Return to Middle-earth

 

Despite my heartiest efforts, my children are not Tolkien fans. Perhaps it’s the coarsening of our culture and the desensitization that entails; perhaps its oversaturation of all things from the pen of the Professor since the dawn of the new century. All I knew was that when I first read it forty years ago as a young lad entering high school, no one else seemed to know about it except for one uncle and one of my pals. It opened up a world of magic and hope, goodness and virtue, my first encounter with an entirely new world. After reading through the novels I’d spend hours and hours soaking up the information in the two massive Tolkien encyclopedias that were out, piecing the history of Middle-earth together, part detective, part archaeologist.

I wanted this thrill for my two daughters, for at least the past six or seven years.

But despite a passing interest in The Hobbit, and a ten-year-old Little One inexplicably forcing her Grammy to buy her a ratted and torn used copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, neither one read much of Tolkien. That fire never ignited.

So I was quite surprised when three weeks ago they suggested we do a Lord of the Rings movie marathon.

I’ll take it!

Thrifting is one of their hobbies, which they normally do with their mom. Now that we’re here in Texas, they’ve discovered about a half-dozen quality stores to hunt at. The last one they dragged me to one Sunday afternoon. I go in with them initially, for two reasons: to make sure the place ain’t sketchy, and to see if there are any used books for sale. This place was borderline acceptable, and they did sell books. They also sold DVDs. So, for a dollar, I picked up a three-DVD set of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings theatrical releases. Nine hours and twenty minutes of Tolkien. I found the movies acceptable interpretations, not without fault but with some certain charms, when I first saw them in the theaters nearly two decades ago.

I hadn’t watched them in at least a decade, so I figured I’d do a marathon of all three on a day I found myself alone should the ladies go out for the day.

A week or two after this the Mrs. had her sales meeting come up. She’d be flying up to New York City for six days, and I’d be watching / entertaining / chauffeuring my two teenaged hellions, in a new land navigating a new job. So it was to my utter surprise and delight when they suggested the marathon.

It took us eight days to get through the trilogy. Usually because we only had an hour a night to watch it after homework was done and dinner was prepared, eaten, and the kitchen cleaned. We do maintain a strict 9:30/10:00 curfew for them (basically electronics get turned off at that time). And the girls prefer showering before bed. Factor in a late night dining out over the weekend, and that’s the reason it took eight days.

And they were into it, right away! Didn’t hurt that as teenage girls they had certain crushes on certain actors and / or teased each other about potential crushes. Even the Mrs. infatuation with Viggo Mortensen was brought up several times, with various “Ews!” and “I can see that.” But even better, they got into the story. Patch was a little rusty on the geo-politics going on in the background, so I’d have to explain that to her on her early morning school drop off, which told me she was ruminating about it over the night.

[… clenches fist in glee …]

But what a wonderful eight days! Imagine spending such a drawn out time in Middle-earth! The Shire, Bree, Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, Rohan, Isengard, Fanghorn Forest, Helm’s Deep, Rauros, the Dead Marshes, Gondor, Minas Tirith, Osgiliath, … Cirith Ungol, Mordor, and Mount Doom, ... and then the Grey Havens.

I hope they got an appreciation for the physical, mental, and spiritual ordeal Frodo went through. I hope the message of courage, perseverance, loyalty and friendship sunk in. I hope they got a sense of the wide-scale cold war between Good and Evil that occasionally erupts into hot war in our current contemporary culture, as seen in metaphor in Tolkien’s writings. I hope they can decipher the hidden Catholic imagery in the story. I hope …

Right now the best takeaway is a possible budding interest in the Professor’s works. Little One is not a reader at this stage of her life (the only non-school-assigned book she’s read recently is Stephen King’s The Stand, which she’s been working her way through over two years, which translates to a rate of about two pages a day). But Patch is a reader. Her most recent notch was Dean R. Koontz’s Lightning, which I bought for her as a birthday present two months back. I can see her wending her way through Middle-earth. She’s about the age I was when I first did.

So that was my highlight early in November. Perhaps this time of year, when the sun sets noticeably early, when the frost first drifts over the Texas plains, when the cold bright moon casts wraithlike shadows … maybe I’ll have to start a new tradition of watching and re-watching some Tolkien with the girls

(But not The Hobbit trilogy!!!)