Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of The Hobbit, is one of a race of creatures about half the size of humans, beardless and with hairy feet. He lives in an unspecified time that is at once ancient and also very like the Victorian age, with its cozy domestic routines. Like most hobbits, Bilbo is fond of the comforts of home and hearth: He loves good, simple food in abundance, and he loves his pipe and well-furnished hobbit-hole. The book opens, in fact, with Bilbo's smoking a pipe one morning just outside his home; shortly afterward, he finds himself serving high tea — including coffee, cakes, scones, jam, tart, and pies — to thirteen dwarves. Memories of this kind of plain English food follow Bilbo throughout his hardships on his journey, when he is often hungry, and represent what home means to him. Bilbo is also fastidious: He does not like the mess the dwarves create in his home and, although he has been invited by Gandalf to join a dramatic adventure, in Chapter 2 he almost returns home because he has forgotten his handkerchiefs and his pipe.
Bilbo is called upon to do more than he imagines himself capable of. He does not like to travel, preferring the safety of his hobbit-hole, but he has inherited a streak of adventurousness from his mother's side, the Tooks. His adventurous Took side and his comfort-loving Baggins side are in conflict throughout much of the story. For the first half of the book, he is often hapless and rather cowardly. He begins by falling into a fit when he feels prevailed upon to join Gandalf and the dwarves, and later he must be carried by Dori when they are escaping the Goblins. In the face of difficulties, he is often afraid and constantly daydreams of bacon and eggs and wishes himself back home. In Chapter 2, he is caught trying to pickpocket the trolls.
