Book III, Chapter 4: Treebeard
Tonight’s book is my Ballantine edition of The Two Towers -- the cover art is a sketch of Fangorn Forest created by Tolkien himself. This Ballantine edition (its 65th printing -- the Ballantines cut a good deal, picking up those paperback rights for $2,500, I think) carries a one page introduction by the noted fantasy author Peter S. Beagle. Beagle is one of the authors whose career (as I hope Peter wouldn’t mind me saying) was partially made possible by Tolkien -- the market, at least, for books like A Fine and Private Place or The Last Unicorn (Beagle’s two biggest hits) is one I can’t quite imagine without Tolkien blazing a trail. Beagle’s connection to Tolkien will be deepened in the years after writing this brief introduction, since he ends up co-writing the screenplay for Ralph Bakshi’s, uh, memorably flawed and half-baked attempt to produce an animated film of the novel. We won’t hold it against Peter, who surely has a lot more talent than is on display in that film, although this is where I admit that I’ve never actually read any of his novels, and one or more of you will scold me for having missed some classics of the genre. I will get around to it, I feel certain, someday.
Anyway, I reference Beagle because some of his comments in this brief introduction are really interesting and worth sharing, and I doubt that, if you don’t have a Ballantine sitting on your shelves, you have any way of accessing it. Beagle begins by reminiscing about his first encounters with The Lord of the Rings -- W. H. Auden’s glowing review in the Times, and then waiting years until he managed to find a copy on a Carnegie Library shelf, and the feeling of secret rapture he got from the experience. He then argues that Tolkien’s explosion of popularity in the 1960s is no accident -- that the Sixties “were the years when millions of people grew aware that the industrial society had become paradoxically unlivable, incalculably immoral, and ultimately deadly” and that, under those circumstances, “escape stopped being comically obscene.” He’s making a good case for revisiting the story in 2020, that’s for sure. :-) And then he writes this effusive paragraph that I’ll reproduce the final flourishes of in their entirety: “[Tolkien] is a great enough magician to tap our most common nightmares, daydreams and twilight fancies, but he never invented them either: he found them a place to live, a green alternative to each day’s madness here in a poisoned world. We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers -- thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.” Luckily we learned all these lessons in 1973 and now things are better, eh? Well, I will let you ponder Beagle’s words, and turn our attention to perhaps the most notable example of what Beagle calls Tolkien’s “green alternative” -- Treebeard the Ent.
The Ents are among Tolkien’s most inventive creations -- unlike Elves and Dwarves and Dragons, the concept of a tree-shepherd was, if not totally unique to his work, at least something where he’s largely building from scratch rather than adapting the work of others. The Onodrim, as they are called by the Elves, are the most ancient creatures in Middle Earth by the events of this novel -- with the possible exception of Tom Bombadil -- and that makes this encounter between Treebeard and Merry and Pippin, respectively basically the oldest and youngest characters in the novel, particularly fascinating to watch unfold. They could not have more different senses of time or experience, and yet it does not take them long at all to reach an understanding of each other. Jackson’s film, of course, needs to heighten some tensions for us, and so the presentation is radically oversimplified to depict Ents as being so tragically slowed that they refuse to take on Saruman, and it takes the plaintive appeals of the frustrated hobbits (plus a sudden, shocking clearcut) to get through to them. What strikes me here is really the opposite experience, though -- the Ents’ slowness is not the dithering of indecisive folk who nearly end up complicit in great evil as a result, it’s the patient consideration of a forest that accomplishes almost all its great achievements through the slow work of time. And the Hobbits, rather than being comically outraged at the root-dragging pace of the Ents, find a little peace and calm here that I think must have reminded them of the Shire -- they do not chasten the Ents about their pace (which would have been pretty freaking impudent from the little fellows, had they tried) and I think it’s clear that the resulting outcome is a wonderful collaboration between the two species, rather than a case in which one side is proved wrong and the other right.
Treebeard’s great gift, really, is his unwillingness to be hasty. Through his eyes, we see all of the history of Middle-earth as it must have looked from a tree’s vantage point -- when he says that he is not altogether on anybody’s side because nobody is altogether on his side, there’s an obvious truth being expressed here. Treebeard has enemies, like the Orcs (those little burarum) who basically destroy whatever they touch, but the so-called Free Peoples of Middle-earth have not really treated him or his tree flocks with much care or concern. The Elves have done best by him, maybe, but even there, he feels the absence of much empathy coming from the Elves, and he’s not wrong. And the elaborate pace of Old Entish is not some tragic (or comic) flaw in the Ents, in my reading -- to the contrary, Treebeard’s language allows him to speak of things in their fullest dimensions. He’s right: “hill” is a VERY hasty word for a geological feature that has been there thousands of years. Granted, a time has come that demands some haste from the Ents, but it’s not as though they were wrong not to have “dealt with Saruman” years ago -- their patience has allowed them to act at exactly the time that other forces are ready to move against Orthanc, and the result will be a more complete and successful triumph than the Ents would have achieved on their own anyway. Treebeard’s steady pace is one of his better attributes, in my eyes.
One of his other great gifts is empathy -- an ability to understand and reach others of his kin, for a start, but also an ability to connect with the trees he guards. And we see it on display here with his compassion for the young Hobbits, in whom he confides very openly and freely given how briefly they’ve known each other, in this chapter. He seems concerned for their people, given all the troubles they’ve found themselves in, and while his interest in the Shire is surely motivated by his hunt for the Entwives, I took it also to be genuine interest, an admiration for a people whose love of their own land is free and generous. It must have warmed his very ancient heart to hear such young voices speaking about their memories of home. And then his speech at the very end of the chapter really seals it for me -- Treebeard says, with sad but unbowed determination, that it is “likely enough, my friends, likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents,” and makes it clear that the delay in finding resolve was probably affected in part by their understanding that this assault may undo their whole species, which now comprises maybe a little over 50 individuals, all of them centuries old at a minimum. And then he says, “we may help the other peoples before we pass away.” For all that talk earlier about how he is on nobody’s side, this is the truth of Treebeard’s life -- he and his forest have grown for the good of all, and he has stood against foes only for the protection of that forest, not for any personal gain. If by action he and his people can save others, even in sacrificing themselves, they are ready to do it. That’s a level of commitment that no one else has asked of themselves -- Elrond is still home in Imladris, and Dain on Erebor, and even folk who are taking real personal risks, like Merry and Pippin, aren’t bringing their entire nation with them into the dangers of war. Treebeard commands a lot of respect, if you ask me.
The chapter leaves unanswered some other interesting questions -- where exactly the Entwives might have gone and why, and whether they’ll return. (It’s often speculated that the walking tree that Sam Gamgee references in argument with Ted Sandyman back in the second chapter of Fellowship is an Entwife, but I think the text doesn’t do much to clear that up for us.) I think it’s meant to remain a mystery, and certainly I don’t feel I can easily resolve it as a reader. It’s also not clear yet what’s happening to Merry and Pippin every time they drink from the Entwash, but that river’s water definitely is impacting each of them. Another unanswered question here is, why does Tolkien write so much unimpressive poetry for this one chapter? Okay, apologies to fans of his verse -- I did genuinely enjoy poems earlier in the story, and I was starting to think I had misremembered my feelings about his poetry when I hit this section. I think Tolkien’s enthusiasm for Treebeard carries him away a little, and as a result we get a ton of material that, to me, just isn’t as well crafted as the verses in the earlier chapters.
Well, it’s fun to see the Ents finally roused to anger, and Merry and Pippin riding their new friend into battle, essentially, but it’ll be good to loop back first and get a better understanding of what’s been happening for Aragorn et al. while Merry and Pippin have been playing in Quickbeam’s backyard and waiting for the conclusion of the Entmoot. They’ve got some adventures to relate, not least of which is an encounter with The White Rider. See you in Book III, Chapter 5!