The Moment of Truth

Виньетка: герои "Илиады" Гомера. С оригинала Г.В. Тишбейна (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today is my conference about revising my draft.  I barely finished it in time for class last Wednesday, but there were plenty of other people who didn't make it at all, so I felt better about it.  I'm still not happy with my thesis, but I thought I did a good job on the scenes I analyzed.  I also think that she's going to tell me that I need to find another source on groups of heroes working together, and I sure hope she can recommend one, because I've had real trouble finding any material on it.  Maybe I should look at books about The Iliad, which has lotsa heroes-  Achilles, Ajax, Odysseus (my Zemanta feed just kicked in with over a dozen recent articles and posts, all on The Iliad). 

The peer review I got was okay.  The paper I reviewed was only 4 pages long, and didn't make much sense to me -- I told the guy he should look at a scene I remembered from his movie (300), and I thought for a moment that he didn't see why.  Then he seemed to get it, so maybe I helped.  Hope so.

Fingers crossed for today.  I'm hoping I won't have too much revising to do.  I've got stuff due in all my classes.

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4 AM Reflections on Writing, of all things

English: Scan of Ellesmere manuscript of
Canterbury Tales. The first page of
Knight's Tale. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I'm so stressed over my project and my other classes that I'm having trouble sleeping.  I woke up at 2:30, and I'm not having any luck getting back to sleep, which sucks, because I've got an 8am class today.  So I've been doing what I usually do, surfing the web, and I came across a blog posting on FlickeringMyth.com, which is a film site that is big on s/f and fantasy-type films, especially ones with a high pop-culture quotient, like The Avengers.  Anyway, they had a retro-review of A Knight's Tale that must have been posted by another insomniac, and I decided to comment on it.

This is a first for me.  I've never commented on anything before, and even now, it kind of makes me nervous, just the way this blog does.  I would never have started a blog on my own if it hadn't been a requirement of a course, because I feel as though I'm asking to be judged by others when I put my work out there.  It's uncomfortable, thinking about strangers reading what I write, but I guess doing this blog all semester has made me less worried about what other people think of my writing.

Still don't feel sleepy.  I'll try working on my draft some more -- no point in wasting this time. 

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Overt and Covert Agendas

Gimli and Legolas (Photo credit: Dunechaser)

The Rivendell scene is all about motivation.  Each of the fellowship members has his own reasons for volunteering for the quest, and these reasons reveal character.  In each case there is an obvious motivation and one or more underlying purpose, even for those who seem much less important than Frodo and Aragorn, the obviously heroic individuals in the group.  I find that I'm suddenly interested in Legolas and Gimli.  Legolas signs on in order to support Aragorn (he defends Aragorn from Boromir's verbal attack, and it's clear from Aragorn's reaction that the two of them are friends), as well as to carry out the mission of destroying the ring (hey, top-elf Elrond says it has to be done, so it's reasonable to assign that motive to the only elf who volunteers).  But then there's Gimli.  He's so loudly against the participation of any elf that he makes himself a bit ridiculous ("NEVER TRUST AN ELF!!!), yet his stated fear of the elves taking control of the ring is itself ridiculous, since they already have it -- Frodo having turned it over to Elrond by setting it on the stone table.

And, Gimli is obviously in agreement that the ring must be destroyed-- it could be because of the possibility of the elves getting hold of it, but he seems to accept that it has to be done for whatever reason, so he hops right up and tries to smash it with his battleaxe, which shatters on impact, leaving the ring undamaged, unlike Gimli himself, who seems to have been injured in the attempt.  The most likely reason he joins the quest then, based on that evidence, is simply to destroy the ring, but he uses his anti-elf prejudice as a justification.  This is ironic, since he has only the word of Elrond, the elf, that it must be done.  Which leads me to wonder, what about Elrond?  What are his expectations or hopes for this council?  His behavior is sort of alien, in the non-human sense, or maybe it's just that he is a kind of king among elves and tries to stay above the rest of them.  This idea is probably not going to find its way into my paper, but it's interesting anyway.

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