'But Death is Not an Enemy!' : Using the Literature of J.R.R. Tolkien to Teach about Death in the Upper Secondary English Classroom

Sammanfattning

This thesis explores how teachers can teach about death in the upper secondary English classroom by reading and analysing literary texts. It argues that learning to talk about death addresses a fundamental need that students have and may benefit them in ways that go beyond the aims stated in the syllabus. The manner of teaching about death that is employed in the thesis is a literary analysis of several death scenes in J.R.R. Tolkien's works set in Middle-earth. Specifically, the selected scenes deal with death in war. This is due to the fact that we live in times where all of us are daily confronted with reports and images of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, which impacts students' mental health. The literary analysis of Tolkien's texts applies the concept of the good death to the selected death scenes. This concept from sociology offers a lens through which the death scenes can be analysed in-universe and their applicability to our own reality can be explored. The pedagogical chapter explores how addressing existential questions about death through literary analysis fits into the Swedish syllabus for English at upper secondary level and how the literature of J.R.R. Tolkien can be studied in this context.