LotR -- Book 1 - Chapter 06 – The Old Forest

[davem]

(Yes, this is a long post - anyone who feels daunted, please skip it, & just pretend it never happened!)

Well, after two, on the surface, slow, uneventful chapters, things start moving! We enter the Old Forest (I can hear the screams from some readers now - ‘Tom Bombadil- ARRGH!!!!!’)

We are now entering strange territory - the Old Forest & Old Tom. Where to begin?

Verlyn Flieger’s essay ‘Taking the Part of Trees’ (in JRR Tolkien & his Literary Resonances offers some insight into the nature of the Old Forest:

‘Not just dark & mysterious & filled with little understood magic like the Mirkwood of The Hobbit, the Old Forest is consciously ill-intentioned toward those humans who invade it. The hobbits’ encounter with the Old Forest is the first really dangerous, frightening adventure that they experience in LR.
This can hardly be placed under the heading of ‘taking the part of trees’....What we are shown at this point in the narrative is Tolkien version of the standard fairy-tale dark wood on the order of those in ‘Snow White’ & ‘Hansel & Gretel’*.

But If we then look at Tom’s words in the next chapter regarding OMW we get a new insight:

‘Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees & their thoughts, which were often dark & strange, & filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers & usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient ... filled with pride & rooted wisdom, & with malice ...But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green’

Flieger analyses this statement:

“In critical terms (this passage) deconstructs itself...In the voice of Tom Bombadil, who understands the Old Forest if anyone does, tolkien begins by telling the hobbits (& us) that the thoughts of trees such as Old Man Willow are often ‘dark & strange,’ & ‘filled with hatred.’ But almost immediately we are given a legitimate reason for these dark thoughts, this hatred; they are engendered by the activities of ‘things that go free upon the earth.’ As used here, ‘free’ is a loaded word, for we are not accustomed to thinking of trees as ‘unfree,’ or indeed, connecting them with any concept of freedom versus restraint. We are being reminded of something so obvious that it’s easy to overlook: trees cannot run away. If someone starts hacking at a tree with an axe, the rooted tree has to stand & take the blows’

Compare Merry’s ‘matter-of-fact account of how the hobbits cut down ‘hundreds of trees & burned all the ground in a long strip,’ with the ‘hacking & burning’ of the earlier quote, & also with Treebeard’s lament:

‘Down on the borders they (Saruman’s orcs) are felling trees - good trees.. Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut & acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost forever now.’

We have to face the fact that the trees the hobbits cut down & burned also ‘had voices of their own that are lost forever now’ & that OMW’s anger & desire for revenge is no less understandable than Treebeard’s. Of course, it can be argued that OMW is ‘evil’ because, rather than seeking revenge against the particular hobbits responsible for the hacking & burning, he seeks to revenge himself on all who go on two legs. But Treebeard also revenges himself against all orcs, without interrogating each of them to find out if they were involved in cutting down ‘his’ trees. But perhaps OMW’s irrational anger is more understandable, as he, unlike Treebeard, cannot move, & simply has to remain where he is, at the heart of the Old Forest, aware of the destruction of ‘his’ trees, the loss of their voices forever, unable to come to their defence. Treebeard could have gone to the defence of ‘his’ trees, but didn’t, OMW, rooted to the earth, simply had to remain where he was, earthbound.

Yet, what struck me more forcefully re-reading this chapter, was the way its not simply OMW, or even the trees themselves, which are the threat - the whole forest, even the earth itself, seems to actively conspire. The land seems to change shape in order to direct the hobbits to the centre of the wood, seeming to become boggy, or solid, opening into gullies, raising itself up, lowering itself down as necessary. Even the air itself seems maliciously to ‘drug’ them, while the trees try to sing them to sleep so that OMW can consume them. And Tolkien communicates this dreamlikeness in some of the most beautiful prose in literature:

A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm & drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked with fallen willows, & flecked with thousands of willowleaves. The air was thick with them, fluttering yellow from the branches; for there was a warm & gentle breeze blowing softly in the valley, & the reeds were rustling, & the willow-boughs were creaking. (my italics)

which Shippey (Author of the Century) describes as ‘one of many brilliant passages of natural description in the Lord of the Rings’

But then the weirdest thing of all happens - Jolly Tom appears! Actually, the way he’s described, he seems to rise out of the earth:

There was another burst of song, & then there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown & a long blue feather stuck in the band. With another hop & a bound there came into view a man, or so it seemed.

Now, I know some readers hate Tom with such a vengeance that they skip this chapter & the next two & jump straight to Bree, but Tom has grown on me through the years, & I always liked him anyway! I think some quotes might be relevant here.

Brian Rosebury, in Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon, describes Tom thus:

The relation of Bombadil to his little country is like that of an unfallen Adam to the Garden of Eden. Bombadil’s freedom from fear is co-ordinate with his freedom from tyrannical intent: secure in a gardener-like status which it does not occur to him to exceed, his will cannot afflict or be afflicted by the wills of others.

Anne C Petty, in Tolkien in the Land of Heroes, points out:

The Ring has no pull for Tom because his focus is elsewhere; that kind of power is irrelevant to him - in one sense, this is a very Buddha-like approach.... Tom’s powers are passive & elemental, not aggressive & rooted in immediacy.

And Verlyn Flieger, in A Question of Time:

Tom Bombadil, stamping, chanting, crashing through the underbrush with his blue feather & his yellow boots, is not your ordinary, everyday kind of fellow. Tom is not less substantial than the waking world but more so. His vivid unreality makes the waking world around him seem pale & insubstantial in comparison... Both those who like him & those who find him ‘discordant’ may be responding in their separate ways to the same thing: the child’s drawing quality, the crayon colors (sic ), the absence of shading or depth that seem to characterise this episode. It can appear simplistic, it certainly seems one-dimensional. This is precisely what gives it the quality of dream. The Bombadil chapters have all the cheerful, bright aspect of a happy dream, one in which we can be assured, as we never wholly can in real life, that the dark fears are banished, the lights are on, & we are home & safe. Everything is all right.

And David Elton Gray compares Tom & the great Shaman Vainamoinen, of the Finnish Kalevala, in his essay JRR Tolkien & the Kalevala, in Tolkien & the Invention of Myth:

for both Vainamoinen & Tom Bombadil power comes from their command of song & lore rather than from ownership & domination. Vainamoinen spends his time in endless singing, not singing songs of power, however, but rather songs of knowledge. Indeed, it would appear that he, like Tom Bombadil, sings for the simple pleasure of singing... As has been often noted, much of what tom says is, in fact, sung. As with Vainamoinen’s singing, Tom’s has power, & the power of his singing is clearly similar to Vainamoinen’s.

Well, that’s either sparked off loads of posts or knocked the wind out of everyone’s sails! Sorry if its the latter!


*One possibility which Flieger doesn’t explore is Tolkien’s ‘conceit’ - that LotR is a translation of the Red book of Westmarch - it was written by hobbits from their perspective. Tolkien himself may ‘take the part of trees as against all their enemies’ (letter 319) but that doesn’t mean that the hobbits do - a ‘well ordered & well farmed countryside’, which they love, requires the clearing of natural woodland - the two - as Flieger points out, cannot co-exist - one must be sacrificed in favour of the other. Treebeard may mourn:

The broad days! Time was when I could walk & sing all day & hear no more than the echo of my own voice in the hollow hills.

but clearly the hobbits don’t. Treebeard may dream of the days when forest covered Middle earth, but Hobbits like to be in control of their land, & keep it in iits place.

Frodo’s song, ending with the line ‘For east or west all woods must fail’ wouldn’t be the kind of thing Treebeard would approve of - & nor, we can assert, would Tolkien.Merry's suggestion of tuning & giving the trees a rousing chorus of the song when they get out of the forest, in the light of the hobbits rampant destruction of the trees, is simply adding insult to injury. Perhaps Tolkien is making a subtle & easily missed point when he has Merry & Pippin enter Fangorn & meet Treebeard. Merry has a lesson to learn if he is to become Master of Buckland in the future, & have responsibility for the Old Forest.

[Aiwendil]

This is the first real adventure chapter in the book; so far we have had the Black Riders appear threateningly from time to time, but that threat has not yet been realized. It is something of a twist, then, to more or less forget the Black Riders for a chapter (indeed, for three chapters) and to suddenly put the Hobbits into an unrelated bit of trouble. In fact there is something rather odd about it, I think. Few authors would so carefully build up the threat of the Nazgul, and go to great lengths to illustrate the nature of the Ring and get its story started, only to drop these threads almost completely after just five chapters and present us with a three-chapter interlude concerning other things. One could (as Ralph Bakshi and Peter Jackson know very well) simply cut these three chapters out without creating many problems for the later narrative.

Why does Tolkien do this? I think the real answer is simply that, at the time he wrote these chapters, he didn't know any better. That is to say, he had not yet worked out the whole plot and in fact had not yet realized that LotR was going to be much different from The Hobbit. The Old Forest was conceived of as just an adventure that Frodo has along the way, for originally it was simply to be a story about Frodo's adventures. But of course later, when Tolkien did understand what LotR was going to be, he retained these chapters. I would guess that this was partly just habit - once the narrative got going, he never made any huge changes to parts he'd already written. A more commercially-minded author would probably have deleted the Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, and the Barrow-downs since they don't directly concern the main plot of the book.

But I think that there is value in these chapters as they are, as Tolkien must have realized. First of all, they are simply interesting in themselves. But that's not quite a sufficient explanation, for one can imagine any number of miscellaneous adventures that are interesting in themselves and yet were not and should not have been added to the text.

I think one virtue of these chapters is that identified by Tuor of Gondolin:

One observation here: the Old Forest trees enmity illustrates a depth brought to Middle-earth which PJ's movies missed, that there are autonomous forces for good and ill operating.

That is, it would be unrealistic for the Hobbits only to encounter upon their journey servants of Sauron, or people and things relating directly to the central plot. To give them a few unrelated adventures adds a lot to the realism of Middle-earth.

Another thing this interlude does is to extend the threat of the Nazgul by delaying its resolution. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 have set up the Black Riders as a threat and we know that it will only be a matter of time before they begin to do more than simply sniff and scream. The reader anticipates some kind of confrontation with the Black Riders. That anticipation is firmly in place by the end of chapter 5. So through chapters 6, 7, and 8, on top of everything else, the reader is thinking about the Black Riders and still anticipating an eventual confrontation. To illustrate this point, imagine how much poorer Book I would be if these three chapters were placed after the Weathertop encounter.

And a final justification for not excising these chapters: while they are almost unrelated to the central plot, they are not completely so. There is the obvious relation, for example, between the Old Forest and Fangorn.

As for chapter 6 itself, what struck me on rereading it was the way Tolkien slowly builds up the tension right to the climax of the chapter. This is one of his chief strengths, I think; it's already been noted in relation to the Black Riders in chapters 3, 4, and 5. Here, we begin with the Old Forest being more or less just a forest, if one which, according to Merry, has queer things living in it. Then we find that the trees bar their way and make Pippin uneasy. Then Frodo's song seems to disturb them. Then briefly the tension is eased when they stand at the top of the hill and look out across the forest. Then they go on, making good progress at first, but slowly finding that the forest is forcing them in its desired direction. Then they become completely lost and unable to choose their own direction at all. Finally they arrive in the Withywindle valley itself and struggle with a strange drowsiness. Then suddenly Old Man Willow strikes, and in a brief space we have some minor heroics by Sam and the appearance of Tom Bombadil.

Looking at it this way, what Tolkien does is present a series of minor incidents each of which alters the tension in some way. Most add to it, a little bit at a time. One detracts from it - which only makes its eventual reappearance more striking. And only at the very climax does anything actually happen. A mistake too many authors make is to think that the reader is conscious only of what is happening at the moment, so that they think a constant level of action must be maintained for the story to be interesting. Tolkien realizes that readers have a memory and also a sense of anticipation, so that each of the little incidents he presents adds to the tension.

Davem wrote:

We have to face the fact that the trees the hobbits cut down & burned also ‘had voices of their own that are lost forever now’ & that OMW’s anger & desire for revenge is no less understandable than Treebeard’s. Of course, it can be argued that OMW is ‘evil’ because, rather than seeking revenge against the particular hobbits responsible for the hacking & burning, he seeks to revenge himself on all who go on two legs. But Treebeard also revenges himself against all orcs, without interrogating each of them to find out if they were involved in cutting down ‘his’ trees. But perhaps OMW’s irrational anger is more understandable, as he, unlike Treebeard, cannot move, & simply has to remain where he is, at the heart of the Old Forest, aware of the destruction of ‘his’ trees, the loss of their voices forever, unable to come to their defence. Treebeard could have gone to the defence of ‘his’ trees, but didn’t, OMW, rooted to the earth, simply had to remain where he was, earthbound.

This is a good point. It seems that Old Man Willow and Treebeard may not be as different as one would, at first glance, believe. But I am not sure that it is correct to see the trees in all cases as representing Tolkien's sympathies. I've always thought that the Old Forest shows, contrary to what one might get from the rest of the book, that nature is not all "good". Nature is a force of its own and not necessarily allied with the good incarnates. This is complicated, though, by Tom Bombadil, who is clearly to be associated with nature but is quick to condemn Old Man Willow's assault on the Hobbits.

[Lalwendë]

Firstly, I can't comprehend what the book would be like without chapters 6 to 8, they add in, for want of a better word, a lot of 'magic' to the tale. And what's great about this 'magic' is that it is not of the hocus-pocus, casting spells type, but of the ancient, earth-based variety. There are sections later in the book which could also have easily been left out, e.g. the Woses, but they add to the sense of ancient history in Middle Earth.

Old Man Willow is a frightening figure, made all the more real when you think about the properties and uses of willow. It is a tree that can be chopped up and turned into a fence, which will mysteriously take root and sprout leaves. It is the tree which was (allegedly) used to construct the Wicker Man. And, in some British towns where they celebrate May Day with dancers dressed as 'Jack in the green', they use willow to make the framework for the costume.

Jack in the green is who I think of when I read about Tom Bombadil. It's probably been said a thousand times before, but to me he is The Green Man, the woodland spirit. He is the master of the woodlands and Old Man Willow, but I'm getting dangerously close to straying into the next chapter here.

Getting back to the chapter, I love the sense of how being lost in a woodland feels. When the path disappears, Mery is convinced that the trees are conspiring to hide it, and this is how it does feel when you get lost while out walking. The hobbits sense movements and sounds as though the trees are moving, which is another eerie sensation that can grip you.

As for fitting into the narrative, this chapter and the following two are technically well placed as they provide a transition from the world the hobbits (and readers) have got to know and feel comfortable in, to the wider world, untamed and altogether more dangerous.

I agree that in this chapter we see the first contact with the unknown for the hobbits and I think it's nicely symbolised by the passage through the gate and the finality of its closing: with this act they leave behind all that is familiar and comforting to walk into and towards danger - the mists that envelope them are a clear (no pun intended ! ) signal for this.

What I'm not really sure of is the evil intent of the Old Forest - apart from Old Man Willow we never actually see the trees moving or actively doing something: I wonder whether this is just the product of the hobbits' imagination, aided by Merry's quite scary tale and combined with the strange environment they find themselves into. It might seem that the hobbits, taking with them their fears and doubts (and maybe some guilty feelings about the actions taken by their compatriots against the forest) give substance to the impression that nature is conspiring against them.
After all, when Old Man Willows exerts his "charms" the only one keeping his wits about him is Sam - the most levelheaded (and less imaginative ?) of the four.

[Firefoot]

Hi, Fimbrethil, welcome to our discussion and the Downs!

In this chapter something struck me that I haven't noticed before. There was a certain 'magic' about it, very akin to that of the Hobbit. I think this is partly because it gets away from the darker aspects of the story (the Ring, the Black Riders) and while the adventure they have in the chapter is certainly dangerous, it is of the "simpler" sort. Even though the mood surrounding the Forest is very dark indeed - it goes from extremely foggy (somehow a very fitting way to begin the adventure) to a dark, queer sojourn through the Forest - the chapter seems almost light, especially compared to the rest of the book. Part of this is perhaps Merry's relative familiarity with the Forest and his way of taking the Forest so lightly (that is how it has always seemed to me anyway).

Something else that hadn't occurred to me in recent readings is the image of the path by the Withywindle that we are given. The scene is much more vivid right now than many images I get from books (being that I am one who does not generally get images when I read).

Coming to the opening they found that they had made their way down through a cleft in a high steep bank, almost a cliff. At its feet was a wide space of grass and reeds; and in the distance could be glimpsed another bank almost as steep. A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm and drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked with fallen willows, and flecked with thousands of faded willow-leaves. The air was thick with them, fluttering yellow from the brances; for there was a warm and gentle breeze blowing slftly in the valley and the reeds were rustling, and the willow-boughs were creaking.

One more reflection for now, and that is on a line I have always greatly enjoyed:

In their shed they found the ponies; sturdy little beasts of the kind loved by hobbits, not speedy, but good for a long day's work.

In many of the threads people have posted on what different quotations, lines, and actions have said about Hobbits, and I am going to chip in my two cents about this. Hobbits love this kind of pony not because they are well-bred, fast, pretty, or anything like that, but because they are sturdy and will last an entire day of work - good hard work being one of the things that Hobbits delighted in, according to the Prologue.

[Fingolfin II]

Aiwendil said:

This is the first real adventure chapter in the book; so far we have had the Black Riders appear threateningly from time to time, but that threat has not yet been realized.

Quite so. This is the start of the adventure where the hobbits find themselves in an unfamiliar (except for Merry) situation and have to deal with it themselves- very reminiscent of Bilbo and the dwarves being left to their own devices in Mirkwood after Gandalf left them. Both companies faced a dangerous, uninviting forest and both had no one else to guide them but a path and uncertain knowledge. This quote, I believe, sums up the situation perfectly-

Fail- even as he said the word his voice faded into silence. The air seemed heavy and the making of words wearisome. Just behind them a large branch fell from an overhanging tree with a crash into the path. The trees seemed to close in before them.
'They do not like all that about ending and failing,' said Merry. Wait till we do get to the edge, and then we'll turn and give them a rousing chorus!'
He spoke cheerfully, and if he felt any great anxiety, he did not show it. The others did not answer. Thye were depressed. A heavy weight was settling steadily on Frodo's heart, and he regretted now every step forward that he had ever thought of challenging the menace of the trees.

Seem familiar? This is an interesting passage, because we see here that Merry is the leader of the hobbits, both geographically and mentally, and it is he who is trying to rouse their spirits, instead of Frodo, who is the older hobbit. This is the start not only of the hobbit's real adventures, but their personal character and determination is also being tested here- will they have the strength to go on, or will they turn back? Even though Bombadil rescues them, and they get into a few scrapes, it is what underpins the rest of the book- will they go on with their Quest to destroy the Ring or will they turn back and leave it for others. Here they still have a choice, but it is notable that they choose to go on; as they do later in the book.

Also, this passage seems to be a prelude, or taste, of Fangorn Forest later on in the book. The same type of forest, with dangerous creatures (i.e. Old Man Willow) and wild rivers, as well as trees that can move and 'talk', besides being an extension of Fangorn near the Shire, anyway, the Old Forest on the borders of Buckland sets up nicely what is going to be a major factor later on- Fangorn Forest- although we don't know it yet.

Tom Bombadil and Treebeard also seem to have a lot in common with me- both old, interested in nature (an understatement) and knowledgeable about the Elder Days.

Even at the very start, we can see that Tom is a very merry and kind fellow by assisting all the hobbits-

Tom Bombadil burst out laughing. 'Well, my little fellows!' said he, stooping so that he peered into their faces. 'You shall come home with me! The table is all laden with yellow cream, honeycomb, and white bread and butter.'

Inviting four strangers (however harmless they appear) is not something most people would do. But then again Tom is not most people; he already appears to be a friendly and lively character and we can infer from his speech that Goldberry is his misteress. Another thing that certainly shows us that Tom is not normal is his (mostly) utterly weird, but lovable, songs!

And with that song the hobbits stood upon the threshold, and a golden light was all about them.

As Estelyn said this quote is indeed very evocative, and keeps us interested in what is going to happen next, as it is a statement leading up to learning more about Tom and Goldberry, if you know what I mean.

Now let the song begin! Let us sing together
Of sun, stars, moon and mist, rain and cloudy weather,
Light on the budding leafe, dew on the feather,
Wind on the open hill, bells on the heather,
Reeds by the shady pool, lillies on the water:
Old Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter!

Delightful.

[Boromir88]

In the first beginning chapters almost every chapter whenever the hobbits are in some sort of trouble they find a safe "haven" or house to rest at, Farmer Maggot's, Crickhollow, Tom Bombadil, Gildor's elves, Strider, Rivendell. Then past Rivendell as they start getting closer to Mount Doom, the "friendly" people start fading. You have Galadriel and Faramir, that's all I can remember. Then once leaving Faramir and entering into Mordor, they're on their own, no more "friendly" people to come give them a nice place to sleep at, or warm beds, well cooked meals...etc. If you look at some of the troubles in the beginning chapters, the Black Riders numerous times, Old man Willow, the Barrow-wright. The troubles towards the end are Shelob, Orcs at Cirith Ungol, Gollum, destroying the ring, all are probably "bigger" problems then the ones from the beginning, and also theres no one there to help them out they have to overcome it themself. Showing The growth of the Hobbits.