Master of Middle Earth

by Paul H. Kocher

  And counsel together took

  Who should of dwarfs

  The race then fashion,

  From the livid bones

  And blood of the giant.

  Modsognir, chief

  Of the dwarfish race,

  And Durin too

  Were then created.

  And like to men

  Dwarfs in the earth

  Were formed in numbers

  As Durin ordered.14

  Dwarves are the only folk fashioned in this way. Tolkien keeps the idea of their uniqueness but not the particular method of it recounted in the Eddas.

  Another racial peculiarity which he fastens upon dwarves is the small number of their women. Only one third of all dwarves are female, Tolkien says, and not all of these choose to marry. In consequence most dwarf males never marry, and children are few. Those males who do get wives keep them for life "and are jealous, as in all matters of their rights." The devastating effects of these statistics upon dwarf character in general can be imagined, and are certainly more than enough in themselves to produce the inbred clannishness and surly tenacity that drive away other races.

  The sexual imbalance is the probable cause also of the intense secretiveness of Durin's folk. They have a language of their own which they guard so jealously that "few of other race have succeeded in learning it." Each dwarf, moreover, has his own "secret and inner" name, his "true" name, never revealed to any one of alien race. "Not even on their tombs do they inscribe them." What Gimli's true name is we never find out, nor does Legolas, intimately though the two come to know each other. Gandalf refers to this instinct for privacy in describing the rare silver mined in Moria, which elves call mithril: "The Dwarves have a name which they do not tell . . . The Dwarves tell no tale." Galadriel in Lórien knows how to make secrecy an element in her test of Gimli's loyalty to the Fellowship: "And it seemed to me too," he reports to his companions afterward, "that my choice would remain secret and known only to myself."

  The artistic sensibilities of male dwarves, which make them master craftsmen in metals and stone, seem to be a sublimation of their sexual frustration. Being unable to have marriage, "very many" males come not to desire it, "being engrossed in their crafts." Even their love of beauty, however, is usually colored (or tainted) with the jealous possessiveness that runs through so many facets of their nature. Listening to Thorin's crew sing praise of the smithy work of their ancestors, Bilbo "felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves."15 We have Gimli's word for it, though, that when confronted by the supreme loveliness of the caves of Aglarond in Helm's Deep his people would rise above all thoughts of gain, as he does. "There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them . . . None of Durin's race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there . . . We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them." Caught up above his usual dour self, Gimli proceeds to give a superbly lyrical picture of the echoing domes and chambers underground, the glint of polished walls, marble columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose springing "from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces!" Here he is a true spokesman for the finer qualities of his race.

  As suggested above, Gimli's membership in the Fellowship of the Ring enables him to become an ambassador for the dwarves to other members of the band and to the other peoples whom they meet on their journey. In Moria he opens the eyes of the hobbits, of Legolas, the elf, and Boromir, the man, to the past glories of Durin's civilization. To the Lórien elves he exhibits dwarf pride and obstinacy in preferring to fight rather than be treated as a spy. Galadriel welcomes him, after setting aside the law which excludes strangers, as an ambassador of good will for his race: ". . . today we have broken our long law. May it be a sign that though the world is now dark better days are at hand, and that friendship shall be renewed between our peoples." He learns in Lórien to accept the love and understanding that she offers him and, so learning, he outgrows the parochialism of his kind. In asking as a parting gift only a strand of her hair "which surpasses the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine" he transcends dwarf obsession for both gold and gems and frees the longing for beauty, the love of love, from the alloy of earthly price. Galadriel can then foretell of him that '"your hands will flow with gold, and yet over you gold shall have no dominion." Gimli also accepts the role as peacemaker between elves and dwarves that she has proposed for him. When he returns home he will set her hair in imperishable crystal as "a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days."

  This new admiration for Galadriel opens Gimli to a new understanding and liking for Legolas. Thereafter elf and dwarf become inseparable, to the wonder of all who see together these members of two inveterately hostile races. The friendship affords Tolkien countless opportunities for comparing elf and dwarf nature. Although both are sad when leaving Lórien, Gimli is the sadder because he is leaving Galadriel, whose memory will always be torturingly sweet to him. In his own memorable words: "Torment in the dark was the danger I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy." Legolas tries to comfort him with the thought that his memories will remain always clear, and never fade or grow stale. This is precisely the trouble, Gimli answers. Elves may enjoy memory as a reliving of past experience, but dwarves need the reality of the experience itself. "Memory is not what the heart desires. That is only a mirror . . . Elves may see things otherwise. Indeed I have heard that for them memory is more like to the waking world than to a dream. Not so for Dwarves." Inherent in the fabric of the two races is a difference in the operation and effect of memory.

  Although Legolas and Gimli are standing together on the plains of Rohan when Éomer belittles Galadriel as a perilous enchantress, it is the dwarf, not the elf, who almost precipitates a hopeless battle by bluntly rebuking him, regardless of consequences. Gimli's renewal of the challenge to single combat in her defense on several later occasions takes on a comic aspect and is humorously avoided by Éomer, but Gimli never thinks it funny. In truth, the dwarf temper is not much given to humor. I can think of only one occasion when Gimli jokes about anything, and that comes when Pippin and Merry are reunited with their comrades outside Isengard and Gimli joshes them over and over as "truants" who had to be rescued from the ores—not a notably hilarious subject. Legolas, by contrast, is high-spirited by nature, except when he longs for the sea. The two make a striking contrast as they walk into Minas Tirith for the first time, Legolas fair of face and singing, "but Gimli stalked beside him, stroking his beard and staring about him" at the city's masonry: "There is some good stone-work here . . . but also some that is less good, and the streets could be better contrived." In their ensuing argument about the durability of the works of men against change Gimli takes the pessimistic view against Legolas' more hopeful one. From the plurals they use they seem to be speaking as representatives of their respective races, as well as individuals.

  At the start of The Lord of the Rings Durin's offspring, by nature, by circumstance, and by the machinations of Sauron, are largely outcasts and self-outcasts (the one follows hard upon the other) from the society of Western peoples. By the end of the tale the breach has been healed as well as it can be among races so disparate. Dwarves under Dáin have done their share in battle against the northern wing of Sauron's armies. Their leaders permit Gimli to take dwarf masons and other artisans to help rebuild and strengthen Minas Tirith, capital city of the new ruling race of men. As a trusted companion of Aragorn he will be a major link between the human race and his own. As the friend of Legolas, who visits Gimli's new dwarf colony in the caves of Aglarond, he is a link with the Silvan elves of Mirkwood, to whose kingship Legolas is heir. As a visitor to Fangorn Forest with Legolas he w
ill become better known to the ents. And to every hobbit who reads Frodo's manuscript tale in the Red Book he will be as familiar as their own heroes of the Shire.

  3. Ents

  Tolkien's imperial success in his invention of the ent folk, the great tree herders of Fangorn Forest, owes not a little to a deep personal love for trees, which began early in life. Even as a very young boy his greatest enthusiasm was for stories about Indians "and above all, forests in such stories."16 When he wrote of fantasy's power to tell tales of men conversing with birds and beasts, he always added "and trees," which he conceived of as speaking a language peculiar to themselves.17 By his own account the primary inspiration for his autobiographical story, "Leaf by Niggle," was a poplar tree outside his bedroom window, which "was suddenly lopped off and mutilated by its owner, I do not know why. It is cut down now, a less barbarous punishment for any crimes it may have been accused of, such as being large and alive. I do not think it had any friends, or any mourners, except myself and a pair of owls."18 Tolkien's sense of the aliveness of this poplar, and consequently of the cruelty done to it, is so strong as to arouse in him the indignation one might feel at the murder of a man.

  Ents are the oldest of all living races, older even than the elf-sires of the First Age, but "asleep" at first in silent awareness of themselves alone. Then elves came along and "waked" them. This is the same metaphor of awakening from sleep which was used earlier to describe Durin's creation and birth. For the ents Treebeard recalls it in this way: "Elves began it, of course, waking trees up and teaching them to speak and learning their tree-talk. They always wished to talk to everything, the old Elves did." Appendix F, in analyzing the ent language, says that it is "unlike all others: slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive ..." and that to the elves the ents "ascribed not their own language but the desire for speech." In other words, before elves stirred them up ents had an undeveloped potentiality for speech. From the elves they got the elf tongues, which they used in talking to others, and the stimulus to articulate their own language, which they used only among themselves. "They had no need to keep it secret, for no others could learn it." Yet, purposely or not, ents now resembled dwarves in having a secret language and, possibly as a consequence, the same suspicious reluctance to divulge their "true" names, for fear of putting themselves in the power of their enemies. Treebeard will not reveal his to Merry and Pippin or anybody else, and reproaches them as rashly "hasty" in trusting him with theirs without knowing more about him. After all, there are plenty of wicked ents in the depths of Fangorn Forest who contracted evil from Morgoth during the Great Darkness in the north.

  With these kinsmen Treebeard has no traffic, and keeps strangers out of their way; for the ents are subject to the same moral principles as are other fully conscious peoples. Aragorn's universal maxim, "Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men," applies to the ents equally. Treebeard is practicing it when he assures Merry and Pippin that he has no intention of restricting their liberty: "I am not going to do anything with you: not if you mean by that 'do something to you', without your leave. We might do some things together." Like Elrond, Aragorn, Gandalf, and other principals he has a most tender regard for freedom of choice. Though the oldest and most respected leader of his tribe, he orders none of its members to attack Isengard but puts the question up for open discussion by the Entmoot. Noteworthy also is his care in ascribing "bad hearts" to trees only after they have turned into ents, when they have achieved full consciousness. "Some are quite wide awake, and a few are, well, ah, well getting Entish . . . When that happens to a tree, you find that some have bad hearts. Before then they may be somewhat contaminated ("That sort of thing seems to spread") but they are still essentially "asleep" and therefore not altogether responsible.

  This slow awakening of some trees to ent status is going on all the time and forms one part of a remarkable cycle fundamental to the life of ents. Ents are like elves in that they never die unless killed by injuries inflicted by others from the outside. Nevertheless a number have died in this fashion down through the years. In the beginnings of their race these were replaced by the normal method of sexual reproduction through the entwives. At the time when Merry and Pippin enter Fangorn, however, these females have entirely disappeared from the ken of the males. They have not died out. Long ago, even in the First Age, the ents and entwives slowly developed such incompatibilities of interest that they grew apart entirely, and the entwives left the forests in which they were born. The ents remained there because they loved the trees in their wild state, "and ate only of such fruit as the trees let fall in their path; and they learned of the Elves and spoke with the Trees." But the entwives became interested in the shrubs, fruit trees, herbs, and grains growing in the meadows outside the woods. They were not content merely to speak to these plants and leave them as they were but they "wished them to hear and obey what was said to them" and made them grow as they were ordered, ". . . for the Entwives desired order, and plenty, and peace (by which they meant that things should remain where they had set them). So the Entwives made gardens to live in." By this route they became the inventors of the arts of agriculture, which men learned from them.

  At first the male ents used to leave their forests periodically to visit the females, begging them to return, but in looking for better agricultural lands the latter moved so far away that the males lost sight of them entirely. When last seen they were being so changed in appearance by their work—"bent and browned by their labours, their hair bleached and cheeks reddened by the sun—that Treebeard is not sure he knows what they look like now. For a long while the ents searched Middle-earth for them in vain, but "the wild wood called and we returned to it" and now the memory of the entwives is only a perpetual sorrow, still strong enough to keep Treebeard wistfully asking everybody he meets whether they have been sighted anywhere. Like other races ents have a vision of a hereafter of happiness. For them it takes the form of a reunion with the entwives in "a land where we can live together and both be content." According to the beautiful ballad dialogue which Treebeard hums for the hobbits, this land lies in "the West" but can be reached only after a bitter winter during which the two separated sexes lose all they have.

  This separation is the abiding tragedy of the ents. It has come about because the male propensity to wildness and free wandering and the female desire for a settled, orderly home have not been reconciled by a strong enough sexual instinct for reproduction, as in other races. Consequently, in order to insure the continuance of the species, nature has had to substitute a different method. Treebeard cannot explain it altogether to the hobbits because "I do not understand all that goes on myself." He knows enough, however, to observe that a cycle has been inaugurated by which some (not all) trees grow into enthood while some (not all) ents decline into treehood. His contemporary, Leaflock, for example, "has grown sleepy, almost tree-ish . . . he has taken to standing by himself half-asleep all through the summer with the deep grass of the meadows around his knees." Of late even in winter he has been too drowsy to walk far. Leaflock and others like him make up the class of huorns, half-tree, half-ent, who tear down the walls of Isengard and smother to death the ore army besieging Helm's Deep. Their ferocity terrifies the hobbits. Relapsing back toward raw nature the passions of the huorns are no longer bridled by rationality.

  Ents share with dwarves an abnormality of sexual life and with elves an endless longevity. But they react to these problems in quite contrasting ways. Unlike dwarves they have not let the loss of their mates drive them into either a surly possessiveness in some cases or a love or art in others. Ents have no art. They are friendly enough creatures, and they maintain a strong sense of responsibility for their work as guardians of the forest. Unlike elves they seem to have solved satisfactorily the puzzle of how to live undying in a world where everything else dies. The heart of their solution lies in their handling of memory. In Gimli's view elves' memory of the past can
be as vivid as life in the present—a very mixed blessing for them, perhaps even a curse—whereas dwarves remember the past as irrecoverable past. Ents, on the other hand, have eyes in which Pippin sees "an enormous well . . . filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present: like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree . . ." For them life is a history in which the past grows into the present, all in due order, and they remember every part of it sequentially and calmly. In fact their language is such as to incorporate into the names of persons and places all the events which have made them what they are, adding new events as they occur. Treebeard's true name "is growing all the time," and the name of Lórien is changing to match its fortunes.

  In any comparison of ents with the other races of Middle-earth Treebeard's analysis of their similarities and dissimilarities with men and elves must be preeminent. The feeling of ents for trees is much closer than that of shepherds for sheep, he says, because ents are good at "getting inside other things." In this they resemble elves more than men, who are more interested in themselves than in other beings. On the other hand, ents are closer to men and farther from elves in taking on the color of any new environment they enter. Elves always remain the same. Finally, ents excel both elves and men in being able to "keep their minds on things longer" and more steadily. Treebeard's central interest here is the relative sensitivity of the three races to other "things," meaning living beings. Men seem to come off rather the worst of the three, as perhaps we should. Still, the analysis may not be altogether objective, since Treebeard confesses later, "I take more kindly to Elves than to the others: it was the Elves that cured us of dumbness long ago ... though our ways have parted since."

  "Our ways have parted since." These are words which might have come from the lips of any one of the free peoples of Middle-earth in speaking of any or all of the others. Through natural preoccupation with its own needs or through discord sown by Sauron each has become an island unto itself. Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin that he has not troubled himself about wars heretofore. They mostly concern elves and men. Let wizards, whose business it is, worry about the future. "I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side . . . nobody cares for the woods as I care for them, not even Elves nowadays." But as Aragorn brings to Rohan the doom of choice, so do the hobbits bring it to Fangorn with their news of the crisis in the outside world. "Young Saruman" has been irritating Treebeard for some time by cutting down trees for his factories. The understanding that the wizard is on one side of the coming struggle finally pushes the ent leader into action on the other.