Two Green Beards

The Important Takeaways from Comparing The Green Knight and Treebeard

Tolkien took plenty of inspiration for Treebeard directly from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Meeting both characters plunges the others instantly into Faerie, completely overwhelming everything that had happened to them before. Both are old, mysterious, and it is unclear whether they are friend or foe at first. The green knight has "a big beard like a bush over his breast hanging", which Tolkien directly references with the name Treebeard. 

Some of the immediate differences are important too. While the Green Knight is, well, green, there is limited nature imagery at least at first. Treebeard on the other hand is the forest itself. The degree of shock for the other characters is similar though. Arthur’s Christmas feast is suddenly much less frivolous, and Merry and Pippin’s journey through the wild now forces them to face sentient Fangorn itself.

Both of their eyes are noted to be remarkable. Pippin described Treebeard’s this way: "One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake". The Green Knight’s "glance was as lighting bright". The Green Knight is the present - the hasty part of Freeboard that can sometimes be roused. Some might say that Treebeard’s eyes are a representation of Eru’s fire of creation itself. They hold memory, and in them the past interacts with the present and is at peace. Both pairs of eyes are unusual, supernatural even.

Everyone who saw the Green Knight immediately noted his immense strength and weapon, whereas it took Merry and Pippin quite a while to understand the great strength of the Ents, although they did fear the forest at first. Initially, everyone feared both of these characters. However, they both turn into a respected ally, either in the fight against Saruman and Sauron, or in the quest to become a better Christian. They are still feared, and still dangerous by the end of the story. 

The most important similarity between the two is that they themselves change very little, while the environment around them and the characters who interact with them are changed significantly, and for the better. This is why they are both "good" characters. The Green Knight is frightening, even barbaric to the original audience of the story, but Sir Gawain’s character development and the Green Knight’s knowledge of Christianity leave the reader feeling much more positive toward him than if he was only there to accomplish Morgan le Fay’s plan to hurt Guinevere. Treebeard is still part of Fangorn, which is definitely dangerous, and the ents took plenty of convincing to help destroy Isengard, and even Galadriel warned the fellowship about the forest. And yet his is decidedly on the good side not just because of the destruction of Isengard, but because this is a turning point for Merry and Pippin. They go from baggage that eats way too much food, to being movers of the great events of the war. I don’t remember any subsequent stories of Gawain, but before challenging the Green Knight he was kind of useless, and he certainly needed much courage to follow through with the second encounter. (On a side note, I was very surprised to see the Green Knight portrayed as an absolute monster in the trailer for the upcoming movie, as the grey area is what makes the story interesting.)

Tolkien still manages to make an immense contrast without diminishing Merry and Pippin. They are saplings who don’t know very much about the world, but Treebeard treats them as young entings and helps them grow, even forgetting that they are hobbits at one point. When they drink the ent draught, "the hair on their heads was actually standing up, waving and curling and growing", like the uppermost leaves of a plant that has just been watered. They grow physically. They also grow mentally. Until now, the story has not truly described the horrors of Sauron’s work. The Black Riders have terrorized the Shire, and Gandalf fell in Moria, but Merry and Pippin, and therefore the readers, remain relatively ignorant of what the growing Shadow means for normal civilians. The destruction of the forest is put in a new light because Treebeard can speak to the trees and raised some of them. Tolkien is noting an important aspect of war that is often forgotten, and which became abundantly clear in World War 1. The casualties are not limited to the battlefield, but history and legend tends to care about important battles and kings. The people who are caught in the middle, whose ordinary wonderful lives, at least in Tolkien’s writing, are just as important, it not more important, than the war itself. And those who get taken over for resources to fuel the war die in a different way. I am not trying to say that this is allegory. This portion of The Two Towers can also be said to represent the need to respect the dwindling wild places of the world, or the power of a people to rise up in unison and throw down their oppressor. However, this particular metaphor is relevant to the Green Knight story, where Sir Gawain’s actions with Morgan, whom he thought was just a normal person at the time, ended up saving his life.