tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post3075642358437450683..comments2023-11-07T06:20:12.181-08:00Comments on Tolkien: Medieval and Modern: It's Green, It's Mean, It's a Fighting...Tree?"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"http://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-43193895317622316412011-05-22T16:02:41.608-07:002011-05-22T16:02:41.608-07:00In class, when this issue came up, one interpretat...In class, when this issue came up, one interpretation of a ‘hatred toward trees’ that I thought was especially interesting is the notion that the strong antipathy may not be for the tree as physical object but for what the tree represents. In addition to their advanced years, size, and threatening visage, trees are literally the first defenders of virgin land unaltered by human habitation. Whenever we expand our agriculture, roads, and settlements, it is first and foremost the vegetation standing in the way of those projects that must be removed before work can commence. While modern technology certainly expedites this process almost to absurdity, this very work represented a formidable barrier to human expansion in the ancient and medieval periods, perhaps accounting for the increased fear of forests our ancestors undoubtedly experienced. Trees are thus the flagship representatives of the continued overwhelming power of nature over what we can wield, a disparity that remains vast to this day, despite our flourishing technological progress. The feelings of a ‘tree-hater’ might not resemble a personal grudge as much as the hatred of a racist toward people of other ethnicities. Though the racist will be unable to claim in all truth that a random member of another race has done him personal harm, he continues to hate that person as representative of a more abstract loathing. The ‘hatred’ of trees Tolkien refers to may operate the same way: we are insecure in our own power, and because of a jealousy of the supreme power of nature, the less Tolkien-esque among us might project those foul feelings onto nature’s most tangible avatars.<br /><br />-Philip R."Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"https://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-19673155410033514862011-05-17T22:14:00.786-07:002011-05-17T22:14:00.786-07:00For me, the idea of hating trees also seems fairly...For me, the idea of hating trees also seems fairly unfounded. I can understand trees being scary as I would always avoid the path that went through the forest when I was little if it was late at night. These trees had the power to block both sight and sound as soon as I passed their border and it was not until I passed through that I could begin breathing easily again. However, I never once felt any hatred towards the trees. Perhaps it was because they were never specifically in my way or caused me any harm that the idea is still entirely alien to me. I like the idea that Tolkien created a protector of trees which was able to stand up for the acts done against them in the stories and I agree that the trees represented in the Lord of the Rings have much more of a reason to be hated than in our modern day world. As RFLB wrote, perhaps we do resent them for their ability to live entirely in one place without having to move while our entire existence is one of insentient motion. Or perhaps we resent trees because they instead do not move whenever we wish and we are forced to deal with their stubbornness with axes and saws.<br /><br />B. Wille"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"https://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-16563148889200812102011-05-14T07:08:38.971-07:002011-05-14T07:08:38.971-07:00I agree that it seems far-fetched, in the light of...I agree that it seems far-fetched, in the light of day, to hate or fear trees, but who hasn't felt threatened by a tree at night? Particularly, during a storm, when the trees do seem to be moving, perhaps even coming alive in the way that we animals think of alive, i.e. capable of moving? I think that Tolkien would agree with you that it is the trees who more properly should hate and fear us, but why then (as he might put it) do we attack them even when all they have done is be "large and alive"? I like very much what you say about the trees' memories and experience of time. Perhaps we resent the fact that we <i>have</i> to move while the trees don't, and yet they get to live so much longer than we do?<br /><br />RLFB"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"https://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5746173806126403959.post-38945289190005233812011-05-13T21:03:45.201-07:002011-05-13T21:03:45.201-07:00As a side quibble, I'm pretty sure that Ents a...As a side quibble, I'm pretty sure that Ents are two-legged. Treebeard is described as having "large feet" with "seven toes each", which means he has at least two, and he could hardly be mistaken for a "stump" if he had more than two. Plus, he counts distance in "Ent-strides", and it's really not feasible to stride with more than two legs.<br /><br /><br />As for tree-hating, it's true that trees are more of a physical threat in the legendarium than they are in the primary reality. However, Tolkien is not one to put elements in his stories without some "applicability" or "relevancy" to our present-day world. He could have made it so that any rock you step on had a 1 in 500 chance of flying up in the air and screaming at you, but that would just raise the question: so what?<br /><br />Instead, I think Tolkien's depiction of tree-hating/fearing is related to something in real life. Specifically, how much <i>older</i> trees are than we. They don't rush around, do lots of stuff, then die after a few decades, like we do. They just stand there, perfectly harmonized with their environment, slowly growing, for as long as millennia. That's something which I think we find very hard to really understand. If we try too hard, overanalyzing it, we could come to think of trees as alien beings to be resented. This seems to me the likely import of the tree-hating practiced by bad guys in the legendarium.<br /><br />--Luke Bretscher"Tolkien: Medieval and Modern"https://www.blogger.com/profile/04348913969813157482noreply@blogger.com