Nature's Immersion

The thing about Tolkien’s nature is how interesting he makes it. It’s hard to write about nature, about the trees and grass and flora and fauna that make up the basic setting of almost every book, of almost every life out there, solely because it doesn’t normally do much. Nature, sure, is living, but it doesn’t really act upon us. It’s passive, especially in books, where it only appears to be traversed. And Tolkien subverts this in a few ways, most prominently by making the nature not passive – if anything, aggressive. We see this throughout the trilogy, most notably in the Old Forest, where the trees themselves come to life. Beginning of course with foreboding feelings – as “the trees became taller, darker, and thicker… they all got an uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched with disapproval, deepening to dislike and even enmity…” (LotR, pg. 111), the hobbits’ passage through the Old Forest peaks with an attack from Old Man Willow himself, who, as he attempted to trap the hobbits, “set up ripples of anger that ran out over the whole Forest” (pg. 118), even as the hobbits fought with the forest itself.

It's one of the great things about fantasy, the ability to bring the environment to life around the characters, creating a world that is not only more immersive for the readers, but also more immersive for the characters themselves. We talked in class about how the Hobbits themselves are isolated and shut off from much of the world, so as they learn about it, so too does the reader. And nowhere is this more clear than in their experiences with nature, with their surroundings. Not only the Old Forest, as discussed above, but every biome is populated by a variety of highly-intelligent species, from dwarves to elves to orcs, even to dragons such as Smaug, and as will be discussed below, ents.

And it’s clear that part of what allowed Tolkien to write like this was his understanding of nature, his ability to view it as truly alive. It’s seen across his writing – for example, in Letter 241 in The Letters of JRR Tolkien, he writes of a tree that “had gallantly grown new limbs – though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self,” personifying this plant, this tree, that so many wouldn’t have looked twice at. This ability to see each tree as unique, as something interesting in and of itself, is how Tolkien is able to create such diversity from consistently similar backdrops. Across the forests of Middle-Earth, each one is treated differently, is written about differently – “Lothlórien is beautiful… the Old Forest was hostile… Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility… Kirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power…” (Letters, Letter 339).

And this sentiment of Tolkien’s is of course backed by his own writing – the Old Forest, as discussed above, Lothlorien, with “no trees like the trees of that land. For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold… the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, for the bark of the trees is smooth and grey” (LotR, pg. 335); Fangorn forest originally described as “untidy… most of the trees seem to be half covered with ragged dry leaves that have never fallen…” yet full of “the old feeling of this wood” (LotR, pg. 461), before meeting Treebeard.

Of course, the ents are Tolkien’s clearest version of nature itself truly coming to life, and you can see plenty of Tolkien’s love of nature bleeding through the book in some of these passages – for example, on page 475, Treebeard tells “rather a strange and sad story,” beginning when “the world was young, and the woods were wide and wild...”. This consistent portrayal of nature as this untamable force separate from humanity, or other similar species such as elves and dwarves, is key to what makes his work great, introducing the complexity of another player in every scene – the backdrop itself – while adding uniqueness to every setting, making every forest that is traveled through different – and, of course, the constant emphasizing of protecting nature is an amazing byproduct. Through this pattern, Tolkien creates a world that is both beautiful and immersive, mixing the best pieces of fantasy with bits of the real world and the beauty it contains. 

-MR