[davem]

(Yes, this is a long post - anyone who feels daunted, please skip it, & just pretend it never happened!)

Well, after two, on the surface, slow, uneventful chapters, things start moving! We enter the Old Forest (I can hear the screams from some readers now - ‘Tom Bombadil- ARRGH!!!!!’)

We are now entering strange territory - the Old Forest & Old Tom. Where to begin?

Verlyn Flieger’s essay ‘Taking the Part of Trees’ (in JRR Tolkien & his Literary Resonances offers some insight into the nature of the Old Forest:

‘Not just dark & mysterious & filled with little understood magic like the Mirkwood of The Hobbit, the Old Forest is consciously ill-intentioned toward those humans who invade it. The hobbits’ encounter with the Old Forest is the first really dangerous, frightening adventure that they experience in LR.
This can hardly be placed under the heading of ‘taking the part of trees’....What we are shown at this point in the narrative is Tolkien version of the standard fairy-tale dark wood on the order of those in ‘Snow White’ & ‘Hansel & Gretel’*.

But If we then look at Tom’s words in the next chapter regarding OMW we get a new insight:

‘Tom’s words laid bare the hearts of trees & their thoughts, which were often dark & strange, & filled with a hatred of things that go free upon the earth, gnawing, biting, breaking, hacking, burning: destroyers & usurpers. It was not called the Old Forest without reason, for it was indeed ancient ... filled with pride & rooted wisdom, & with malice ...But none were more dangerous than the Great Willow: his heart was rotten, but his strength was green’

Flieger analyses this statement:

“In critical terms (this passage) deconstructs itself...In the voice of Tom Bombadil, who understands the Old Forest if anyone does, tolkien begins by telling the hobbits (& us) that the thoughts of trees such as Old Man Willow are often ‘dark & strange,’ & ‘filled with hatred.’ But almost immediately we are given a legitimate reason for these dark thoughts, this hatred; they are engendered by the activities of ‘things that go free upon the earth.’ As used here, ‘free’ is a loaded word, for we are not accustomed to thinking of trees as ‘unfree,’ or indeed, connecting them with any concept of freedom versus restraint. We are being reminded of something so obvious that it’s easy to overlook: trees cannot run away. If someone starts hacking at a tree with an axe, the rooted tree has to stand & take the blows’

Compare Merry’s ‘matter-of-fact account of how the hobbits cut down ‘hundreds of trees & burned all the ground in a long strip,’ with the ‘hacking & burning’ of the earlier quote, & also with Treebeard’s lament:

‘Down on the borders they (Saruman’s orcs) are felling trees - good trees.. Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut & acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost forever now.’

We have to face the fact that the trees the hobbits cut down & burned also ‘had voices of their own that are lost forever now’ & that OMW’s anger & desire for revenge is no less understandable than Treebeard’s. Of course, it can be argued that OMW is ‘evil’ because, rather than seeking revenge against the particular hobbits responsible for the hacking & burning, he seeks to revenge himself on all who go on two legs. But Treebeard also revenges himself against all orcs, without interrogating each of them to find out if they were involved in cutting down ‘his’ trees. But perhaps OMW’s irrational anger is more understandable, as he, unlike Treebeard, cannot move, & simply has to remain where he is, at the heart of the Old Forest, aware of the destruction of ‘his’ trees, the loss of their voices forever, unable to come to their defence. Treebeard could have gone to the defence of ‘his’ trees, but didn’t, OMW, rooted to the earth, simply had to remain where he was, earthbound.

Yet, what struck me more forcefully re-reading this chapter, was the way its not simply OMW, or even the trees themselves, which are the threat - the whole forest, even the earth itself, seems to actively conspire. The land seems to change shape in order to direct the hobbits to the centre of the wood, seeming to become boggy, or solid, opening into gullies, raising itself up, lowering itself down as necessary. Even the air itself seems maliciously to ‘drug’ them, while the trees try to sing them to sleep so that OMW can consume them. And Tolkien communicates this dreamlikeness in some of the most beautiful prose in literature:

A golden afternoon of late sunshine lay warm & drowsy upon the hidden land between. In the midst of it there wound lazily a dark river of brown water, bordered with ancient willows, arched over with willows, blocked with fallen willows, & flecked with thousands of willowleaves. The air was thick with them, fluttering yellow from the branches; for there was a warm & gentle breeze blowing softly in the valley, & the reeds were rustling, & the willow-boughs were creaking. (my italics)

which Shippey (Author of the Century) describes as ‘one of many brilliant passages of natural description in the Lord of the Rings’

But then the weirdest thing of all happens - Jolly Tom appears! Actually, the way he’s described, he seems to rise out of the earth:

There was another burst of song, & then there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown & a long blue feather stuck in the band. With another hop & a bound there came into view a man, or so it seemed.

Now, I know some readers hate Tom with such a vengeance that they skip this chapter & the next two & jump straight to Bree, but Tom has grown on me through the years, & I always liked him anyway! I think some quotes might be relevant here.

Brian Rosebury, in Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon, describes Tom thus:

The relation of Bombadil to his little country is like that of an unfallen Adam to the Garden of Eden. Bombadil’s freedom from fear is co-ordinate with his freedom from tyrannical intent: secure in a gardener-like status which it does not occur to him to exceed, his will cannot afflict or be afflicted by the wills of others.

Anne C Petty, in Tolkien in the Land of Heroes, points out:

The Ring has no pull for Tom because his focus is elsewhere; that kind of power is irrelevant to him - in one sense, this is a very Buddha-like approach.... Tom’s powers are passive & elemental, not aggressive & rooted in immediacy.

And Verlyn Flieger, in A Question of Time:

Tom Bombadil, stamping, chanting, crashing through the underbrush with his blue feather & his yellow boots, is not your ordinary, everyday kind of fellow. Tom is not less substantial than the waking world but more so. His vivid unreality makes the waking world around him seem pale & insubstantial in comparison... Both those who like him & those who find him ‘discordant’ may be responding in their separate ways to the same thing: the child’s drawing quality, the crayon colors (sic ), the absence of shading or depth that seem to characterise this episode. It can appear simplistic, it certainly seems one-dimensional. This is precisely what gives it the quality of dream. The Bombadil chapters have all the cheerful, bright aspect of a happy dream, one in which we can be assured, as we never wholly can in real life, that the dark fears are banished, the lights are on, & we are home & safe. Everything is all right.

And David Elton Gray compares Tom & the great Shaman Vainamoinen, of the Finnish Kalevala, in his essay JRR Tolkien & the Kalevala, in Tolkien & the Invention of Myth:

for both Vainamoinen & Tom Bombadil power comes from their command of song & lore rather than from ownership & domination. Vainamoinen spends his time in endless singing, not singing songs of power, however, but rather songs of knowledge. Indeed, it would appear that he, like Tom Bombadil, sings for the simple pleasure of singing... As has been often noted, much of what tom says is, in fact, sung. As with Vainamoinen’s singing, Tom’s has power, & the power of his singing is clearly similar to Vainamoinen’s.

Well, that’s either sparked off loads of posts or knocked the wind out of everyone’s sails! Sorry if its the latter!


*One possibility which Flieger doesn’t explore is Tolkien’s ‘conceit’ - that LotR is a translation of the Red book of Westmarch - it was written by hobbits from their perspective. Tolkien himself may ‘take the part of trees as against all their enemies’ (letter 319) but that doesn’t mean that the hobbits do - a ‘well ordered & well farmed countryside’, which they love, requires the clearing of natural woodland - the two - as Flieger points out, cannot co-exist - one must be sacrificed in favour of the other. Treebeard may mourn:

The broad days! Time was when I could walk & sing all day & hear no more than the echo of my own voice in the hollow hills.

but clearly the hobbits don’t. Treebeard may dream of the days when forest covered Middle earth, but Hobbits like to be in control of their land, & keep it in iits place.

Frodo’s song, ending with the line ‘For east or west all woods must fail’ wouldn’t be the kind of thing Treebeard would approve of - & nor, we can assert, would Tolkien.Merry's suggestion of tuning & giving the trees a rousing chorus of the song when they get out of the forest, in the light of the hobbits rampant destruction of the trees, is simply adding insult to injury. Perhaps Tolkien is making a subtle & easily missed point when he has Merry & Pippin enter Fangorn & meet Treebeard. Merry has a lesson to learn if he is to become Master of Buckland in the future, & have responsibility for the Old Forest.