Again, Bilbo is the hero and he manages to lead them up the mountain and successfully decipher the runes of Thorin's map. But after this, Bilbo has to find the correct path; and after this, Bilbo has to find the doorstep. The dwarves may be excited about the treasure inside but they are not excited enough to enter the cave on their own, and so Bilbo must enter alone. Analysis:

With the genre of quests and tales of heroism, we find that place names like "Long Lake" and "Lonely Mountain" are examples of what John Ruskin referred to as the pathetic fallacy. The landscape is described in terms of the emotions that are inspired in the actual creatures. The Lonely Mountain, described as "towering grim and tall" towers in the imagination and that is what makes it a symbol of evil and, to a certain degree, a metonym of Smaug, the dragon. We should maintain our focus on the themes of shelter, home and nostalgia when we think about Smaug's cave, Gollum's grotto and Bilbo's Hobbit-hole. Just because you're beastly doesn't mean you can't have a home. But if you are a monster and your doorway is hidden, only to be revealed as a "yawning mouth leading in and down" your cave is a stacked symbol of a mouth (for eating), of an expanse of underworld (yawning, down), and treachery (leading). In the end, this is an image of hell‹the fire and devil character of Smaug, makes this a pretty deliberate‹albeit subconscious‹structure. Archetypes, as used in this chapter, only make the scene depressing. The dark birds seem to be symbols of doom, though this is not the case in the end. The mountain is a negative archetype, signifying obstacles and in this case it is also a tomb or crypt. This motif of cave/tombs recurs throughout Tolkien's work. The town of Dale, a name that means 'green pasture' is the desolation of an archetype. Smaug is destroying life, greenery and pastures. And the idea that time is not on the travelers' side is confirmed in a sentence like: "Only in June they had been guests in the fair house of Elrond, and though autumn was now crawling towards winter that pleasant time now seemed years ago." The confusingly swift pace of seasons is a metaphor for approaching death. The unity of the key and map (both must be used at the right time), strengthen the motif and foreshadow Bilbo's heroics in the next chapter. In a scene that parallels Chapter Five's scene with Gollum, closely follow the themes of knowledge and surveillance when Bilbo meets Smaug in Chapter Twelve.