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!