[davem]

Even as he spoke, there came forward out of the trees three strange shapes. As tall as trolls they were, twelve feet or more in height; their strong bodies, stout as young trees, seemed to be clad with raiment or with hide of close-fitting grey and brown. Their limbs were long, and their hands had many fingers; their hair was stiff, and their beards grey-green as moss. They gazed out with solemn eyes, but they were not looking at the riders: their eyes were bent northwards. Suddenly they lifted their long hands to their mouths, and sent forth ringing calls, clear as notes of a horn, but more musical and various.
The calls were answered; and turning again, the riders saw other creatures of the same kind approaching, striding through the grass. They came swiftly from the North, walking like wading herons in their gait, but not in their speed; for their legs in their long paces beat quicker than the heron's wings. The riders cried aloud in wonder, and some set their hands upon their sword-hilts.
'You need no weapons," said Gandalf. "These are but herdsmen. They are not enemies, indeed they are not concerned with us at all."
So it seemed to be; for as he spoke the tall creatures, without a glance at the riders, strode into the wood and vanished.

We encounter here beings with their own agenda, beings who 'reck little' of the affairs of men, of their wars & struggles. Yes, men have their own stories, of which the Ents may know something, but at this time they are not concerned with those stories. The Ents & their Huorns have not come to save the people of Rohan, but to bring about the utimate destruction of Saruman. Two battles have been fought at Helm's deep, two battles against the forces of Saruman - they just happen to have co-incided at this time & place - or is it that simple?. The Ents have their own concerns & as far as these men are concerned they 'look & pass'. As Treebeard has said, he is not altogether on anyone's side, because nobody is altogether on his side.

There has been a battle of men against monsters, against the 'darkness' personified, but there has been another battle, a mythical battle of the trees & the forces which seek to wipe them from the earth. Its as if these two battles eched each other, or perhaps its the same battle taking place on two planes - the mundane & the supernatural - simultaneously.

What is strange though is that these two battles are fought against the same enemy - as if Saruman himself is fighting both a natural & a supernatural battle - as if he seeks a victory on the supernatural as well as the natural plane. We seem have another example of the 'two worlds' which Tolkien says the Elves inhabit. No victory achieved in only one of those worlds will suffice. Its almost as if Saruman has had to fight on two fronts & suffered a defeat in both.

WE learn a lot about Saruman in this chapter. We learn his true desire, & all his clever philosophising in his talk with Gandalf is exposed. He wants to be Sauron:

But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived--for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dur, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.

He has studied his enemy too closely for too long, until the experience has become like staring into a mirror. He looks at Sauron & sees himself magnified. He looked upon Isengard & could in the end only see that it wasn't yet Barad Dur. He looked at himself & in the end could only see that he wasn't yet Sauron. He has made himself into a pathetic copy of another, one greater than himself. All his talk of 'breaking' & 'overwriting' is shown up for what it is - he doesn't desire to be himself, he desires to be someone else. 'What does it profit a man if he gain the entire world & yet lose himself?'

Well, it doesn't profit Saruman at all. He loses everything in the end, because he fails in his attempt to gain the world, or rather the worlds, as well as sacrificing himself to his own desires. He ends not with the Ring, but with 'blood' on his hands, & that 'blood' is not just that of the people of Rohan, it is also his own. He has sacrificed himself in an act of spiritual suicide. He has taken his own life, 'killed' himself, in his desire to be someone else - Sauron.