The dwarves and Bilbo after many days venture into the cave and find that Smaug isn't there. Bilbo takes the Arkenstone and the dwarves get greedy and start claiming their portion of the treasure and clad themselves in armor. They follow the river until they find the front gate, and then they leave for the old look out post. The story then back tracts and recounts how Smaug attacked Lake-Town, destroying the town itself but was hit with an arrow in his unprotected breast by Bard. The townspeople are angry at the Master and Bard becomes the new leader of Lake-Town. The elves march into town and form an alliance with the humans and proceed to march towards the mountain. The dwarves learn of Smaug's death and the elves and fortify the front gate of the mountain palace, as well as send word to Thorin's cousin Dain to come help them. The elves and humans arrive at the front gate and are rebuffed by the dwarves. Bilbo sneaks out and gives the Arkenstone to the humans as a bargaining chip and then sneaks back in, but when Thorin hears the truth, he kicks Bilbo out. Dain arrives and they are about to fight when goblins and wolves arrive out of the mountains, and The Battle of Five Armies begins, the elves, humans, and dwarves against the goblins and the wolves. At the end, the eagles and Beorn come and help defeat the goblins/wolves, but Thorin is injured (as well as Fili and Kili) and dies as an ally to Bilbo. Bilbo and Gandalf start the long journey home and when they arrive find that Bilbo's possession's are being sold, so he stops it and regains most of them, and lived happily ever after, until The Fellowship of the Ring.
Bilbo completes the Hero's Journey as he goes through the Supreme Ordeal ( when Bilbo goes into the cave and steals the cup when Smaug is still there), the Road Back (his journey back to the Shire) and the Return with Elixir (Bilbo returns with the ring, although he doesn't tell anybody about it). During the battle, although he didn't actually fight, Bilbo managed to survive one of the bloodiest and most terrible battles in the history of Middle Earth. He almost brought peace between the Elves and the dwarves, which is extremely hard to do, using the quick wit and trickery that Gandalf taught him while tricking the trolls. Bilbo is finally finished with his adventure that took him from a sniveling hobbit worried about what his next meal would be to the thief that stole the Arkenstone and survived the Battle of Five Armies. He really has come a long way.
I think that the Battle of Five Armies is just a little convenient for everyone involved, except of course the goblins and wolves. It seems as though Bilbo would either succeed in bringing peace between the dwarves and the elves, at the cost of Thorin's friendship, which shows that Bilbo is willing to make sacrifices in order to succeed on his journey, or fail, in which the elves and dwarves would go to war and the dwarves would eventually lose, taking most of the elves with them, and it would have been a sad and crappy ending. Tolkien chickened out of the book and used the Battle of Five Armies as a scapegoat so that he wouldn't have to decide whether Bilbo succeeded or not; he also didn't have to disappoint his children with an ending they didn't like, because a giant battle will always satisfy a child. Unfortunately, some of the people who read this book aren't children.
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