• A Reader's Guide to the Two Towers

    Author(s):
    Patrick McEvoy-Halston (see profile)
    Date:
    2017
    Group(s):
    CLCS 20th- and 21st-Century, GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Culture and Society, TC Cognitive and Affect Studies, TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature
    Subject(s):
    Affect (Psychology), Fantasy literature
    Item Type:
    Essay
    Tag(s):
    j.r.r. tolkien, the lord of the rings, the two towers, object relations, Affect, Theories of affect
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/3p38-e734
    Abstract:
    This essay serves as a guardian, as a true friend of the reader, encouraging them to recognize that if they identify with the hobbits in this book, to be wary of the text trains the reader to become someone who would mistake their actual proud moments of self-decision, self-realization... of bravery, of the genuine kind, for something evil or bad, and mistake the text's inscriber -- the author -- as someone who actually isn't mostly afraid to see these traits manifest in the reader, while of course always pretending to himself the very opposite. The essay, as guardian of the reader, doesn't confront the reader with this, but nevertheless still basically presumes that the reader already has a built-in inclination to "be brave" in ways that don't arose their internal censors, internal censors already built-in to their brain to deter them away from ways of thinking, overt "actions," that would arose threatens of ferocious parental attack or full-out casting off; abandonment. So the true danger of the book is actually not really the way it TRAINS the reader, but the way it reinforces aspects of their world outlook that already malformed, and need, rather, the touch of true guardians, true friends, to learn to snap out of it. If the text itself doesn't provide it, then the essay implies that text plus critic, text plus GUARDIAN, be thought of as the REQUIRED minimum for much textual contact, textual involvement, to be possibly presumed to be nourishing; promote emotional evolution.
    Notes:
    Third of a four part series, designed to make readers more greatly wary of how "Lord of the Rings" WANTS his readers reinforced into certain ways of guarding the possibilities of their lives, so that de facto they never emerge out of being their own sort of "Gollums."
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial
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