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

[The Saucepan Man]

Sadly, no, it was SaucepanMan.

But I was going to say it, SpM just beat me to it. Yeah, that's it. . .

Confused? I sure am! Either you're going mad, Fordim, or I am. And I think it's you, as that was a far too intelligent thing for me to say.

If this is intentional or not, who can say, but it does not, I think, conflict with Tolkien's own responses to the rural landscape he valued so highly, as this itself is a 'tamed' landscape.

I was going to skip further discussion on this until we reached the Treebeard chapter, but it seems appropriate to air my thoughts here now. I do agree with your point, Lalwendë. But where does that leave Treebeard? Is it really as simple as Hobbits and Men having their habitat and Ents having theirs? I believe that Treebeard says that Fangorn was once part of one great swathe of forest that originally connected with the Old Forest (perhaps Treebeard and Old Man Willow are even distantly related). The greater part of this must have been cleared, presumably for Human habitation.

Moving towards the idea of nature as a force unto itself, the contrast of the 'evil' Old Forest with the 'good' Fangorn (or is it?) is interesting, as the former is a woodland which has been under attack from the people who have moved to live on the borders, while Fangorn had apparently remained until then relatively undamaged.

So this is not necessarily the case. Both forests (having originally been one great forest) have been under attack in the past. Did Treebeard and his fellow Ents resist the Men who cut Fangorn down to its current size? Perhaps they did in some unwritten chapter of Middle-earth's history. Although Hobbits would not have been involved. The woods would have largely been cleared long before they came along. As far as I am aware, they did not need to cut back the Old Forest when Buckland was established and did not actually "attack" it until the Bonfire Glade incident. And that was, as I said earlier, in response to a threatening advance by the trees of the Old Forest. (Sufficient grounds? A preemptive strike by the Hobbits? Hmm, I'll leave that thought there.)

Hobbits would no doubt have cleared some residual woods for habitation, agriculture etc. And they do of course use wood as a material for building, making tools and burning for warmth, cooking etc. As do Men, Dwarves and even Elves, though. Even Rivendell, presumably, and the furniture within it, is largely wooden in construction.

The difficulty that I have is that the comradeship that Treebeard and his Entish fellows, in common with Old Man Willow, have with trees would appear to conflict significantly with the lifestyles and needs of the other races of Middle-earth. Of course, this all goes back to the "creation" (or perhaps a better word is conception) of the Ents by Yavanna , in response to her husband's "creation" of the Dwarves. She did so to protect the forests from the Dwarves' axes. But, as I have mentioned, it is not just Dwarves who have need of wood. All of the races use it. So Yavanna's actions would seem to have initiated an irreconcilable conflict between her own "creations" and Iluvatar's (other) Children.

This is not reflected in Treebeard's acceptance of Merry and Pippin and, later, other representatives of the races of Man, Dwarf and Elf (in contrast to his hatred of Orcs). But it is represented in the actions of Old Man Willow and his forest. They both have the same concerns so why do they not react in the same way? Perhaps Old Man Willow (like the Japanese soldier on the South Pacific Island) is still carrying on a war that his distant cousins elsewhere in Middle-earth have long since abandoned recognising the need to live in harmony with the other "good" races of Middle-earth. Is this the root ( ) of Old Man Willow's evil? Is it that he has not recognised that need for this harmony?

Hmm. Perhaps these matters were discussed at great length at the Entmoot. Perhaps the Ents went to great lengths (naturally) to debate how the (wood-consuming) actions of Saruman and his Orcs might be distinguished from those of the (similarly wood-consuming) free peoples. Perhaps I should wait until we get to the relevant chapter before going on ...

One further thought, though. Aren't the actions of Old Man Willow much more consistent with the conception of a race of sentient trees?