The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again is an adventurous children's novel about the small hobbit Bilbo Baggins written by J.R.R. Tolkien. The novel features many important themes from which the readers can learn. One of the themes is greed, and it is a moral dilemma that runs throughout the novel. In my analysis of the novel, I have decided to focus on greed, and how the characters in the novel are affected by the greed driving them. By analyzing a handful of characters in the novel, I attempt to illustrate the power that greed can have, how the characters are affected by their own reaction to the temptation of greed for material possessions and what their outcomes are due to their response to avarice. The essay also features a comparison between the characters driven by greed and those not driven by any greed for material possessions, and this in order to show a contrast between character outcomes. For despite the fact that the outcomes of greed are often negative, the novel shows that the characters can change their reaction to the temptation of greed, thus making it possible to overcome it. My argument is that while greed is without doubt something bad and destructive, the responses the characters have to it are not always so.