Lewis critiqued each other’s work. However each had its own theme and focused on completely different ideas.

Tolkien and Lewis have been known as the fathers of modern fantasy

This helps us understand why many people draw conclusions on Tolkien’s work and Lewis’ work and say that they are the same. It is easy to just point out the similarities between these two authors because they write books based off the same genre. However, if the books were coming from separate genres then the responses wouldn’t be the same. It would be like saying the Bourne movies are the same as the James Bond movies. But after seeing both, there are major differences that can be spotted. Back when Tolkien and Lewis wrote these books, there wasn’t much of the groundwork done for them in the Fantasy genre. So they just happened to write books based off the Middle Earth and now their books are lumped together.

The audience is completely different for the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia

The Hobbit was written as a children’s book and focuses on the aspect of staying where you are, it brought the feeling of staying at home just like the Wizard of Oz. While the Chronicles of Narnia was also a children’s book and focused of something completely different because throughout the story the main plot stays more on the adventure side without having the comfy home feeling like the Hobbit. As Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings, the book became darker and focused on more of an adult audience rather than staying with children’s fantasy. The expansion of the world increased in the book also and Tolkien actually created his own languages to go in the Lord of the Rings. As for the Chronicles of Narnia Lewis stayed with the younger audience. This shows the difference between each author’s audience preferences.

The plot is different for the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia

The Hobbit is about Bilbo’s adventures when he was a young man. A wizard comes to Bilbo’s house to convince him to leave the comfort of his home and embark on a dangerous journey to steal from a dragon guarded mountain. This story takes place in Middle Earth, so there are a lot of fictional characters like ogres, elves and etc. There is also a war about to take place against evil. However there are many side quests that come in the way because of these unforeseen circumstances. Now, in the chronicles of Narnia there are four children who escape the Nazi attacks in London and stay with their uncle. These four siblings stumble upon a magical dresser that teleports them into Middle Earth where the meet interesting fictional characters like a talking lion, an ice witch, and etc. This is also taking place during a war torn era and kids help fight for the good cause.

In conclusion, there are some similarities between both of the author’s works but the differences outweigh them. Aside from the Middle Earth setting, these books are completely different.