The Trickster's Consort

[davem]

Originally Posted by LMP

If that does not denote evil, I don't know what does. So I do not think it's a stretch to say that there are evil trees in Fangorn and the Old Forest. It's a different kind of evil, but "a rose by any other name" and all that....

Unless 'black' is being used in the sense of darkness, an absence of 'light' implying a lack of moral 'light' or goodness, so that the trees are not actively evil, but merely not 'good'.

Treebeard is sentient to the extent that he is capable of both distinguishing good & evil, & of being able to choose one over the other. Maybe he simply means that those particular trees don't have that capacity & so are dangerous to the unwary, or to the tresspasser.

In short, I'm wary of attributing moral choices to trees, plants or animals. Do they have souls? Can they understand & make moral choices? (Actively)Evil trees seems to beg more questions than it resolves...

[Aiwendil]

Unless 'black' is being used in the sense of darkness, an absence of 'light' implying a lack of moral 'light' or goodness, so that the trees are not actively evil, but merely not 'good'.

If rings, places, and even the very fabric of Arda can be evil or contain evil, surely a tree can.

[Rimbaud]

As even represented today by our legal systems, negligence, or passivity when activity is the more reasonable course, is recognised as an 'evil'. I imagine the trees, imbued with personalities and names by the author, run the whole gamut of goodness from the truly black-hearted to the merely apathetic and upward to the nobility of the tree herders we meet.

I'm not sure if this creates further questions, as Tolkien distinguishes relatively clearly between the Ents and other, non-sentient, living things.

[davem]

Doesn't it require a rational soul capable of making moral choices to be truly 'Good' or 'evil'?

One of the most obvious manifestations of 'evil' in Middle earth is destruction of the natural environment. I don't see any natural plants, trees or animals participating in this kind of behaviour. What I do see is such creatures defending themselves (often, admittedly, to an extremely callous & destructive degree) against those they percieve to be their enemies, or against any who invade their territory.

What I mean is, I don't think we can class any trees or animals who have not been bred, or pressed into service, by the Enemy alongside Sauron or Saruman or the Nazgul. The moral 'evil' of those who have chosen to hate & destroy the Light is of a different order. (Some of) The trees of Fangorn & the Old Forest may have black hearts, but they are not demonic, they have not 'made a pact' with hell.

[Lalwendë]

This point depends upon whether it is a tree or an Ent which is being described as 'black-hearted'. Surely a non sentient creature cannot be described as good or evil, as it does not have sufficient consciousness to be able to decide. If we say that it can indeed be evil, then this suggests that evil and goodness can be inherent and that we can do nothing about them, therefore there is no chance for redemption etc. It's the thorny (and wormy) nature vs nurture question.

But something else strikes me as interesting in terms of Arda. Were the Ents once non-sentient in some way? Did the Elves 'awaken' their consciousness and therefore their nature as sentient beings? If so, then this might suggest other creatures have the potential to be sentient.

There's a live thread about whether animals could talk, and these tie together at this point, as we have to ask what it is that makes a non-humanoid (for want of a better word) creature sentient or not.

Trying to classify which creatures are evil and which are not is a bit of a minefield but is possible. We could define categories as those which have been bred for the purpose of evil (e.g. fell beasts), those which have been enslaved (e.g. oliphaunts), those which are employed by the good forces (e.g. horses), and those which are unaffiliated (e.g. trees). But I don't like to do this as where do we start and stop? Can we blame the fell beast for having been bred that way (and a creature is a very different thing to a ring)? And what of the oliphaunt, unfortunate enough to be a massive beast of burden and so dragged into conflict against its nature?

My own feeling tells me that Tolkien was trying to say that nature is 'outside' our concerns of good or bad, that it simply exists for its own sake. He shows us where creatures are 'used' or enslaved, and shows us where they fight back; he also shows us that despite what human-like species do, certain aspects of nature will act independently regardless of good or bad. On the one hand there are the moral forces, and on the other, the forces where morals do not matter. This is why I think the trickster figure is best represented in nature within Arda. How are we to say that a tree is good or bad? It is simply a tree. It has some kind of consciousness but it is beyond our comprehension.

[littlemanpoet]

Please let us remember that we are talking about Tolkien's Middle Earth. As a Milieu, it functions according to the laws and rules Tolkien built into it. They must necessarily be different from our world in so far as there are no Ents, Trees that can walk and move about and destroy orcs, Elves, Dwarves, Ring, etc., etc. That being the case, we must be careful not to overlay our own moral predispositions and philosophy on top of Tolkien's work, if we are to understand Middle Earth according to Tolkien's intentions (since I'm "trespassing" on canonicity grounds, I included the italicized phrase).


davem:

Doesn't it require a rational soul capable of making moral choices to be truly 'Good' or 'evil'?

Ah. You are presuming that making moral choices is a necessary aspect of being either good or evil. I don't think it holds in Middle Earth. Murdering a hobbit, something Old Man Willow was quite intent upon doing, is just as evil as wanton destruction of trees.

Lalwendë:

If we say that [a non sentient creature] can indeed be evil, then this suggests that evil and goodness can be inherent and that we can do nothing about them, therefore there is no chance for redemption etc.

Actually, the bolded phrase does not necessarily follow from your premise, whereas the italicized one does. But again, remember, this is within the context of the Middle Earth milieu, and such things as a God/Man dying for the redemption of humans is not part of the milieu; instead, "meant to be-ness" occurs throughout the story such that what was meant for evil turns to good in the eucatastrophic way that Tolkien was so able to give witness to. Therein lies redemption in LotR/Middle Earth.
Also, I must disagree with you that in Tolkien nature existed for its own sake, as The Silmarillion indicates that all things exist for Eru's sake..... at least, if we are going to let Tolkien's creation be Tolkien's.

[davem]

But Elrond States that 'nothing was evil in the beginning. Therfore 'evil' is always the result of a moral choice. Hence, if trees are evil they must not only have become evil, but, one supposes, have chosen to do so. So, can trees & animals make such a choice?

Originally Posted by LMP

don't think it holds in Middle Earth. Murdering a hobbit, something Old Man Willow was quite intent upon doing, is just as evil as wanton destruction of trees.

I wouldn't say it is, in that the attempt to kill the hobbits was made by a creature with intelligence (Old Man Willow), a sentient creature who has chosen to do what he did. Of course, its plain that OMW was seeking revenge on those who had harmed his own. Is this evil? If so, aren't the Ents also behaving with evil intent when they attack the orcs? Of course, just because OMW has made a choice doesn't mean that all trees in ME can make such a choice. And how do we account for the fact that the huorns attack the orcs just as eagerly as OMW attacks the hobbits? What I see is trees attacking their attackers - whoever those atackers may be.

This is as vexed a question as SpM's one about orcs. Can we really say that there are creatures in Me which are evil by nature (remaining within Tolkien's parameters for Me)? Any creature which was evil by nature would be beyond redemption, but must have been made evil by Eru - which, as I said, begs more questions than it resolves...