I have read The Hobbit so many times that I lost count of the rereads sometime around eighth grade. Even though I never use this as my fun-fact icebreaker (for fear of coming off a bit too nerdy a bit too soon), it is without a doubt my favorite truth about myself.
My copy is old, falling apart, and was once dropped in a hot tub. It also happens to be my prized possession and the thing I would grab first if my apartment were on fire.
These are all things I’ve been thinking about during the random English class I added to my schedule at the last minute—Pleasure Reading (or Reading for Pleasure, the less explicit-sounding alternative I’ve given it). The class is focused on what it actually means to read for fun. Reading has been my only real hobby for the vast majority of my life, so it felt like the class was made for me.
In just the first half of this semester, it has made me do some serious reflection on what I read for fun and why I read it. With all of this mulling, I’ve come to an important conclusion: People do not give the genre of fantasy its flowers.
Fantasy books have defined my personal reading experience from the very beginning. I, like many, got sucked into the world of Harry Potter at an early age. When I read The Hobbit for the first time in fifth grade, it was like being swallowed whole.
I truly believe that there is no feeling quite like being completely engrossed in a fantastical world with entirely new rules and never-ending possibilities. Fantasy is one of the best forms of escape I know.
Picking up a fantasy book requires you to leave this world behind in a sense. You become so engrossed in another realm and its characters that you’re truly able to let go of anything that may be bothering you—even just for a short while. To me, fantasy is about true relaxation.
It helps you not only gain perspective on your personal life and problems, but also better understand the stakes of your choices and acknowledge what really matters.
Fantasy authors often use the medium to address life’s big questions. They take their own decisive moral beliefs and force them into a new world to see if they hold up. It has been a genre that consistently comments on religion and politics but rarely gets credit for it.
At the end of the day, most fantasy is simply a metaphor for life. Narnia was created to hold C. S. Lewis’s conception of Christianity. Suzanne Collins’ newest novel is inspired by David Hume’s theory of implicit submission and “the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”
There is so much knowledge and understanding to uncover within the genre of fantasy. Yes, it is often a bit silly if you only look at the surface level of a world populated with hobbits, dwarfs, dragons, and more. But really, The Hobbit is a book about purpose and what it means to find it. It asks every reader what they would be willing to sacrifice in order to fulfill their true potential.
These lessons are given in a way that, to me, feels even more pure and true. If characters in a book set in a world so different from your own can come to such critical conclusions and change their lives for the better, then why can’t you do the same?
