Comment on your part of the chapter, providing summary and analysis. Add 1-2 thought-provoking questions for discussion. Then answer a peer’s question. Don’t forget to cross-post in Bb with all required parts of your post.
NB: A complete post in Bb includes: 1) indication of your assigned chapter at the top, 2) your post, 3) a peer’s question, 4) your response.
1. Kate and Justine: does Beren Erchamion mean in Sindarin? What other words in English sound like “Beren” and how might these be related to Beren’s character? What does Lúthien Tinúviel mean? How do they get their second names?
2. Mark and Jaysin: What is Lúthien doing when Beren sees her for the first time? (How is she like Princess Mee? Like the Pearl-Maiden?) How does Lúthien transform over the course of the narrative — physically, emotionally, relationally?
3. Hannah and Nickolas: What losses does Beren experience, esp. at the beginning of the story? What rash oath does Beren take / impossible task does he agree to and why? To what extent does he succeed? How do Melian, Luthien, and Huan help him?
4. Dominic and Hugh: What are the Silmarils, and what do they symbolize? How do they compare to the pearl in “Pearl”? (Consider http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast548.htm.)
- All: Be ready to explain the ending of the story: “Yet in her choice the Two Kindreds have been joined; and she is the forerunner of many in whom the Elder see yet, though all the world is changed, the likeness of Luthien the beloved, whom they have lost.”
5. Aaron and Alina: Explain what happens in the chapter concerning Eärendil the Wanderer. How is this story a fitting conclusion to the saga of the Silmarils?
- All: Identify two points of interest in Beal’s “Orphic Powers in the Legend of Beren and Lúthien.”