IV. TOLKIEN, WAR, HISTORY AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS

IV. TOLKIEN, WAR, HISTORY AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Many readers have interpreted the story as a direct allegory to World Wars (even to nuclear power). War is in fact present within Lord of the Rings and it influenced Tolkien as he inevitably witnessed the two biggest and worst wars in Western Civilization. But he didn't condemn both world wars as much as he condemned the concept of war itself. We may find traces from what Tolkien thought about war as well as images he may have well transposed from his experience in the battlefield.

According to Tolkien scholars, Ents are supposed to have their origin in the delusion Tolkien suffered when he attended a performance of Macbeth and saw soldiers hidden within trunks instead of living trees approaching Dunsinane. Concerning shape there is no more discussion about. But their attitude and deeds owe a debt to something Tolkien experienced some miles before reaching the Somme:

The eight hundred or so men of the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers were lodged in barns at Rubempré, a cluster of old but sturdy farms north-east of Amiens and thirteen miles from the front. It was just about the cleanest and most comfortable spot in the British army area behind the Somme front line, but Tolkien had to set up his new camp bed on a farmhouse floor.

Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War, 148

As these farms of Amiens, Fangorn forest turns out to be the last safe place before reaching Orthanc. Merry and Pippin meet the Ents and camp there. And what is more, they attend an assembly of Ents and watch them go to war. As said before, both the farm and the ent-cave are places in the Wild.

'This is an ent-house,' he said, 'and there are no seats, I fear. But you may sit on the table'

[...]

On the right side of the bay there was a great bed on low legs, not more than a couple of feet high, covered deep in dried grass and brackets.

Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 460

Again, John Garth illustrates the facts concerning war and we surprisingly notice the coincidence with Ents daily drama:

This was a migrant community exiled from home, without women or children or old people, and the vast majority had joined in the first two months of the war, many of them in their mill clogs.

Garth, John. Tolkien and the Great War, 149

[...] 'There have been no Entings - no children, you would say, not for a terrible long count of years. you see, we lost the Entwives.'

Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 464