Ancestors

Toot

Written by Unsafelyhotboots on 2024-08-13 at 03:55

I see this is getting some boosts. Her parents put some restrictions on me - no queer stories, keep it in line with what she is learning in school, focus on essay writing.

In spite of that, she has decided to go for broke and do Lord of the Rings, after several weeks of discussing books that she has had to read for school. I warned her that it is dense reading and the way Tolkien writes contradicts my first tenant of the written language - that writing is an extension of the spoken word, not something separate but related. Next week, now that she'll be a few chapters into the Fellowship and we've discussed how Tolkien's life and religious views shaped LotR, we'll be at least touching on how that view - that writing is an extension of speech - is an opinion, and not one shared by Tolkien, and understanding that if a teacher presents something like this as fact, there will be another person on her journey that makes a compelling argument against it and that it will be up to her to find her truth.

So far, we've discussed how to pull apart a story for themes and how to look for what an author chooses to say (or does not say, as is the case with Lois Lowrey and description), we've discussed how to look at an author's life as an influence on their storytelling, and how to edit an essay you've already written. On my list of important storytelling elements that one can write an essay on is symbolism, and the ideas of character archetypes - character foils, the anti-hero, the relatable villain.

I feel like we're going to keep coming back to those topics we've covered in the process, but given what we are reading (LotR) and her age, what would be some more key things to discuss?

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Descendants

Written by Mage Moss (trying it on) on 2024-08-13 at 04:27

@unsafelyhotboots Tenet versus tenant 😉😉

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