This past weekend The Peanut, who is almost six, decided she wanted to watch The Lord of the Rings. I have a Gollum cut out in my classroom who warns my students to always write their homework down, lest they be transformed into Gollum and share his fate. She has always liked it and Friday night asked if she could watch the movies.
I hesitated for a second.
If you have seen them you know that Peter Jackson did not tell the story with kid gloves. The baddies are scary and there are sword fights a plenty. There are even a few decapitations and one finger removed by biting. But I only hesitated for a second. The movies are full of excellent lessons and I know that The Peanut has a very mature grasp of what is real and what is make believe. This may be because we have read to her since the day we brought her home (actually we read to her in the womb, but who knows how far that went) and we have read to her from a variety of genres.
So on Friday night we got comfy on the couch and put in The Fellowship of the Ring. I don't own the standard movie. I have the director's cut of each, extending the length well over the three hour mark for each film. I will admit I had my doubts. Not about whether or not she could handle the content, but about whether or not she could handle the length of time needed to watch each movie.
We watched the first half of Fellowship until it was time for bed. She was riveted. Absolutely engaged. Her eyes rarely left the screen. My daughter tends to talk to the screen when she is watching something she is really enjoying. I wish I had a recording of her commentary. At one point toward the middle of the movie the character Aragorn is about to leave on a dangerous quest to escort the One Ring to the only place it can be destroyed, a quest that promises to be fraught with danger, violence, lots of running, and bleeding creatures galore. As he is leaving he catches the piercing gaze of his love, the elf Arwen (who The Peanut wants to be for Halloween by the way). He halts his horse and shares a lingering, doe-eyed, longing glance that lasts for several seconds. Getting tired of it, The Peanut yells at the TV, "Come on! Be a man and GET GOING!"
She went to bed begrudgingly and was up at 6:30 Saturday morning ready to continue watching. I made her wait for a bit so I could sleep but by 8:00 her repeated head peeks into my bedroom got me up. I swear to you she is not even that excited on Christmas morning. She could not wait to "continue the adventure" as she put it.
We went downstairs and finished Fellowship. Then she wanted to keep going and we rolled right into the Two Towers. When it concluded I asked her if she wanted to take a break and she said no. So we rolled right into Return of the King, the longest of the three films. She was totally engaged in the story. When she was confused she asked a question but that did not happen often. She felt bad for Smeagol (Gollum). She, like many girls, is in love with Orlando Bloom's Legolas ("Daddy, can I marry an elf like him when I grow up?") and she is very jealous of the fact that Hobbits don't have to wear shoes.
But the part that amazed me most occurred after the credits for Return had rolled. Whenever she watches a movie we talk about it. We discuss the characters, the story, cause and effect, favorite parts, and any questions she might have. We do this to give her a solid base for literary comprehension when she starts to read (which is already well on its way).
We discussed these things for several minutes then I asked her who she thought the real hero of the story was. I thought she would say Frodo, or Gandalf, or even her new boyfriend Legolas. She floored me with her answer.
She thought it over for a few seconds then responded.
"Samwise! He was the real hero."
After I picked my chin up off the floor I asked her why.
"Frodo needed Sam. If there was no Sam, Frodo never would have brought the ring to the big volcano."
She is, of course, right. She totally got the movies. To hear her confirm my own opinion, albeit simply but correctly, made me so very proud.
"So," I said. "What is a big lesson we could learn from the way Sam helped Frodo? About his friendship?"
She thought again.
"Being a good friend is very important. It saves the world."
At that moment, wherever he may be, I like to think JRR Tolkien smiled.
