* Steps forth, smoking a conversational bowl of Old Toby. *
Hullo, Kuruharan and mark12_30:
* bows a greeting *
I am greatly enjoying your discussion. Here are my own two pieces of mithril:
As for the dream of Frodo sailing over the sea, that sort of dream as a prophetic indicator of a future event does not to my mind qualify as eucatastrophe. Certainly the dream was a consolation ... but I see no evidence that it had a direct cause-and-effect bearing on Frodo's behavior. Thus, the dream was a percursor to eucatastrophe which added depth to the eucatastrophe when it finally did happen.
However, I would say that there are indeed dreams of another nature ... dreams so powerful as to be life-changing. Such dreams qualify as events in and of themselves.
To my mind, a dream qualifies as being a eucatastrophe if it meets the following two criteria as defined in Tolkien's letter # 89:
1) an event causing unexpected joy that brings tears
2) an event bringing a sudden glimpse of truth
I've had such a life-changing dream, about Mirkwood. Before the dream, I hesitantly avoided taking a certain action in my waking life. After the dream, that very day I set about taking that very action with an optimism I had not been gifted with before.
Looking forward to hearing any and all further insight on this fascinating, uplifting, and most worthy topic, [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
Olórin
[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Gandalf_theGrey ]
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