and where tears are the very wine of blessedness

[lotesse]

heaven and earth, nothing can make me cry like hobbits do. It starts so terribly easily. And it's like the tears start from all the way down, but they somehow don't really hurt, and after crying them I feel clean and worn smooth.

I feel bad, sometimes, teaching these summer classes on Fellowship, because I'm not giving my poor students any warning as to the heartbreak that lies ahead for them, should they choose to finish the work. I haven't told them yet that it's the saddest story in the world.

Comments

[lavendertook]

Awwwwww! If any finish and are teary, be sure to show them in the appendix where Sam sails to join Frodo, and then give them copies of the unpublished second epilogue that makes it clearer. How I would have loved to have had those epilogues when I was a teen!

And let them know that they throw the best parties in Tol Eressea and Frodo and Bilbo and Gandalf and Galadriel and Elrond partied there like party animals, and even more when Sam and Gimli and Legolas joined in.

[lotesse]

Unfortunately, I don't get to do the whole thing - it's a five week class, and these are high school kids who need extra practice reading, so the first half of Fellowship is about all they can manage!