The Essential Scenes in Fellowship of the Ring

Elrond (Photo credit: Dunechaser)

The two scenes I am using for my analysis (so far, that is) are the call to action (the council of Elrond) and Boromir's final test.  I may have to go into his final battle as well; in fact, I think I'll probably have to do that.  At any rate, I'm working on each one separately, which is proving to be the best way:  working on the Rivendell scene, I'm getting ideas for the later scene where Boromir succumbs to the ring and "attacks" Frodo. 

As the scene progresses, each of the heroes reveals his agenda for the quest, and it seems as though the different outcomes are inevitable from that point on, particularly for Frodo, Boromir, and Aragorn.  Since I'm looking at the film as having its own . . . completeness (I can't think what else to call it), the quest of the fellowship as a group ends when the film does, at least for my purposes.  Why this matters is something I will save for my next posting.

Related articles

• The Fellowship of the Ring Assembled (starrymantle.wordpress.com)
• Fellowship of the Ring: Boromir (starrymantle.wordpress.com)
• Man, Gandalf ... Wilder, With Urgency (wildermanonrollingcreek.wordpress.com)
• 3 Act Structure (Lord of the rings) (leenatdip.wordpress.com)
• Cerebral Madness in Middle Earth (sarcasticfox.wordpress.com)
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New Ideas for the Research Project

Bilbo writing There and Back Again in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring; note subtitle "A Hobbit's Tale" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yes, I know I've fallen behind, so you can expect to see several entries in the near future.  I've been working on my literature review, mainly focussing on hero archetypes, and I think I've reached the point where it's not going to get any better.  Therefore, I'm moving on to the research paper itself, and I just got some more ideas by watching The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey yesterday.  There's an interesting contrast between its overall story and that of The Fellowship of the Ring when it comes to the makeup of the band of questers in each.  The guys in The Hobbit are NOT all heroes, unlike the fellowship members.

Once I noticed that, I started having some self-discussion (am I inventing that term?) about what the difference means, which led me to some other thoughts about what exactly makes the FOTR guys heroes that The Hobbit's characters lack.  And I'll talk about that next time.

Related articles

• NVivo for Literature Reviews (pennwic.wordpress.com)
• 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' Joins The Billionaires Club (moviesblog.mtv.com)
• 10 things you might not know about 'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' (digitaltrends.com)
• What Writers Can Learn From The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (kourtneyheintz.wordpress.com)
• First Impressions (teachingtolkien.com)
• The Hobbit Game Armies of the Third Age Launches (video) (geeky-gadgets.com)
• The Fellowship of the Ring Assembled (starrymantle.wordpress.com)

In Which I Am Totally Confused by a Book

So you liked The Power of Myth?  You're gonna hate this guy's book. (Photo credit: jay mann)

This week, I am supposed to be describing one of the sources I found, and I'm not sure that I can.  Here's the MLA citation for it (sorry, I can't figure out how to do the hanging indent here):

Manganaro, Marc.  Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority:  A Critique of Frazer, Eliot, Frye, & Campbell.  New Haven:  Yale UP, 1996.  Print.

And, here's the problem:  I really, really, really don't understand what this guy is saying, partly because of his writing and partly because he's talking about some ideas I never heard of  before (and when I looked them up, I had trouble understanding the definitions.  Semiotics?  Hermaneutics?  Huh?).  Mostly, it seems to me that he is saying that considering myth when you read literature is pointless.  I don't get it, especially since he seems to think that it's okay for T.S. Eliot and James Joyce to do it -- but not Frazer, Frye, or Campbell (he seems to really dislike Campbell).

Finally, here's the kicker:  he doesn't give me anything to work with for my project.  As far as I can see, he is so against this approach that he doesn't try to apply it to see if he gets anything out of it.

I thought that I must be reading this wrong, so I showed it to Dr. Toffee.  She skimmed the introduction, then went to the afterword, and she started laughing.  It appears that I actually read it correctly and he is just trying to convince people that there is no value in myth criticism.  This baffled me even more, and she could tell that I was really messed up.  She asked me, "When you are thinking about your film from the standpoint of myth, are you finding things in the film that you didn't see before?  And, are you enjoying it?"

After a moment's thinking, I said yes and yes.  She said, "then he's wrong, and there is value in it because it makes your experience of this work of art more meaningful for you."

I feel better, but I'm not sure why.

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• 2013: Crossing the Threshold (gointothestory.blcklst.com)
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