So this is the part where Merry and Pippin meet a strange new creature called an Ent, and discover that the Ents are, despite their total apparent newness, just as important a thread in the tapestry of Tolkien’s world as Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits, and they learn about the Ents, and they trigger an attack by the Ents on Saruman himself, despite the apparent disparity of power between a bunch of seeming trees and a lesser God. But before we get into that, I want to discuss one oddity that I cannot recall ever being discussed before: When the Hobbits set out from the Orcs’ camp into Fangorn Forest, where do they think they are ultimately going?
You may remember that to Merry and Pippin, and to most members of the Fellowship, Fangorn was like a big blank space on the map, or a big spot marked simply “Here be dragons” (no, let’s not go there). Eventually, they want to find somewhere safe, and preferably reunite with the rest of the Fellowship. Initially, they are just getting as far as possible from the Orcs – even though they are actually moving closer to Saruman, and getting themselves more and more lost in the blank space on the map.
The answer, I think, lies in hikers’ instincts. Where could they go? Not to Saruman. Not back towards the downs of Eastern Rohan. Not north; the Misty Mountains block that. Towards central Rohan, towards the space between the Orc camp and Isengard. So here’s what their hiker instincts tell them to do: (1) climb a treeless height, well away from the Orcs. (2) Point in the direction of central Rohan. (3) Find a stream and follow it downhill, towards people. And they get through step (1), they find a height and sit down and rest on it and compare notes about the scenery, the little mini-world of deep Nature, that they’ve just seen. And that is where they connect with the Ents.
One real key, I think, to both the nature of the Ents and the reason they and these hobbits hit it off is that Ents are herdsmen (and you can think of Entwives as farmers/gardeners who tend their flocks, trees and plants and flowers treated like pigs and chickens, penned up and orderly). The herdsman in Tolkien’s world is very like a hiker – the same broad territory, the same appreciation of Nature. They differ mainly in that hikers seek out the new (like the Elves connecting with the Ents) while the herdsman appreciates more deeply Nature within a repeating annual or regular round. And that also partly explains why, in the story, non-hiker Dwarves that don’t appreciate trees and horse-riding non-hiker Rohirrim do not connect as well with Ents.
But, as many analyses better than mine have made clear, there are several other key and unique characteristics of the typical Ent. One is, of course, their singular focus on trees. Actually, this deserves a fuller commentary. I am reading In Search of The Canary Tree, by Lauren Oakes, which describes an assessment of human-driven-climate-change-caused murder of the canary trees of the Pacific Northwest. What she says is that the canary tree feels special to the scientist and sacred to the Native American because of the texture of the wood, the way it feels numinous as a living thing. She is describing, I think, the real-world equivalent of when Frodo in Lothlorien actually feels a tree as being vibrantly alive, or the way the Ent treats trees as people, with personalities and grace that they cannot but love. I conclude, as Tolkien did, that in that respect there is a little bit of a potential Ent in many of us, and it’s a good thing to have.
The third key aspect of Ents is their language – the names that string together all the aspects and maybe the history of anything, hill, tree, Ent, or human. I think of it as a way to be “high” while being as immortal as the Elves but without having the Elves’ perfect recall. Consider the Entmoot. What was actually going on there, I suspect, was each Ent enabling the others to understand fully the nature and consequences of a decision, by seeing the history and nature of each being that needed to be considered. Saruman? Look at the history of the trees he has killed and understand the full tragedy and the real danger he poses. And so, the decision takes longer, but when a decision is reached and a plan of action is formulated, the decision achieves utter consensus and the plan is backed by deep passion and commitment.
And it is those three aspects of the Ents’ nature together with our love of the trees in our backyard that explains, I think, my sense that the Ents are popular with the broadest segment of those who have read the books or seen the movies. More people seem to me to like the Ents than the Elves, the Dwarves, the human action heroes, the comic hobbits, or good old Gandalf. I have heard various reasons – not only the personification and love of the trees that they show, and the love of the Entwives that is their tragedy, but also the wisdom and deepness of their eyes, and I would myself add the music of their voices. But underlying it all, I would guess, is that Tolkien has given us yet another dimension to his world: Nature that is not only alive, and vibrant, and mood-affecting, and an integral part of the rounded whole of our lives, but also as individual and capable of love and goodness as we ourselves.
Of course, let us not deify Ents. Tolkien makes it very clear that there are bad Ents and bad trees, and that their long decision processes and insular reluctance to get involved in the affairs of the outside world are drawbacks.
But for now, let us lay all that aside. Let us share with Merry and Pippin the Ent-draught that makes us feel the great thrill of growth and blossoming and stretching to the sun that is the best essence of the tree and of our daily waking, and then, too soon, the willed end of the Ents. The last march that is like a group of old sheepdogs walking off the job and into the sunset together. Not quitting; putting up a last fight against the wolves before they die. Too soon, right after we, like the hobbits, get to know them, they will be gone, beneath the bitter rain, into the West. And Tolkien’s world, like our tree-starved world after climate change, will be utterly the poorer for it.
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Like You’ve Never Heard It:
- The First of a Series of Ramblings About JRR Tolkien
- Part II. Pre-Psychology Writing, Poetry, and a New Hero
- Part III. Torture, Enlightenment
- Part IV. Weather, Mushrooms, Leaders
- Part V. In the Moment, Sam the Obscure
- Part VI. Folk Songs, Master, First, Fair
- Part VII. Hiking, Curses, Noble Language
- Part VIII. The Hiker’s Extrasensory Writing
- Part IX. Torture, Elves, Endings
- Part X. Your Highness
- Part XI. Business Meetings, Dwarves
- Part XII. Horns of Wild Memory
- Part XIII. Ecstasies of the Dwarves
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