Of Ents and Immortality

[Alfirin]

A few questions, brought on by current threads.

1. Do Ents have the same "conditional" immortality as elves. That is, they are slayable but do not die of old age?
2. If they don't, what happens to them when they die? Do Entish spirits go off to an unknown place like those of men?
3. If they do, do they also eventually travel west? if so, how? do they also take ship. since they may not have to breathe (I honestly don't know if Ents breate) do the simply walk the path under the sea the elvish ships take?
4. Since older ents seem to become treeish in thier age, is the untimate fate of any ent to simple become so "treeish" that their animation and consciosness departs them, and they became for all intentent and purposes, indistinguishable from an "ordinary" tree? (I can't help but think of a parallel here with what Terry Prachett says happens when a troll gets advanaced in years.)
Some of these questions seem semi important. Since the fourth age is the age of men, and it seems that all of the other sentient races are dwindling, this would presumably include the Ent's. While Aragorn's gift to them of dominion of Fangorn in perpetuit, with a freedom to expand to other areas if Fangorn get's too small for the population is certinly noble, kind and fitting, I can't help but feel that it may also be sort of pointless, and Aragorn (depending on how much he knows of the Entish situation) may sort of know this. Without the Entwives, there can presumably be no more little Ents (Entlings?) so the population will never increase, just go down. A cynical part of my brain seems to think that, in a few centuries, if a later king changes his mind and wishes to put Fangorn to mannish use, he will find no ents around to oppose him, probably no Huorns either.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Well, there is one important thing that needs to be included first and foremost.

The Ents are not the Children of Ilúvatar. And they are, I believe, even distant from the Dwarves, who are the "Children of Aulë" with the gift of life given to them by Eru. But the Ents do not have the "real life" in this sense, obviously. Therefore, one can start questioning whatever happens to them when they die: I, at least, believe that there is no way they would participate in any "afterlife" in Valinor - and obviously, they do not share the fate of Men, either. I think, if they are close to anything, they are close to animals, or...

...or something else. I believe the key to understanding lies in the Silmarillion, in the chapter "Of Aulë and Yavanna". We hear about the origin of the Eagles and Ents, who are named there together - so in fact, the way I see it, the Eagles are something similar to the Ents. Yavanna speaks about her concern that the trees are defenseless, yet says she did sing about something like that in her part during the Music, and Eru then replies to Manwë that he of course is aware of that, and that

"(...) When the Children awake, then the thought of Yavanna will awake also, and it will summon spirits from afar, and they will go among the kelvar and the olvar, and some will dwell therein, and be held in reverence, and their just anger shall be feared. For a time: while the Firstborn are in their power, and while the Secondborn are young."

So here we have it. The way I see it, there are some "spirits from afar" who "incarnate" ("in-wood-ate") into the Ents (and also the Eagles, as the text mentions right after this part) and then dwell in there. Who knows what it is. Some sort of "lesser Ainur"? Some "subthoughts of Eru" created for this particular purpose, who are only later sent to Arda? Who knows.

But in any case, it seems that those spirits are past the simple "mortal dialectic" and whatever happens to them after death is likely leaving their body (tree...) and maybe returning back to Eru or wherever it was they came from.

Personally, I am also wondering whether the Ents fit into a similar cathegory as the Dragons (creations of Morgoth in a similar manner) or the Werewolves, of whom we hear a similar story: "evil spirits" (in this case) placed into a beast's form.

But yes, as for the first question: I think the Ents do "work" that way that they don't age much (remember Treebeard talking about his walks during the First Age), at most they can become "treeish" (maybe the spirit gets "tired" and goes "asleep"?). But of course, they can be killed (by destroying the "corpse", however, the spirit probably simply goes back to its maker again?).

[Alfirin]

Under those circumstances, one begins to wonder if by the Third age, the line between Ent and Huorn was more or less an academic one, if there was a point where the ents had become so like trees and the trees (huorns) so like Ent's that there was functionally no difference between the two in term of anything but what they had started out as. Indeed while i simply assumed that a young ent needed an ent and an entwife to come into being, if they are spirits inhabiting trees, maybe the Huorns are Ent children(ore more accurately, a phase of ent development) maybe after a Huorn has live long enough and become Entish enough, it is an Ent. Then the possibility of them needing expansion room evetually makes sense.

[The Might]

Interesting thread! I have taken the liberty to copy/paste part of a nice study on the origins and the history of the Ents posted by Andreas Moehn here http://lalaith.vpsurf.de/Tolkien/Fr_ents.html
The abbreviations used below are also explained at the bottom of the linked page.

The Eldest and the Firstborn

The statements about origin and age of the Ents are mysterious. Of course, no one would doubt that the Elves are indeed Iluvatar‘s "Firstborn", and they would have to be so to "cure" the Ents from dumbness. But why then are the Ents notoriously called "the most ancient people surviving in the Third Age" (LP) and "oldest of living creatures" (L131)? This can only interpreted that way that there were Ents before there were talking Ents. The first specimen probably were but mute and "dumb" or yet "unawakened" beings, looking and behaving just like another kind of tree. But of course, they were not ordinary trees. It cannot be doubted that Elves cannot just pass along and teach a tree at the wayside to talk and move, not to mention turning a forest into another Free People! There must have been an inherent potential of rational thought to the proto-Ents which only Iluvatar could have given to them and which was but waiting for the outside impulse to get active. Lothlórien recorded a unique hypothesis of their origin: "Some (Galadriel) were [of the] opinion that when Yavanna discovered the mercy of Eru to Aulë in the matter of the Dwarves, she besought Eru (through Manwë) asking him to give life to things made of living things not stone, and that the Ents were either souls sent to inhabit trees, or else that slowly took the likeness of trees owing to their inborn love of trees. ... The males were devoted to Oromë, but the Wives to Yavanna." (L248) If this was true, it would set real Ents far apart from "talking beasts", animate but soulless. No doubt, those spirits were sent before the Elves awoke but had to lie dormant till their proper time, so not to turn down the intended order in which the Children of Iluvatar would appear. This had not been allowed even to Aule’s Dwarves!


Are Ents Maiar?

Based of this statement it was often suggested that Ents were in fact Maiar. But there is much which speaks against. First, there is the usage of words. "Soul" in the sources is usually a crude translation of Elvish fëa, a kind of spirit very much distinct from a maia (MR). Maiar are very much above: Would it have been possible for even the greatest Child of Iluvatar to cure but one Maia from dumbness? The Wise of Middle-earth indeed believed or hoped that the "Ents and their wives being rational creatures would find some 'earthly paradise' until the end of this world: beyond which the wisdom neither of Elves nor Ents could see. Though maybe they shared the hope of Aragorn that they were 'not bound for ever to the circles of the world and beyond them is more than memory.'" (L338) Galadriel seemed to have known or sensed even more: Her farewell to Treebeard "until the lands that lie under the wave are lifted up again. Then in the willow-meads of Tasarinan we may meet in the Spring" (RK) indicates her belief or conviction that Ents - like Elves and Men (and Dwarves) - might possess an immortal component. However, a Child of Iluvatar derobed from his fána or body becomes a free fëa, but certainly not an Ainu! Second. The entish language is a further indication against them being Maiar. Real Maiar probably would not have bothered about developing any since they already possessed one: Valarin or a descendant thereof. Yet "the language they had made was unlike all others" (LP), even Elves had a hard time to learn "their tree-talk" if at all. The few examples of Entish recorded from hearing indeed do not resemble any other spoken in Middle-earth, least of all Valarin. Third: After the initial impulse of awakening was given to the Ents, they were capable of (consciously or unconsciously) awakening more trees. "Most of the trees [in Fangorn] are just trees, of course; but many are half awake. Some are quite wide awake, and a few are, well, ah, well, getting entish. That is going on all the time." (TT) Treebeard also remarks that "some of my trees are limb-lithe, and many can talk to me" (TT). Among those he had known "some good old willows down the Entwash". When he approaches Wellinghall, Merry and Pippin witness two unidentified trees capable of motion: they "lifted up their branches, and all their leaves quivered and rustled." However, those secondarily awakened trees were classified as Huorns, not as new Ents. Evidently, many trees, though not any tree, had the potential to do so: trees that seemed to be half awake or "quite wide" are also to be met in the Old Forest, notably Old Man Willow, (FR) and in Mirkwood (H). Without Entings they still were doomed to extinction – and with them the Huorns, for apparently no other species had any more the power to awaken them. By the late Third Age even the youngest Ent was already over 3000 years old. The surprising notion that the awakening of trees was not a one-time event but a permanent process is the strongest argument against the "Elves are Maiar" hypothesis. If all awakened trees harboured a Maia within that would have required a constant influx of Ainur from Valinor or outside of Aman to Middle-earth – many of which never again were awakened! An unlikely proposal. It may be assumed that Huorns rather resembled the talking beasts and thus were distinct from Ents by lacking the soul or fëa. But what should we make then out of the "spirit" (FR) that inhabited Old Man Willow?

In my opinion Andreas does a very good job at gathering the important data on Ents from Tolkien's writings and I agree with his own conclusion. The most likely explanation seems to be that upon hearing of Aule's dwarves Yavanna bargained "souls for the olvar" from Illuvatar. They seem to be lesser in "power" than those of the Maiar but are capable of reason and free will, their origins are of course another interesting topic.

[Lalwendë]

I have another take on this.

An Ent is not a tree, it's a giant. It's a tree shepherd, a being brought into Arda to protect the trees which can very much have the appearance of trees, and rather like a master may come to look a bit like his dog, an Ent can come to look like the trees he shepherds.

Ent is also the Old English word for 'giant', with a concurrent word in Old Norse - jotunn. Giant lore is something I've not looked into agreat deal because I find them frankly a bit scary (don't laugh ) and unappealing, but Ents as giants I find an appealing idea.

I think that as they age, they become more like a tree and might become as static as a tree so that to the untrained eye, they are a tree. Some of these Ents may, I suppose be termed 'Huorns', though that's highly debatable.

There's something interesting that was posted a few years back (and I've been trying to find this) about how a 'houseless Elf', that is one who has been killed, may choose not to go to the Halls of Mandos and instead remain a houseless fea and maybe inhabit elements of the earth itself, such as rocks and trees. I think that is also a possibility for some Huorns. And for others, that they are simply trees that are capable, if pushed, of movement and speech.