I was so excited when I saw this one the list for books at the beginning of term. Of course I'd already seen all three Lord of the Rings, and has heard about the animated 'The Hobbit' 2-D movie- whose style was interesting, but quite odd. I enjoy the fantasy genre the most. I completely agree with Tolkien in that fantasy is a necessary escape from the grueling and harsh nature of reality. I lose myself in the stories of fantasy, anything that can take me to another world, some where unlike the one I live in everyday and I love it. Happy endings don't normally happen in real life, things often don't turn out, or we fail, but in movies and books we can escape that. That's why I hate scary movies, I go to the movies to escape reality, not have it thrown in my face in the most gory or mind-trippy way possible.
Our discussion about the heroes journey is one I've heard before, but will never get tired of hearing. Every time I hear about the hero's journey, I learn more and more. I like this classic story plot, and I enjoy watching it, as well as creating my own. I have a comic, and while learning about the hero's journey the way we did in class, I realized what my story was lacking, and how I could improve it, if I were to re-draw it. I lacked the initial 'calling' of the hero, in my story he just, went off on his own, when I believe it would have been much more engaging if he had a reason. Also I noticed I automatically seemed to understand the hero's journey, even without directly meaning too. There were several points/stages in the image of the hero's journey showed during class that I noticed were in my story. For example the duality struggle, the struggle with one's self, like the classic, Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde, before you can defeat the villain, you must face and conquer your own evils.
Most of the books I've read before this class were fantasy, one of the reasons I was interested in this class to begin with was to break out of that style a bit, and explore other mediums. Horror was interesting, the books seem milder then the movies. My younger sister is the real hard-core book lover, and she would often give me the books after she read them- which is how I got into Harry Potter.
The Hobbit was cute, surprisingly easy read compared to other books we've read recently. Though the songs/poems were, in my opinion, annoying, they almost reminded me of book I read in AP English that would go on and on and the poems would be pointless, almost like they were trying to fill up space, basically I didn't get their purpose. In The Hobbit they almost introduced the new characters, but I still was reminded of pointlessness and became annoyed, and there were so many. I saw the movies of Lord of the Rings first, so it was interesting to finally 'get' some of the hints they were making in the beginning of the movie, and now I have some insight into Gandolf and Bilbo, who seemed to be complete minor characters- at least Biblo- in 'Lord of the Rings'. It was nice though being able to perfectly imagine what each of the characters looked like, and the environments as well, though some would say it would have been better to imagine it on my own, I liked the images that popped in my head.
One more note about something we discussed in class was the sexist undertones, I could feel them in the story now that you mention it. I suppose though I wasn't really paying attention to that and therefore didn't notice it. However I remember during the last movie, one of the big bad guys, had a legend about him: no man could defeat him. So what happened in the end? A women ended up killing him in the battle! I thought that was almost completely contradicting the sexist nature, that a women would go into battle and actually be the one to kill the big bad guy. Only problem is I'm not sure if that's entirely cannon as I have not read the Lord of the Rings books.
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