To this day, one of the most intriguing characters inThe Hobbitfilms and book is Beorn. Very little is known about him and his ability to shape-shift, other than the fact that his people were some of the first to live in the mountains before the goblins came down and took over. He is left deliberately mysterious as a character, to keep the audience tantalized. But beneath his gruff exterior, there is a pain and a tragedy that is hinted at, and it makes him a much more sympathetic character.
When the company of dwarves, with Gandalf and Bilbo in tow, enter, two at a time, intothe abode of the bear man, the reader is given the impression of a very powerful, and not too friendly man who lives in solitude and keeps himself out of the affairs of the rest of the world, choosing only to attackgoblins when they leave their cavesand cause trouble on the borders of his land. His only friendship is with his animals, whom he would defend with his life, and he seems to dislike many other species, including dwarves. He is distrustful and harsh, but he does offer the companions food and sanctuary despite this, which is the first hint that he might not be so bad. However, when the audience are invited to learn about the tragedy of his family, it all begins to click into place as to why he is the way he is.
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He reveals to the dwarves that they share the same hatred goblins, because “Azog the defiler killed most of my family. But some he enslaved; not for work you understand,but for sport. Caging skin changers and torturing them seemed to amuse him.” and when Bilbo asks what happened to the others like him, Beorn replies “Once there were many. Now there is only one.” In this way, Beorn appears to be the last of his kind, and has to bear the burden of being the only survivor of a race of people who were brutalized and annihilated for the entertainment of lesser beings.
It is obvious that the character has suffered greatly, and that he is only too keen to help the dwarves rid the world of the creatures who brought him so much pain and inner-turmoil. That is why he joins in at the Battle of the Five Armies, and protectThorin from an even worse fatethan the one he eventually dies of. In the movies he is shown riding in onthe back of a Giant Eagle, which definitely doesn’t happen in the books, but it is told that he basically turns the tide of the war, and brings about a victory for the good. He is strong enough to take on several enemies by himself, and a valiant warrior with revenge as his driving force.
Luckily, this is not the end of the story for Beorn. After the war, when the mountain has been reclaimed and the quest has been achieved, Beorn goes on to throw a celebration for all the men who live in the lands around him. It is clear that he has a lasting alliance withthe elven king in Mirkwood, and remains a life-long friend of Gandalf. But it is believed that at this feast, he may have met someone who later becomes his wife.
It is revealed in theLord of the Ringsbooks that they in fact go on to have many children, and that his firstborn son Grimbeorn ‘was now the lord of many sturdy men.’ His descendants become known throughout the lands as Beornings, and they help to keep the peace both with the birds and creatures of the forests, but also between the dwarves of Dale and the elves of Rivendell, as they protect the lands in between and prevent conflicts from erupting there.
It is also rumored that most of the children from Beorn’s direct line of descendants inherited the ability to skin change, meaning that the shape-shifting gene also survives and gets passed down through the generations. It is unknown why they turn into bears specifically, and why they are unable to walk in the skin of any other kind of creature in Middle Earth, but in bear form they are remarkable and formidable nonetheless. In this sense, Beorn is no longer the last of his kind, and is able to undo some of the damage that Azog the defiler did to his people. In many ways, this gives hope to the other characters in the world who have suffered similar losses, like the Ents who still search across the lands for the missing Entwives.
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