Tolkien the naturalist

[wispeight]

I think he has used idea's from religions that are older than the Three we all are so aware of. One hint is the fourteen gods and goddesses.

What has hurt everyone of us to an extent, is the transition from agrarian to industrial based culture. We simply have to make it work for us. We are thinking all the time and I've heard that we even confuse a thought with an emotion. I personally find it difficult to accept that last assertion. Or rather, understand how that can be. We need industrialization now, to support our massive global population. I certainly don't accept the solution of killing people in massive numbers. I'd rather attempt to come up with a solution to an impossible situation. Perhaps that is exactly our tasse du the. Surmounting impossible obstacles.

[radagastly]

Originally posted by Mithalwen:

where as a naturist is something quite different again....

Where I come from, a "Naturalist" means a "nudist." Like old Ben Franklin, only more sixties and hippie!

At any rate, Tolkien was an environmentalist. Even if you set the Ents aside, the fact that Sam was a gardener, (and, according to some letter or other, he was the real "hero" of Lord of the Rings,) should be enough to convince you. The care and attention he took to revive the Shire after the "Scouring" should be enough by itself to convince anyone. If that's not enough, Tolkien's detailed description of the flora of Middle-Earth, like Elenor, and Niphrodel and Athelas not to mention all the others, should be enough.

Clearly, he loved trees and nature. His contemporaries, Peake, Eddison and (just a little later) C. S. Lewis did not include such detail as Tolkien did. Even in other genres, H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, F. Scott Fitzgerald or even Faulkner never approached such attention. Perhaps Hemmingway, though that could be another thread by itself. The point is that Tolkien would never have bothered with such attention if it was not important to him.

Indeed, The Old Forest, Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil, Fangorn and Treebeard might never have occured to him if he wasn't exceptionally attracted to nature and forests and little rivers. Even among the most exceptional Fantasy writers, not to mention the most "common" of them, like Terry Brooks, he was an exception, a stand-out. The more so because he was writing when the world of men thought that the earth, Nature, was "supposed" to be at their disposal, that it was there for them to use, and nothing more. It wasn't until the sixties (or maybe the late fifties!) that people started to notice the environment as something valuable in itself, and not just a commodity to be exploited.

As much as Tolkien seemed to resent the "hippie" movement's obsession with his work, it did get them thinking about the environment. I credit Tolkien as much as I do Jacque Cousteau and Marlin Perkins with a final attention to what was, at that time, a dying environment. Maybe even more-so. Tolkien, after all, reached everyone who read his work, not just the college-drop-out-commune freaks (some of whom are still practicing their chosen lifestyle.) Tolkien's attention to all the little details of Middle-Earth, including the flora and fauna, can only have started people thinking about it.

Was he a naturalist? Vatican forbid!!! Was he an environmentalist? Absolutly!

[Morthoron]

Yes, Tolkien was an environmentalist before that term gained popularity; however, I think a better definor would be that he was a conservationist in the truest sense of the word...

conservationist: a person who advocates conservation especially of natural resources.

which is to say...

conservation: a careful preservation and protection of something; especially : planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect.

One could even say he was a conservative conservationist. It also mirrors Tolkien's Elves. Look, the man despised cars, hated factories and their pollution, and didn't even like central heating (of course, this brings up the fossil fuel he burned in his fireplaces, but I don't believe many folks at the time had the awareness that fireplaces correlate to pollution in the same manner factories do).

[Selmo]

Had Tolkien been a naturalist he would not have made the error, in The Hobbit, of having Thorin instruct Bilbo to hoot like a barn owl and a screech-owl as a signal.

Screech-owl is an alternative name for a barn owl and it doesn't hoot; it screeches.
It's the tawny owl that hoots.
.

[Mithalwen]

Maybe that was why Bilbo was confused and it was Thorin not Tolkien who was the poor ornithologist?