Friday, March 13, 2020
The Importance of the Unimportant
For Thursday's class we discussed what scene of certain chapters we found the most important. This was an interesting task. Sometimes the things that are the most obvious are less important than one would think. Discussing slightly less obviously important events can often lead to more interesting discussion. For example, if one were to discuss the chapter in which Frodo left Bag End, that would be an easy thing to point out as the most important. However, one could argue that drinking the last of the wine, or labeling all of the furniture and other objects around the house for others is more important and could potentially lead to a more interesting discussion. I just find it strange that the most obvious things are sometimes so obvious that discussing it often doesn't really lead anywhere.
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I concur. What I found most intriguing from our discussion was the amount of foreshadowing that occurs in these chapters. Some of it is very obvious, if one has read the story in its entirety, while others were so subtle, it was a little shocking to realize what they mean for the rest of the story. The other part I found exceedingly interesting was looking at the instances where Tolkien explicitly explains the reason for his narrative choices, when usually they’re not so obvious yet extremely vital that they’re made the way he does. It was an incredibly interesting discussion, despite it being a bit more subdued than normal.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree! It's truly amazing how Tolkien never included anything within his works that wasn't important, even if they may seem insignificant in terms of the bigger picture. I love how analyzing seemingly the less obvious details of the story leads to really important and crucial understandings of the story as a whole.
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