LotR -- Book 3 - Chapter 04 - Treebeard

[Hilde Bracegirdle]

Just a few quick comments.

For Ents are more like Elves: less interested in themselves than Men are, and better at getting inside other things’.. And yet again Ents are more like Men, more changeable than Elves are, and quicker at taking the colour of the outside, you might say. Or better than both: for they are steadier and keep their minds on things longer.

davem had mentioned the preceding quote which also stuck me as an odd thing for Treebeard to say. I can only conclude that perhaps these opinions of elves and men were formed from earlier days or maybe he had been misinformed? I do think that from an Ent's viewpoint the both men and elves would seem unable ‘to keep their minds on things’, even if it did not seem like it from their own standpoint. I am thinking for example of Gondor’s watch over Mordor. Granted they had less population than earlier, but one gets the impression that their vigilance was superceded by more mundane concerns.

As for the elves being less interested in themselves, maybe this can be true in a sense. I think their experience in ME had been a rather humbling one and you don’t seem to have the same ambition in them as once was there.

‘…And these-burarum,’ he made a deep rumbling noise like a discord on a great organ- ‘these Orcs, and young Saruman down at Isengard?…’

‘They are falling behind the world in there, I guess,’ he said. ‘Neither this country, nor anything else outside the Golden Wood, is what it was when Celeborn was young.’

It is interesting that Treebeard appears to view Saruman as young and Celeborn as no longer young. This could be due to Saruman’s later arrival in Treebeard’s ‘stomping grounds’ but still it is curious, and makes me wonder where exactly wizards would fall in the Ent’s lists, if indeed they are included at all.

One last impression. I am running on the intuitive side as usual…. Regarding Entwives. I can’t help getting a rather sinister feeling in the description of them. All this talk of order and orders reminds me terribly of Saruman’s pitch to Gandalf. The ends justify the means. Really I feel quite unsympathetic to them, and wonder if it is unintentional, simply a result of viewing them through an Ent’s eyes. But there is no mention of the concern of the Entwives for their charges. They nurture it is true, but in a rather bizarre and stunting way. I could imagine a great revolt in the orchard if the elves ever woke those trees! And a pile of mulch where the Entwives once stood! Quite a contrast with Quickbeam and his rowans!