Tookish & Baggins

This typographic design highlights the juxtaposition of Bilbo's battle between his Tookish and Baggins sides during his adventure in The Hobbit.

Corey Olsen in his book Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit explains, "In Chapter One, we learn that Bilbo is the child of two very different families, the Tooks and the Bagginses, and that his Baggins side and his Took side push him in very different directions. The interaction between these different impulses in Bilbo is one of the central realities of Bilbo's character, and Tolkien's handling of the balance between Bilbo's Tookish and Bagginsish* desires as the story proceeds is subtle and complex, not following the simple patterns we might expect."

*Olsen adds, "Tolkien uses the adjective Tookish numerous times, but he never uses the much sillier corresponding word Bagginsish..."

Two longer passages from the first chapter The Hobbit show these two sides of Bilbo:

"This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, and his name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Baggins would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours’ respect, but he gained—well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end."

"As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up - probably somebody lighting a wood-fire-and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again."

—The Hobbit, chapter 1 "An Unexpected Party"