The Elven King rules an underground hierarchical society with dungeons, class distinctions and property rights enforced through state coercion. Bilbo’s invisible reconnaissance reveals power structures, developing his political consciousness through dialectical experience as he learns to resist bourgeois illusions about authority.

Mirkwood’s malevolent darkness absorbs light itself,inherent evil rather than mere absence of illumination. It contains Tolkien’s favourite villains, giant spiders.Bilbo’s spider-slaying marks his heroic transformation to someone able to help his fellow travellers.

Beorn controls his own means of production through honey-making and foraging. His Arts and Crafts style hall echoes William Morris’s medieval socialist ideals. He needs to work on how he treats his staff though.

Tolkien’s eagles rescue the party from certain death by wargs and goblins. Though morally ambiguous—stealing sheep while helping heroes—they function as Tolkien’s ultimate plot-fixing device when characters face impossible situations.

Bilbo’s underground riddle contest with Gollum became the archetypal Dungeons & Dragons scenario—a lone adventurer solving puzzles to escape danger. We also see Tolkien’s pre-scientific worldview with Lamarckian evolution (“the more you use it the bigger it gets”) and Platonic light-emitting vision.

Goblin Town mirrors the chaotic Victorian Birmingham of Tolkien’s youth—a dark maze where inhabitants love machines and inventive cleverness but create only weapons and torture devices. The bow-legged, squint-eyed goblins resemble rickets-ridden factory workers who rarely saw sunlight. Their rhythmic songs echo industrial machinery.