Progress on The Two Towers, Part 1

[bunnyboo]

Hi, everyone! I’ve been going through The Two Towers at a pretty good pace. According to GoodReads, I’m about a quarter of the way through. Most of it’s been Aragorn and the gang traipsing about Rohan, so I’ve skimmed a lot of it. There’s some good stuff there that I want to talk about, but mostly I’m interested in the Ents. Oh goodness, the Ents.

 

Aragorn says something interesting on morality that I think is echoed throughout what I’ve read so far: “’Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men.’” Let me drop a little tidbit about my life on you—before I joined the exalted ranks of the mighty English majors, I was an Anthropology major. (I really enjoyed it but decided to pursue English for reasons that aren’t relevant here.) Anyways, something that came up quite a bit was moral relativism which, to paraphrase Wikipedia, is the idea that different cultures and peoples have different moral standards and ideals. What the Western world considers moral may not be the case for, say, an indigenous population in Papua New Guinea. Here, Tolkien is asserting that there is a universal moral code for all peoples and races in Middle-Earth. And honestly? I agree with that in the real world. That’s not to say that everything is exactly the same, but there’s basic tenets that just about everyone follows—respect your elders, protect your family, be helpful and contribute to the group, and so on. Anthropologists at the University of Oxford have had similar findings. I think there’s room for differing interpretations of those basic “rules,” but in general I agree that there’s a definite “good” and “ill.” Kind of expanding on this, I think Middle-Earth and I have similar thoughts on intent versus outcome as well. The Ring preys on both good and evil people, perverting good intentions to horrific outcomes. I hold to the old saying that “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” but I also think that there’s room for bad intentions having beneficial outcomes. I like to think of it like this—if a person does something good for the wrong reasons, it’s still a good deed. Let’s say that a mob boss donates to the local children’s hospital to deflect accusations of wrong-doing (an extreme and cartoonish example maybe). The fact that he’s donating out of self-interest, to me, means nothing. He’s still helping out the children’s hospital and benefitting society. Who cares what his reasoning for doing so is? Hm. Kind of getting off track here. Bringing it back to The Lord of the Rings, all those who are tempted by the Ring think they’ll use it for good purposes, that is, if they’re unwise enough to think that they can control themselves at all. Boromir has the best of intentions—using the Ring to rid the world of Sauron and rule Gondor as a wise and benevolent king—but that’s not the reality of the situation. His good and wholesome plans will be subverted by the use of evil means. Again, I think that I agree with the text on this—the ends do not justify the means. I won’t bring real world examples into this because there’s just too much tragedy and horror, but I’m of the opinion that good things should come from good practices. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. I think where we differ is that I think that good things that come from bad practices or means are still worthwhile if they are indeed used for good purposes. Something that is genuinely and honestly beneficial is not inherently tainted by where it comes from, but we should be cognizant of that and work to make sure bad practices are known and reviled. I guess what I’m saying is that, taking what The Lord of the Rings says on morality outside of the book for a moment (a cardinal sin in Tolkien’s eyes—oops!), there’s less blacks and whites. However, within the context of Middle-Earth, it totally makes sense to have this hard line stance. The Ring is unambiguously evil and corrupting. There’s no room for interpretation on that, I think.

 

Moving on to the escape of Merry and Pippin from the orcs, I wanted to comment on two things. Firstly, it seems like the forces of evil, in contrast to good, are incapable of uniting and working together. They have some amount of loyalty to their own organizations but not to each other as individuals. Grishnáhk (or was it Uglúk?) just kills off subordinates for failure. The very idea of subordinates is against what we’re presented in the Fellowship. You can argue that Sam is technically Frodo’s servant, but he acts independently of him and his opinions are taken into consideration when it comes to making group decisions. There’s not a leader in the traditional, just people who are more experienced in whatever’s needed at the time and who take the lead. Again, Gandalf may qualify—maybe Strider, too—but it doesn’t feel like adversarial relationships within the group. There’s certainly not any power plays going on like there are with the orcs. Uglúk even tries to betray Saruman and take the Ring—and the hobbits—for himself, something that Boromir only tried after weeks of being under the Ring’s sway. Betrayal is the norm for evil doers in The Lord of the Rings, and friendship and comradery is non-existent. As for the second thing I wanted to comment on, I liked how Merry and Pippin are “in hobbit-fashion” able to recover so quickly from the trauma and distress of being the orcs’ prisoners. They literally just walk it off. That speaks to the fortitude of the hobbit nature and psyche, I think, and may be one of the reasons why they’ve been able to resist the allure of the Ring. I think it also has to do with them being together which, again, feeds into the themes of friendship and love being the best way to fight against evil and sorrow. Within minutes of them escaping from the orcs, they’re already joking and lightheartedly bantering back and forth. That’s great! It’s one of the many reasons I love hobbits—they just bounce back. It’s something that I admire in others and want to see in myself. A lot of what I see in the hobbits I want for myself, I guess. Hm.

But now onto the main event! Ents. I love Ents! I wasn’t expecting to, honestly. What I saw of Treebeard in the movie wasn’t particularly engaging. He was just some tree dude who helped them out, as far as I remember, but I really love their history and culture here. They’re slow to decide and to anger, enjoying and valuing the process and experience of interacting with others, and they’re very deliberate in their actions. They’re also kind and sensitive, even if they’re not the most outgoing of, er, “people.” They seem really laid-back, perhaps because of their nature but also because out of choice. They have time, more so than even the elves, and they use that time to do good and enjoy life. The stories of the Entwives were really moving—this idea that nature has two facets, the wild and the tame, that can never truly coexist despite their equal beauty and importance. I think some people might find the concept of Entwives kind of limiting and stereotypical. I can see that, but to me, it’s more like a fairy tale than anything else. All of the Ents are like that to me—these mystical, wise, and benevolent beings that live in this hidden, beautiful world. They’re more elf-y elves, and they work much better for me. It helps that there’s not endless names I have to keep track of, but I also think that their humility and kindness is more endearing to me. They don’t come off as haughty or holier-than-thou, just… outside of it all. Ultimately, I like that they choose to be proactive about fighting evil instead of just waiting for it to come to them. That felt like a success on the part of Treebeard and the hobbits that they were able to engage these almost timeless, deliberate beings to commit to decisive action for good. Whereas the elves felt like they were doing nothing to me and waiting around for no reason, the Ents just needed inspiration and a reasoned argument to act. To quote Treebeard—“’Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,’ he said slowly, ‘likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now. It was not a hasty resolve. Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song. Aye,’ he sighed, ‘we may help the other peoples before we pass away. Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true about the Entwives. I should dearly have liked to see Fimbrethil again. But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.’” Much like Frodo had to leave the Shire to protect it, the Ents have to leave their homes. Good must be proactive or it fails, and doing nothing in the face of evil is not an option. To me, this is one of the most positive and important messages in fiction—if you see something, do something.

In conclusion, it goes Hobbits > Ents > Everything Else > Elves…