Session Nine of the Big Read covered the Lord of the Rings, Book 3, Part 1 (chapters one through five) and Patrick Curry presented, “Tolkien Themes from the Two Towers.”
I hadn’t been familiar with Patrick Curry previously and really enjoyed his presentation style, tone, and topics raised.
His thematic and philosophical approach very much resonated with my reading of Tolkien’s work. Not necessarily his conclusions, but what he considers and thinks about. I say this not in disagreement, but simply he raised some things of interest I hadn’t previously thought about.
I sadly missed a bit of the early part as I had to switch computers and will be going back to the video once posted, but an early theme was how fate and chance interplay. He also raised the point of legends and myths walking on the ground with us, which speaks to story in general and us living in a never ending one.
He commented along the lines that man changing his mortality is ultimately evil in that it is unnatural or not by design of creator (my summary). Also that Fate can not be controlled for if it could it would be an aspect of power.
The other issue or theme raised was related to the white hand of Saruman, as the Orcs who capture Merry and Pippin were from both Sauron and Saruman’s camps and there was a description of the white hand and white wizard begging the question of in a world of black and white in this world white is not always inherently good. The conclusion was that no one thing was always all good (again my take and summary on what was said).
A very good presentation and he called out Giuseppe Pezzini’s Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation, which I purchased and began reading after his presentation earlier in this series.
During the breakout there were originally five of us, but two dropped. We had a good discussion. It was the first time I was in a break out with either Judd or Penn and we worked through or commented on three of the four suggested topics including, fate/chance, neverending story, and white.
Ross Raymond Nunamaker 