* applauds the eloquence of the participants in this discussion *
Finding myself pressed for time, I'm afraid all I have to contribute at the moment is the following quote by Michael D. O'Brien from his novel _Plague Journal_:
"I know now that Tolkien taught them better than all my pedantic, despairing
diatribes against the follies of this century. I read the trilogy to them
again last year. Tolkien had the charm. He could manifest the thrilling
drama of reality through his "sub-creation", as he called it. The kids were
soon rehooked on this bracing vision and eventually returned to their own
world with clearer eyes and with hearts full of true things. They never did
like school much after that. They had learned that we are not cells in a
vast organism or numbers in a collective. Not that they had the words to
express this, but I observed how they had the truth of it deep down; you
could tell by their questions and their revised likes and dislikes. They
were human persons in a community of persons now, and if most members of
that community had lost their sense of personhood and had opted for herd
law, this in no way negated Bam and Zizzy's right to the real thing."
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