There have already been several good reasons mentioned in this thread, but I think Gandalf chose Bilbo partly because he thought Bilbo might keep the dwarves alive. Gandalf can’t possibly expect 13 dwarves and 1 hobbit to kill the dragon. The dragon had to be dealt with though, or it might ally with Sauron in the future.
I think Gandalf wanted the expedition to disturb Smaug, but expected others to have to kill him afterwards. If Smaug is awake and active, then he’s a much more pressing concern to be dealt with by humans, elves, other dwarves, and the White Council. The dwarves are stubborn, and a Hobbit’s sensibility and common sense might just save them. If he had chosen a “hero” as the 14th member, that person would have probably just ended up dragon food.
The dwarves did not start in the Shire, they had to journey there to pick up Bilbo. Surely Gandalf could have had them journey somewhere else instead. I don’t know where Thorin lived after Smaug kicked all the dwarves out of Erebor, but the Shire is in the opposite direction from Erebor from every other place in Arnor, except for the Blue Mountain dwarves and the Elven Grey Havens.
Except that the dwarven expedition STARTED in the Blue Mountains. So the Shire was not only on the way, but anywhere else would have been well out of it.
Gandalf was a Maiar reduced enough from his eternal spiritual being to fit into a mortal body. As such he had premonitions that he didn’t understand but knew to trust. He flatly told Thorin that it was fated that if Bilbo went with the dwarves their quest would succeed, and that if he didn’t it would fail. That probably came straight from Eru Iluvatar.
Thrain and Thorin settled among the Blue Mountain dwarves, and over time their various kin and other party members joined them there. As Airk says, they went through the Shire exactly because it was on the direct route between the Blue Mountains and Erebor.
Tolkien started with the sentence “In a hole there lived a hobbit.” And the book was about the hobbit. So the question isn’t why a hobbit, but why what followed: a wizard, dwarrows, adventure and a dragon and back again. The given is the hobbit.
And maybe the general “on-the-side-of-good higher powers” (I don’t know the Silmarillion-type learned terminology) nudging Gandalf, hunch-wise, to get Bilbo included in the expedition – with view having, as a seeming side benefit (in fact overall, more important) the Ruling Ring transferred from Gollum’s ownership, to Bilbo’s.
As to why they couldn’t find anyone else between the Ered Luin and Laketown, Eriador (the region west of the Misty Mountains (the Hithaeglir)) was almost depopulated by wars and plague in the first half of the Third Age. It used to be, in large part, the Northern Kingdom of Arnor (the sister-state to Gondor), but by the latter half of the Third Age Arnor had fallen (with the Rangers of the North the only remnant of the Dunedain in that part of the world). It was, aside from Lindon (of the Elves), a small community of Dwarves in the Ered Luin, and the Shire and Breeland, largely wilderness.
This is also included in The Annotated Hobbit, and is there entitled “The Quest of Erebor.” Gandalf, relaxed and expansive, tells the backstory of Thorin & Co.'s adventures to the Fellowship’s Hobbits as they relax in Minas Tirith after the fall of Sauron in LOTR. Good stuff.
The “general on-the-side-of-good higher powers”, plural, are the Valar and the Maiar (Gandalf is one of the latter). The Valar don’t intervene directly in Middle Earth any more, though, since the last time they did so, they broke it. If there was nudging there (and there probably was), it had to have come from God Himself (who is called “Eru” or “Illuvatar” in Tolkien’s works).
Thanks. I love LOTR, but am basically pretty much on “hobbit” wavelength – enjoy their, mostly, decidedly down-to-earth take on things. Would not have taken very much pleasure in the books if they had involved only high / heroic / noble / spiritual, and superpower / evil-overlord, types. Have thus never wished to get into the “Silmarillion” – plus, I gather that much of it is profoundly depressing.
Very interesting!
I never picked up that imagery before.
That’s really pretty cool.
As Tim R. Mortiss and tullsterx have suggested, Gandalf probably chose Bilbo out of his knowledge of Thorin’s shortcomings (absolutely no pun intended) and some foresight of how later events would play out.
He needed a thief who was not unquestioningly loyal to Thorin or the dwarves’ quest.
The Silmarillion can be pretty depressing, but it mostly (aside from the tale of Turin) focuses on rays of hope shining through the darkness. You’re right though that there are hardly any “everyman” characters in it: The focus is all on “noble” types, and I can see how that might not be your thing.
Given that the Silmarillion tells the tale of how once the world was a paradise where the eldest of the Elves rubbed shoulders with the archangels and lived in a land of eternal wonder and delight, and now it isn’t, it’s hard to see how it could not be pretty depressing on the whole.
