[davem]

Tolkien does seem to have an ambiguous attitude to trees - he likes individual ones, he likes tame woodland - from the woods of the Shire to Lorien, but actual wildwood is always threatening - The Old Forest, Mirkwood, Taur nu Fuin. Come to think of it, all wild nature presents a threat to his created, sentient races.

I wonder if this is historical - wild forest was the habitation of real threats - not moving trees, but bears, wolves, wild boar. It was also the ideal place for all our ancestors fears to be projected upon. I think this comes across particularly in the dreamlike air of the Old Forest, which seems to exist in a state between dreaming & waking. How can a whole environment be 'alive' in that way? The earth itself seems conscious & malevolent. And then, as Flieger has pointed out, Tom appears, the most dreamlike being of all - possibly the most dreamlike being Tolkien created.

Truly wild nature is always awe inspiring, potentially threatening - like the trees that 'attacked' the hedge - it is always trying to reassert its old dominance. But that's also 'natural' - the trees are not behaving maliciously, they are simply doing what it is in their nature to do. On another level we seem to have the old world of the 'dreamtime' attempting to overwhelm the 'awakened' world of civilisation & sweep it away. In a way, the hobbits are passing into an older world, of dreams, myth, legends - of wizards, goblins, Magic, of fairy story. The 'sensible' hobbits like Ted Sandyman are the ones who have awakened from the dream & are fighting like mad to stay awake & not be overwhelmed by 'Old Man Willow's 'song' & be swallowed up by the dreamworld. Yet, they're the least admirable characters, the ones we'd least like to be.

And Frodo is the great dreamer, the one who is always half dreaming throughout his early life in the Shire, & who is most at home in the dreamworld of Middle Earth beyond the Shire's borders, who only seems to wake up once he leaves, & feels he is 'falling asleep again' when he returns home. Frodo is the one who, ultimately cannot go back home & must depart finally for the dreamworld in the West at the end. Frodo, it seems, never truly belongs in 'our' waking world - perhaps, like Galahad, he has been born solely to perform his task of taking the Ring to the Fire, & then departing back to the world of dreams. It increases the sense of isolation about him, perhaps also explaining why he is such an enigma, & why we are always drawn back to him & his story.

Just a thought.