No, I know that, that was sarcasm. Their story arcs are completely different at that point. Beowulf kills a dragon and dies. Bilbo kills a dragon, betrays his friends trying to stop a war, fights a war anyway, eagles, goes home to a life of quiet luxury. You can (and do) draw parallels up to that point, but after Smaug's death the comparison ends.
Um, I think Bard killed Smaug. Even has the arrow/harpoon thing primed and ready for when the dragon comes (and he can thank the dwarves for waking the beastie up later...well, at least in the movie anyway. ) And the point Lemex is making, I believe, is that Tolkien did borrow a lot from Beowulf when making his book, tweaking details here and there. The Hobbit didn't call for Bilbo to die at any point in the story, thus he didn't. Yes he was tested, yes he went through all sorts of adventures, but that's kind of the point about stories like these. Hero goes through great trials and is tested as he/she goes along.
That was sarcasm? I'd hone your skills a bit more. Inspiration, especially in terms of plot structure, it is not as rigid as you seem to think. Ulysses and The Odyssey are the same structurally, one ends on the image of a father and son reuniting and the return of a happy marriage, the other ends with a drunk falling into bed and his bored wife enjoying herself with sexy memories. Of course the endings are different, they have different audiences, different forms, different stories. Structurely one clearly inspired the other however.
I'm playing at a disadvantage because I refuse to stoop to using emoticons. Generally everything I write should be read sarcastically. ...yes...that's the Monomyth. As mentioned before you can draw comparisons, but all you're doing is pointing out where both stories connect back to The Hero's Journey.
People say this. I sometimes hear it from students to. Often, I hate to say it, but it often translates as 'I'm going to say dumb staff'. Frankly you either missed the point or you don't know the subject. James Joyce deliberately took the structure from Homer and remodeled it. Just as Virgil did with Homer, and Chaucer with the Demecron or however that is spelled. It's not a fictional standard, it's a deliberate artistic choice.
In that case you can quote me directly as saying, "I'm going to say 'dumb staff'". Well if we're going to be frank, then I don't understand the turn this conversation has taken. I was talking about the parallels between Beowulf and The Hobbit as both leading back to Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces. Now you're suddenly talking about classic epic's and I'm not sure at what point that happened. No, but Bilbo is instrumental in Smaugs death, pointing out to the (suddenly magic) thrush the dragon's weak point. If you're relying on the movie to refresh your memory, I could do a whole new thread on the way Desolation of Smaug goes off the rails in the third act. But I don't think there are many video production geeks here who will get it.
Because, as I've said, works can take structural inspiration from others, and deviate to do their own thing. Chaucer and the Decemericon are both younger than Beowulf by the way. If you didn't know, Joyce used Homer to structure his novel Ulysses, but there aren't any Irish republicans on some island in 9th century Greece. Things like this are not an exact science, and the structure is not the same thing as the plot. You can't just say 'Hobbit has nothing to do with Beowulf because one ended differently' because lots of things with the same basic structure have different stories, and even plots. If you don't understand this then fine. I feel myself repeating so I'll stop here.
