Week 11

We started discussing Return of the King this week.  

We talked about the theme of sacrifice and all the characters that either are sacrificed or make significant sacrifices.  We also talked about and how many times oaths are made, and what point, if any, Tolkien was trying to make. Whenever an author repeats something, they are usually trying to add to their overall message.  

I shared Tolkien's thoughts on writing a sequel and why he abandoned the project.  I also shared, here and there, the changes he made in the story, like having Aragorn and Eowyn get married. 

I mentioned little tidbits of info, like how Rosie and Sam are third cousins and that Aragorn is 88 at the end of the story.  I mistakenly said he died at 210, instead, he died at 198.  Numenoreans are given up to 210 years to live.  

I left them with research topics.  One is to look up Aragorn's family tree to see how he is related to Elrond, and if he does indeed have elf in him.  From what I remember, he does, and is a descendant of Beren and Luthien. 

Another was to look up what exactly the other rings did, and who made them.  

Researching something at home is one of the requirements for the award.  All the students have a requirement page, I hoped it was pretty easy to do.  Just showing a little effort is enough to pass off several of the things.  The 3 papers they need to write don't have to be lengthy.  A few sentences or one paragraph is enough.  Contact me with any questions on what is passable. 

I am going to be gone this week and the first week back from Christmas.  Teacher Lisa can pass things off. 

Merry Christmas and see you all on the 12th!  

Tolkien Society

For those die hard Tolkein fans, did you know that there is such thing as joining The Tolkien Society?
Just in case you are interested... 

Maille!

Maille is the correct spelling for chain mail.  "Chain" wasn't even a part of its name way back when.  Trey did a fabulous job demonstrating how to make maille and let everyone have a chance putting some rings on the little square Trey had already completed.  He had already spent 5 hrs making the square you see in the pictures.  Amazing!

We all saw how time consuming it is to make maille and were amazed at how heavy a little square piece of copper is.  Steele is even heavier!

Week 8 and 9

Week 8
How could we not go to an archery range when studying Lord of the Rings?  As appropriate, I brought along the red eye of Sauron for our bulls eye.  :D. But alas, I didn't take pictures!  I know!!  I did take this one from the Port Orchard group.

Week 9
We finished discussing the Two Towers.
I shared my new favorite quote.  I challenged everyone to use it next time they were at a buffet or during Thanksgiving dinner when great Aunt Martha placed something on the table they didn't recognize.

"What is it Precious?  Is it crumchable, is it tasty?"

We talked about the meaning of names, a couple more opposites I neglect to mention: 9 fellowship and 9 ring wraiths (duh) and putting Old Man Willow to sleep and waking up the ents.

I passed out discussion questions, choices for a paper writing assignment, and reminded them to have The Return of the King read by Dec 8.

This week Trey is going to have an awesome demo for us.

Opposites, Motifs and Themes

We started off seeing if anyone had any quotes he/she liked and wanted to share or even vocabulary words he/she noted.  I shared several quotes and words that I learned the meaning to.

I also shared a few Tolkien insults, my favorite is:

"The land must groan under their hated feet." 

We talked about how The Two Towers has a resurrection/ awakening theme.  Gandolf goes through a kind of resurrection, The Ents are awakened to fight, Theodon is released from his captive spell and Frodo awakens Smeagol to compete with Gollum.  The second book in a series like this is all about awakening armies and preparing to fight.  Catching Fire from The Hunger Games is a good example of this.

I asked if anyone noticed a motif that Tolkien gave to Gollum that is also foreshadowing.  I should have also hinted that this happens at the end of Two Towers, not the end of the series.  No one noticed, or wasn't there in the reading yet, so I asked them to watch for it.   A few days later, I noticed that Smeagol is given a different motif, and the combined personalities have another one.

Tolkien uses a lot of opposites in his series.
ents/trolls
orcs/elves
Gollum/Bilbo-Frodo
Birthday presents of the ring- Deagol to Smeagol/ Bilbo to Frodo
Boromir/Faramir
orc draft/ent draft
Galadriel/Shelob

I forgot to mention Old Man Willow/ Treebeard and the most obvious one of the 9 Fellowship/9 Ringwraiths

There are also opposites in the themes of the series.
Light/dark
pride/humility
fear/courage
fate/choice
death/immortality

This week we are going to an archery range!  If you have a bow and arrow, please send it with your student.  We will be leaving at the beginning of lunch and returning in time for 4th hour so please have a lunch ready.  The sooner we get out the door, the more time the students will have on the range.

They have another week to finish The Two Towers as we will discuss it the following week.  If they have finished Two Towers, get started on Return of the King. We will start discussing it on Dec 8th.

Week 6

I always have good intentions to update this blog on Friday.  Alas, it hasn't happened... yet.  

So last class we talked about who Tom Bombadil and Sauron are.  Who Sauron is is easliy found, but Tom is meant to be an enigma.  There are lots of ideas out there, and Adam gave a great explanation on who he could be.  

To understand who Sauron is, one has to consult the Silmarilion, the backstory for LOTR.  In this chart, the Valar are married as shown, but the descendency lines are for their creations, not offspring.    Gandolf's name here is Olorin.  

Here is a decent video about how it all started.  

I did not show either of these in class, but probably will this week just to make sure everyone gets it.  

We start discussing the Two Towers with week!  

Week 5!

We started class looking for symbols in the Fellowship of the Ring.  Tolkien said he didn't like allegories, but he also said,

"The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like "religion", to cults or practices, in the Imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

There is a ton of Christian symbolism in this series!  I tried to get their wheels turning about what Christian, and specifically Catholic, symbols that are in the story by having them say something they know about Catholic beliefs.  The mission of Jesus Christ, special celebration dates, and clergy was brought up, but not much else.  How about purgatory?  I told them to think about it and watch for anything as they read.  

I loved the rest of the discussion we had. I asked them to watch how Aragorn develops as a leader, as he made some blunders and had some good moments.  

For this week, hopefully they are researching who is Tom Bombadil and who is Sauron. Also, they can be researching the meaning of names in the LOTR.  (hint: There is a pdf of a document Tolkien wrote about it.) We will discuss what they find this week. Next week, have the Two Towers read for discussion.

The Fellowship of the Ring

We started discussion of the Fellowship of the Ring.

We talked about all the main and sub themes that Tolkien used.

We described all the races of middle earth (well, the good ones) and which one the students would like to be.  The answers were interesting and very insightful.

I explained what motifs are by using the star motif Tolkien used for the elves.

For the next class, we will get more into the discussion questions.

I will also have their binder covers ready, yay!

We will start discussing the two towers in about 2 weeks.

We're Going on an Adventure! Or There and Back again.

To the Shire!  

The Brothers Greenhouses in Port Orchard has created a hobbit house replica and welcome people to come in costume and take pictures.  

Obviously, we had to go. 

I am not ashamed to say that there wasn't much of anything educational about this field trip.  It was pure fun and the results are even more fun.  

It is no contest that now the Literature class has the coolest binder covers ever.  ;)  

One Class to Rule Them All!

Just kidding!  All classes are GREAT at FILA, but a Lord of the Rings literature class just begs for it to be used.

I am so excited to lead this class!  I love fantasy and I love this story.  

For the first two weeks, we laid the groundwork necessary to study literature.  First, we learned about the life of JRR Tolkien.  The students were encouraged to annotate, and we learned about archetypes, in the spirit of this:

The 2nd week we learned about the hero's journey with this video:

And these diagrams: 

Then we went over some popular literary devices, like allegory, alliteration, foreshadowing, backstory and eucatastrophe (Tolkien's favorite).

This week we are going on a field trip to the Brother's Nursery in Gorst where they have a life size hobbit house!  The students are encouraged to wear any LOTR costume for pictures for their binder cover.  If they don't have anything, that's okay, I am bringing some cloaks and sword/bow props.

  

See you on Thursday!