Books, Films, Adaptations & Reader Responses 5/8

The Ents (books, films, and adaptation issues)

Robin the Tree Hugger!¹

We visit the Van Dusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, B.C. (which is about 20 miles closer to us than Seattle is!) every few months. This picture was taken on our May visit earlier this year.

I love trees and always have: and the trees at the VDBG are fantastic! (So are the various plantings and flower beds). But the TREES!

Welcome to the *fifth* in my long-delayed (would not want to be hasty!) series on adapation issues around Tolkien’s fiction, Jackson’s films, and the importance of reader responses. Since it’s been so long since I posted the first posts in the series, I’m providing the links to the five earlier posts, plus short summaries of them (five because there is a Part 3 and a Part 3.5!) in the note below.²

This post is a discussion of my response to how Jackson’s film characterized the Ents and adapted the scenes between them and Merry and Pippin in Fangorn, after the hobbits escape from the Orcs.

Tolkien describes the meeting of the hobbits and Ents in one chapter (“Treebeard”) which ends with the line “‘Night lies over Isengard,’ said Treebeard” (LotR.3.4.461-487). Then the action cuts away to Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn on the verge of entering Fangorn (“The White Rider), and doesn’t return to the storyline of the Ents, Merry, and Pippin until “Flotsam and Jetsam” (which starts on page 560 of my edition). The Battle of Isengard is not directly narrated: Merry and Pippin get to describe it to their friends and to the Rohirrim.

Jackson transforms Tolkien’s interlaced narrative to a chronological one (which I think was absolutely necessary for the film to be at all understandable for the percentage of the audience which had never read the book which I would bet real money was larger than the percentage of the audience who had).³ Jackson, of course, shows us the Ents attacking and taking Isengard (which, really, makes perfect sense for a visual artform).

I love the “Treebeard” chapter—and the other scenes with Treebeard—and have ever since I first read the book. I loved much of the film adaptation (especially the Extended Edition added scenes), with one major exception.

I dislike, immensely, Jackson showing the Ents refusing to go to war and then showing Pippin tricking Treebeard into changing his mind.

And I found Martin Barker’s reason for disliking (or, in his language, refusing or rejecting that specific element of the adaptation) to express, perfectly, the reason for my dislike!⁴

Martin Barker’s brilliant essay, “On Being a 1960s Tolkien Reader,”

Barker was born in 1946, nine years before I was born in 1955. I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was ten, in 1965; he first read LotR in 1959 when he was thirteen! He and I both learned what “allegory” met in the context of that first reading, and we were both influenced by Tolkien’s work in our personal and professional lives.

The link above leads to an open-access copy of his essay that blends his reader response analysis with a fascinating critique about the lazy acceptance of Tolkien’s 1960s audience as being primarily hippies in the U.S. and about the related problem of the concept of an “interpretive community.” Barker’s is one of the essays which I constantly find myself recommending and which I have found immensely valuable for my project on atheists, agnostics, and animist readers of Tolkien’s legendarium.⁵

I also like, and agree with, his discussion of how seeing the films and responding to them led to him thinking much more about what, specifically, he most values in the novel, a framing that leads to a much more interesting essay than some of the “this film is terrible” discussions that came out right after the first film was released. He also discusses his responses to Tolkien’s novel and Jackson’s film in the context of BBC radio adaptation (which I’ve never heard).

It was only in the moment of rejecting some very particular aspects of the first two parts of the film--more in fact than feeling strangely distanced from the third part--that I came to see how the books had mattered to me and even, in retrospect, made sense of an unease I had had about the radio adaptation but had never put into words. Since then, discussing the films with many friends and colleagues, I have realized that I seem to be almost alone in my "reading." And that interests me, almost as much as the understanding of what The Lord of the Rings has meant in my own life.

The second problem was worse than the first, and this time lacked even the thin justification of saving screen time. In The Two Towers, Pippin and Merry meet up with the Ents after their escape from Sarurnan's Orcs. The Ents to me were well visualised, with excellent voices. But in Fangorn a debate arises—will the Ents go to war? In the books we do not hear their debates—the two hobbits, whom we accompany, are left to await the outcome. But I always "imagined in" these discussions—building up to the decisive "Hoom" as the Ents broke their Entmoot and began their march on Isengard. As Treebeard says, they are almost certainly going to their doom. This will be the last march of the Ents. But this is right, and inevitable. The film disposes of this, without compunction. Jackson's Ents refuse to go to war, and have to be tricked into it. Led the wrong way by Pippin, Treebeard is shown the devastation of the forest wreaked by Saruman (as if he would not already know: he, the shepherd of the trees) and is enraged. The Ents, from being embodiments of long wisdom, became foolish, grumpy, diminished creatures. Instead of reasoning their way to a decision, and accepting the fate this imposed on them, they became servants to others' wills (emphasis added) (83-4).

. . . .

To me, there is a clear pattern linking these four refusals of mine. The chain that combines them is the certainty that for me The Lord of the Rings is a very particular fictional treatise on the nature of evil. Only a deeply reasoning assembly of peoples committed to its defeat could unmask its deceits, see past their own ignorance and uncertainties, and assemble the sheer will and courage to keep fighting, no matter what the cost. The story did not need to be as simple as an allegory (now that I know what that word means!). It was a sensibility. There was a structuring principle to the evils of the world—the Vietnam war, the Bomb, apartheid, and so on—but it hid itself. The principle behind evil in the world was huge, and dangerous, and could only be defeated by acts of unlikely will. But if there is no space for reason to operate, no Kantian moment when humans can rise above the first impulses and work out the principles of operation of Evil, there can be no Hope (85).

While agreeing 1000% with Barker’s point here, there is an additional reason I so dislike the film—I have always loved trees. I remember some of the trees from my childhood home and various places I’ve lived more vividly than I remember the places I lived. There was a locust tree in our front yard, and, tucked away behind the garage, an Italian prune tree (ripe prunes piIcked and eaten while sitting in the sunshine reading a book! so hobbity!), and across the lane (we lived out in the country), a white poplar tree that was huge (towering well above their house) and a dream to climb into. Its branches were sturdy and thick, and I could sit on one, leaning back against the trunk, reading for hours. I’ve put that tree into a surprising number of my fanfics over the years.

And I loved the Ents (I also love the absent Entwives—and plan someday to write an essay or maybe a story about their decision to lead a separatist life!). Seeing Treebeard tricked undercut a lot of the wonder of the film.

And while I understand the decision, I also miss Bregalad (Quickbeam) and the description of the time that Merry and Pippin spend with him while the Moot is going on! Treebeard sings a part of Bregalad’s song in the EE of the film, but it’s not the same!

Mature Rowan Tree (Wikimedia repository)

'Hm, boom, here I am again,' said Treebeard. 'Are you getting weary, or feeling impatient, hmm, eh? Well, I am afraid that you must not get impatient yet. We have finished the first stage now; but I have still got to explain things again to those that live a long way off, far from Isengard, and those that I could not get round to before the Moot, and after that we shall have to decide what to do. However, deciding what to do does not take Ents so long as going over all the facts and events that they have to make up their minds about. Still, it is no use denying, we shall be here a long time yet: a couple of days very likely. So I have brought you a companion. He has an ent-house nearby. Bregalad is his Elvish name. He says he has already made up his mind and does not need to remain at the Moot. Hm, hm, he is the nearest thing among us to a hasty Ent. You ought to get on together. Good-bye!' Treebeard turned and left them.

Bregalad stood for some time surveying the hobbits solemnly; and they looked at him, wondering when he would show any signs of 'hastiness'. He was tall, and seemed to be one of the younger Ents; he had smooth shining skin on his arms and legs; his lips were ruddy, and his hair was grey-green. He could bend and sway like a slender tree in the wind. At last he spoke, and his voice though resonant was higher and clearer than Treebeard's.

'Ha, hmm, my friends, let us go for a walk!' he said. 'I am Bregalad, that is Quickbeam in your language. But it is only a nickname, of course. They have called me that ever since I said yes to an elder Ent before he had finished his question. Also I drink quickly, and go out while some are still wetting their beards. Come with me!'

He reached down two shapely arms and gave a long-fingered hand to each of the hobbits. All that day they walked about, in the woods with him, singing, and laughing; for Quickbeam often laughed. He laughed if the sun came out from behind a cloud, he laughed if they came upon a stream or spring: then he stooped and splashed his feet and head with water; he laughed sometimes at some sound or whisper in the trees. Whenever he saw a rowan-tree he halted a while with his arms stretched out, and sang, and swayed as he sang.

At nightfall he brought them to his ent-house: nothing more than a mossy stone set upon turves under a green bank. Rowan-trees grew in a circle about it, and there was water (as in all ent-houses), a spring bubbling out from the bank. T hey talked for a while as darkness fell on the forest. Not far away the voices of the Entmoot could be heard still going on; but now they seemed deeper and less leisurely, and every now and again one great voice would rise in a high and quickening music, while all the others died away. But beside them Bregalad spoke gently in their own tongue, almost whispering; and they learned that he belonged to Skinbark's people, and the country where they had lived had been ravaged. That seemed to the hobbits quite enough to explain his 'hastiness', at least in the matter of Orcs.

'There were rowan-trees in my home,' said Bregalad, softly and sadly, 'rowan-trees that took root when I was an Enting, many many years ago in the quiet of the world. The oldest were planted by the Ents to try and please the Entwives; but they looked at them and smiled and said that they knew where whiter blossom and richer fruit were growing. Yet there are no trees of all that race, the people of the Rose, that are so beautiful to me. And these trees grew and grew, till the shadow of each was like a green hall, and their red berries in the autumn were a burden, and a beauty and a wonder. Birds used to flock there. I like birds, even when they chatter; and the rowan has enough and to spare. But the birds became unfriendly and greedy and tore at the trees, and threw the fruit down and did not eat it. Then Orcs came with axes and cut down my trees. I came and called them by their long names, but they did not quiver, they did not hear or answer: they lay dead.

O Orofarne, Lassemista, Carnimirie! 
O rowan fair, upon your hair how white the blossom lay! 
O rowan mine, I saw you shine upon a summer's day, 
Your rind so bright, your leaves so light, your voice so cool and soft: 
Upon your head how golden-red the crown you bore aloft! 
O rowan dead, upon y our head your hair is dry and grey; 
Your crown is spilled, your voice is stilled for ever and a day. 
O Orofarne, Lassemista, Carnimirie!' 

The hobbits fell asleep to the sound of the soft singing of Bregalad, that seemed to lament in many tongues the fall of trees that he had loved.

The next day they spent also in his company, but they did not go far from his 'house'. Most of the time they sat silent under the shelter of the bank; for the wind was colder, and the clouds closer and greyer; there was little sunshine, and in the distance the voices of the Ents at the Moot still rose and fell, sometimes loud and strong, sometimes low and sad, sometimes quickening, sometimes slow and solemn as a dirge. A second night came and still the Ents held conclave under hurrying clouds and fitful stars.

The third day broke, bleak and windy. At sunrise the Ents' voices rose to a great clamour and then died down again. As the morning wore on the wind fell and the air grew heavy with expectancy. The hobbits could see that Bregalad was now listening intently, although to them, down in the dell of his ent-house, the sound of the Moot was faint.

The afternoon came, and the sun, going west towards the mountains, sent out long yellow beams between the cracks and fissures of the clouds. Suddenly they were aware that everything was very quiet; the whole forest stood in listening silence. Of course, the Ent-voices had stopped. What did that mean? Bregalad was standing up erect and tense, looking back northwards towards Derndingle.

Then with a crash came a great ringing shout: ra-hoom-rah! The trees quivered and bent as if a gust h ad struck them. There was another pause, and then a marching music began like solemn drums, and above the rolling beats and booms there welled voices singing high and strong.

We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!

The Ents were coming: ever nearer and louder rose their song:

We come, we com e with horn and drum : ta-runa runa runa rom!

Bregalad picked up the hobbits and strode from his house.

Before long they saw the marching line approaching: the Ents were swinging along with great strides down the slope towards them. Treebeard was at their head, and some fifty followers were behind him, two abreast, keeping step with their feet and beating time with their hands upon their flanks. As they drew near the flash and flicker of their eyes could be seen.

'Hoom, hom! Here we come with a boom, here we come at last!' called Treebeard when he caught sight of Bregalad and the hobbits. 'Come, join the Moot! We are off. We are off to Isengard!' (LotR.3.4.482-84)

Speaking of the Ents:

New Zealand Tree of the Year [Image credit: Gareth Anderson]

Story about the "walking tree" (northern rātā) which, of course, mentions the Ents

And, a final image, one of my own photos, of one of the numerous amazing trees from Greenacres Memorial Park (which I wrote about in this post about death and dying):

Next up, and possibly the last in the series, Éowyn!

1. Not sure how familiar this term will be to people these days: it is a recent coinage in U.S. English according to the OED! It is one of those terms that (in my experience, back in the 1960s-1970s in northern Idaho) was downright derogatory, sometimes falling into the category of "fighting words,” but I suspect in the intervening forty years, a number of us have re/claimed it for a positive term. I’m pretty darn sure Tolkien was, in fact, a tree hugger.

Chiefly U.S.

1965–

A person who cares for trees or the environment, an environmentalist (usually depreciative); (also literal) a person who adopts a position embracing a tree to prevent it from being felled.

1965         

The battle was between the tree huggers and the city. The city won, 100-0. Appleton (Wisconsin) Post Crescent 10 September 1/4

1977         

Leaves are starting to turn now...Tree huggers predict colors will be most vibrant starting Oct. 15. (‘Tree huggers’ is what rangers assigned to the Washington area call themselves.) Washington Post 7 October (Weekend section) 1/1

1982

‘Tree hugger’, some mutter, and I would say it myself before them. After all, I have not yet met an environmentalist who refuses to drive a car. New York Times 8 May 23/6

1990

Mahatma Gandhi's spirit also resides in the Chipko Movement, India's tree huggers. R. Scarce, Eco-warriors ii. viii. 157

2000

Britain is totally dependent on..the cheap and easy availability of fossil fuel; you don't need to be a tree-hugger to realise that this can't go on forever. Truck & Driver November 9/2

“Tree-hugger, N.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, July 2023, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/3611248537.

2. Part 1 reveals who you can blame who inspired my series: Jokien With Tolkien’s post on Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and Mercury Natis’s post on The Rings of Power Celebrimor problem.

Part 2 is about my personal journey from Tolkien (book) fan to Jackson (film) fan (Jackson’s films reignited my Tolkien book fandom in a huge way), to changing my academic agenda from a focus on feminist speculative fiction to, well, getting grumpy about the backlash against the film by (some) academics, to educating myself on film and adaptation studies.

Part 3 is my weird (in a GOOD neurodivergent subverting academic canons kinda way) to a comparison between reception of “Shakespeare’s” plays [of which I was a huge fan in my undergraduate English major days] and the centuries-long debates over their meaning and “quality” plus bonus information about an anthropologist’s essay on the different understanding of the story of Hamlet which she tried to describe to the people whose culture she was studying. That essay was one of the major *click* moments in my feminist life. After wandering around “Shakespeare,” I end up with a section on Queer “Shakespeare” and Queer “Tolkien” by way of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s life-changing (yep) theory!

Part 3.5 is my ongoing wandering all around Robin Hood’s barn wherein I connect Shakespeare, Tolkien (how his “Leaf by Niggle” is *my* allegory for my thinking/writing processes!), to talk about some of my current work on the backlash against changes in Tolkien fandoms and adaptations and academic approaches that started a few years ago. Basically, far-right extremists (many of whom love “Tolkien’s” imagined White Middle Ages and want to go back to them) who are of course all about “preserving White (AKA) their imagined Western Civilization) often compare Tolkien to Shakespeare! There are, I should warn you, numbers involved!

Part 4 is my answers to questions about Jackson’s adaptations that Jokien with Tolkien asked in the original post. I actually answer all three, but then realized I needed to have at least two more posts that would cover two of the adaptation choicees in the characterization of Éowyn and in the narrative about the Ents: these are both parts of the film I mostly love unreservedly, but there is one small part of each that I *really* dislike.

3. I saw The Fellowship of the Ring 45 times before it left the theatres (starting from its opening night and ending sometime in mid-August, having to drive increasing differences every few months!), and at every. single. viewing. as I stayed in my seat to watch all the credits (which I did every time), and almost everybody else started standing up and shuffling out, someone would exclaim, loudly, “but he still has the Ring! How come it’s the end,” proving that not only had they not read the books, they hadn’t read enough of the publicity to know there were three films.

4. Barker, Martin. "On Being a 1960s Tolkien Reader." From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Eds. Mathijs, Ernest and Murray Pomerance. Contemporary Cinema (Contemporary Cinema): 3. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2006. 81-99.

5. A quote from a recent presentation of mine which I am not posting online because it will probably become the basis for one of the chapters in the book I plan to write on the subject:

I draw on Martin Barker's discussion of "interpretive communities" from his essay on being a 1960’s Lord of the Rings reader who did not fit the media stereotype of the "American hippy" that Anglophone Tolkien studies has not questioned. Drawing on his own experiences of reading the novel during the '60s, and seeing the film decades later, Barker considers the limitations and range of the concept of “interpretive communities” that scholars have identified: “actual communities" like family/friends or book club members; categorical communities based on a common characteristic such gender, ethnicity, class; and virtual (online) communities. These categories overlap. In order to categorize the "1960's LotR readers," he proposes a concept that I find valuable for my work: the “projected community” which he defines as people who “may conceive of a set of shared values, even of the sorts of people with whom they could want to form a community, but so far only in their heads, or partially or fragmentarily. . . .might become the stimulus to action, to finding others to share it.” He describes the 1960's LotR fandom (Anglophone)  as “a very particular kind of projecting towards an interpretive community” (90).

He was also part of the group who organized and ran the international Lord of the Rings film research project (and followed that up with another international project on The Hobbit! So he is definitely a scholar whose work on reception theory is required reading for anybody interested in that approach.