The Trickster's Consort

[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...

[littlemanpoet]

Don't let the name, Old Man Willow throw you. OMW is just as much tree as the trees you insist are inherently good no matter how black their hearts (or is that a misunderstanding on my part of what you're trying to say vis-a-ve trees and inherent goodness?). The degree of OMW's sentience is not given, nor is it important.

Your quote of Elrond is unclear. You're not saying that Tolkien has him saying that moral choice is a necessity, are you? I don't think you are. If you're not, then you seem to be saying that since Elrond says there wasn't evil in the beginning, there had to be moral choice. This does not follow logically. But nonetheless, there was a moral choice: Morgoth's. He corrupted Arda. Thus evil trees did not choose it but became it by his will. Unjust? Certainly. But it reflects reality.

I don't think the problem is as vexed as you seem to think. LotR is the story of war. The Ents get caught up in war. This moves the discussion in the direction of Just Cause, about which I'm sure there are opinions many and varied. But the Ents are an army whereas OMW is at best vigilante and at worst premeditatedly (at least, as much as a tree can be) harmful.

[davem]

Possibly, but I don't get any sense of the Old Forest being evil - not like the Barrow Downs (the place, not the site... oh, I don't know though...) or Mordor, or even Isengard. Certainly it is perilous, but Faerie, as Tolkien has said, is perilous. Certainly Fangorn is not an 'evil' place. Treebeard is speaking of specific trees as having 'black hearts', not the place itself.

Originally Posted by LMP

If you're not, then you seem to be saying that since Elrond says there wasn't evil in the beginning, there had to be moral choice. This does not follow logically. But nonetheless, there was a moral choice: Morgoth's. He corrupted Arda. Thus evil trees did not choose it but became it by his will. Unjust? Certainly. But it reflects reality.

I think for an individual to become evil must be the result of a moral choice, so it depends on whether the trees are individuals. You can't have individual 'evil' trees if they are evil as a result of Morgoth's choice - why aren't all the trees evil if that's the cause?

OMW is just as much tree as the trees you insist are inherently good no matter how black their hearts (or is that a misunderstanding on my part of what you're trying to say vis-a-ve trees and inherent goodness?). The degree of OMW's sentience is not given, nor is it important.

So, are all the trees of the Old Forest evil, or just some of them? The OF is sentient - & my feeling is that its not just the trees, but the earth & air of the place too. It has moods, emotions even. But it is not Mordor, not by any stretch of the imagination, nor an echo of it. Mordor is a place of death, of unlife, anti-life. The OF is not. In there life, the life of nature, is all powerful. It does not attack the Hobbits in the service of Sauron, but because they are unwanted, uninvited, tresspassers.

Let me try another angle: In the episode of the Old Forest & the Barrow Downs the Hobbits have strayed out of mythic history into a poem - 'The Adventures of Tom Bombadil', where OMW is a sentient being, who can think & act. He is a character, & plays his part. A poem has come to life & the Hobbits find themselves as characters in it. This poem-world has its own rules, & its own conditions . Higher morality does not play a part in this world, Good & evil, do not exist in the form they take in the rest of the book. Tom is not affected by the Ring because it does not belong in the world of the poem - what I mean is, what it represents, the threat it poses, has no 'reality' or relevance in that world. Just as Tom himself & Goldberry, & OMW & the Barrow Wight, don't have any 'relevance' outside their poem-reality ('Tom's country ends here, he will not pass the borders. The OF/BD are a self-contained little world, with its own rules, a secondary world, which can be entered & left (if the traveller is lucky), but is in itself self-contained (which is why so many dramatisations leave the whole thing out. Frodo & his companions may gain something from their experiences there, but that world will remain always intact, un affected by events in the 'outer world - just as Middle earth itself remains an equally 'intact' secondary world to us, whatever events occur in 'our' primary' world. M-e may be 'applicable', but it is not 'allegorical'. In the same way, to the Hobbits, the world of the OF/BD may be 'applicable', but it is not 'allegorical' - ie, it has no one-to-one relationship with the rest of M-e. Hence the fruitlessness of attempting to 'prove' Tom & Goldberry are Maiar - or attempting to fit the behaviour & actions of its in habitants in with the 'moral values' of M-e.

So, Tom is neither a maiar, nor the Trickster. Goldberry is neither maiar nor Trickster's consort. He is - Tom Bombadil. And equally, so is she. And so is OMW & the BW.

And if I've contradicted any earlier statements here I take refuge in my sig