Nature in The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s Secret Hero Part 2: The Two Towers
- liammagin133
- Dec 15, 2025
- 8 min read
Nature in The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien’s Secret Hero Part 2: The Two Towers
Building upon my first article dedicated to Lord of The Rings, it is evident that nature is more than a background in the novel. Drawing on Romantic tradition, the English writer portrays It as a true healing force that guides real world readers in their reading journey. Similarly, in Tolkien’s The Two Towers, Nature again appears as a key feature of the novel. It once again protects and cures protagonists, stressing the importance to respectfully handle it. Moreover, the natural world is depicted as a strong force that is able to defend itself, as the Ents eventually put an end to Saruman’s wild industrial colonisation. Their rebellion against Saruman demonstrates to Tolkien’s readers that Nature truly is a force to be reckoned with.
(here is a pdf version of the article):
The presence of Romantic traditions in Tolkien’s world takes shape early in The Two Towers as nature is described as an extraordinary place providing healing and shelter. After having escaped from the Huruk-Hai’s claws, Pippin and Merry find themselves in the Fangorn forest where they encounter a new Middle Earth species: the Ents. These Ents are different than regular trees which cannot move nor talk (468). This is what Fangorn explains to the hobbits and adds that there is no clear boundary between trees and ents: “many [ents] are going treeish” and some trees are getting “entish”, he says (468). What this implies is that all regular trees have within them the ability to, at some point, begin to move and talk. Seemingly alive or not then, Tolkien proposes here through Fangorn that all trees truly live. And more than living themselves, they enable others to live since Merry and Pippin are fostered by “Treebeard”, as they call Fangorn. The forest becomes for them a Sacred place, a sanctuary that allows them to recover from the atrocities they experienced with the orcs. Indeed, they are captured by Saruman’s huruk-hai who, during a “cold” night (454), threaten to “cut [them] both to quivering shreds” (456). As they escape from their enemies’ claws, they immediately run to the “dark and tangled forest” of Fangorn where their “fear of the Orcs die[s] away” (461). There, the water they drink from a stream “seems to cheer their hearts” (451). Evidently then, the role of the Fangorn forest is twofold. First, nature offers them a protection from the dangers of the Orcs but also from their own mind, symbolised by their fear. Without the forest’s shelter, the hobbits would probably have been killed or re captured. Secondly, the place provides them solace as the water betters their mood. Consequently, the Hobbits’ survival depends on their stay in the wilderness. Running to some wood to hide might at first seem benign, but because of the industrialisation brought by Saruman, it is a precious move that the wizard undermines by deforesting the land (more about it in the next paragraph). By creating a tension resolved with an apparently normal and simple act hiding in the woods, Tolkien re affirms the extraordinary out of the ordinary, one of fantasy’s functions, and thereby enables readers to themselves consider their surroundings from a “fresh, startling perspective” (Tolkien “On Fairy-Stories”, qted. in Niiler 1999:279). In its essence, this idea is very Romantic as it echoes what Percy Bysshe Shelley explains in his “A Defence of Poetry”. Indeed, the English poet similarly elaborates on the idea that poetry[1] “creates anew the universe after it had been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration” (Shelley 698). In other words, Tolkien’s book manages to convey that nature’s power might be diluted by our daily lives, but it nonetheless remains as extraordinary as important.
Interestingly, a year before the release of Lord of the Rings, French writer Jean Giono writes The Man Who Planted Trees when asked by the “The Reader’s Digest” to write a text for their rubric about the most extraordinary person he has ever met. Like the Hobbits, Giono’s narrator is compelled to travel because of a conflict, World War 1, and eventually closes his narrative in front of “this immense spectacle” of oak trees where he decides to come back to heal. The traveller concludes by stating that the tree planter’s work is of a godly level (Giono 34)[2], what implies that no technology will ever be greater than Nature. Tolkien’s characters are therefore far from the only ones to find unexpected help and solace in Mother Nature, showing how ecology and fiction can intersect. As discussed, just like in Fellowship of the Ring, the second part of the story highlights the importance of natural places as the protagonists rely on nature to thrive. On a literal level, for example, trees truly help other species to survive thanks to their key role in the creation of oxygen. From a philosophical point of view, what these events convey is that nature must be treated as a sacred place (not subdued) notably because it is a key element in one’s survival. Again, such an idea is deeply Romantic. For example, in his poem “To Nature”, Romantic writer S.T. Coleridge writes the following lines:
It may indeed be fantasy when I
Essay to draw from all created things
Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings;
And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie
Lessons of love and earnest piety.
So let it be; and if the wide world rings
In mock of this belief, it brings
Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity.
So will I build my altar in the fields (“To nature”)
What Coleridge proposes there is that because nature teaches him “lessons of love and earnest piety”, he should “build [his] altar in the field”, thereby turning nature into a moral compass and a church. His plan and vision might seem like a “fantasy” that some “mock”, but that does not bring him any “fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity”. Nature is for him a sacred place, a cathedral, that should be protected. In the light of what was explained until now, this is also what Tolkien’s The Two Towers and The Fellowship of The Ring teach their readers. Nature heals and guides and should therefore be treated with the utmost respect or, in other words, like a sacred place.
Nevertheless, not all humans agree to respect nature, and some do not hesitate to subdue it entirely for their own purposes. In the saga, Saruman surfaces as an antagonist to nature and his industrialisation of Isengard provokes nature’s retaliation. Unfortunately for the wizard, nature reclaims its freedom and eventually leave his realm barren. The book thereby suggests that Mother Nature is strong and independent as it recovers its silenced voice from the industrial Saruman. Coming back to the Ents, they are troubled by their belligerent neighbour of Isengard. As explained in my first article on the saga, the wizard took control of Orthanc and industrialised it to create an army of Uruk-Hai, dead elves risen from the dead to fight for “the black evil” (473). Logically then, Fangorn positions himself as an enemy of Saruman (472), because many of the Ent’s friends perished during the invasion (474). Later, “Treebeard” sharply describes the wizard Saruman, who has a “mind of wheels and steel”, “does not care for growing things, except if they serve him for the moment”. Evidently, this mindset is what enables him to take advantage of a piece of land to fuel his quest for power, symbolised by the Ring (he works for Sauron, but his greed even leads him to betray the Dark Lord). Eventually, Treebeard and his congeners manage to recover their land and envision a new era where the Ents and trees are again living in peace: “[l]eave it to the Ents […] trees are coming back to live here, old trees, wild trees” (587). Such a turnaround suggests a powerful nature, symbolised by the Ents, that can reclaim its rights from an economically powerful organisation, symbolised by Saruman and his affiliation to Sauron. In this defiance to Saruman, Tolkien seems to draw on British Romanticism again. This time, there is a common theme with one of England’s great nature poets, William Wordsworth in his “The Tables Turned”:
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher. (Wordsworth “The Tables Turned”, stanzas 1-4)
Just as Wordsworth urges his readers to “Let nature be [their] teacher, the Ents become the living proof that Saruman must and can be defeated. Nature is a teacher that shows to Merry and Pippin that regardless of how powerful Saruman and Sauron seem to be, they too can be beaten, and their defeat does not require revolutionary techniques. The natural world is more than a teacher: it is a true master. Saruman, the self-proclaimed master of Isengard, in spite of his magic, technology and might, could not even resist the flood provoked by the Ents. there is no need of even Gandalf to help the Ents as they reconquer Isengard alone: “the ents […] sent Isengard back into its old course [,] and that was the end of it [Saruman’s reign] all” (572) recounts Pippin. Furthermore, the Ents’ rebellion shows that Trees have voices too, as Fangorn stresses (474), and are now evidently able to make themselves heard and they are not on anyone’s side because “no one cares about the trees” (476). With its political neutrality, the species reclaim its position and independence amongst other people of the Middle Earth. They do not make alliance for protection because they visibly do not need it. If they enjoy a better relationship with Gandalf, it is not because of any treaty but because of his respectful conduct towards the non-human other, exemplified by his remark to Merry regarding the wizard’s horse: “Shadowfax decides whom mounts him not otherwise” (597). Interestingly, Tolkien is not alone in giving trees a voice. Long before him, in 1653, Margaret Cavendish imagined a dialogue between a tree and a man in her “A Dialogue between an Oak and a Man Cutting Him Down”. As humanity’s relationship evolved since then (from proto capitalist (Moore 2002) to capitalist and in both cases anthropocentric), the writer of The Hobbit pushes her dialogue further and conceives a rebellious response from nature against the threat of industrialisation, thereby continuing to use art as a form of environmentalism. With Saruman’s downfall at the hands of the Ents then, Tolkien suggests that Nature is stronger than anything and that it is a force to be reckoned with, not a passive and inert component of the world of Middle Earth.
In his saga, J.R.R Tolkien presents nature as a living independent force rather than as a passive backdrop. Nature in Lord of The Rings is capable of healing, sheltering, instructing and, when necessary, defending itself. Drawing on Romantic traditions, Tolkien therefore turns nature both into a sanctuary and a moral compass, urging reader to respect it as any other sacred place. Through Fangorn and the Ents, the English writer depicts a nature that reclaims its voice, initially silenced by the mechanical empire of Saruman, and actively participates in Middle Earth’s fate. In doing so, Tolkien transforms nature into a protagonist whose presence continues to shape the journey described in the novel.
[1] Poetry, for Shelley, encompasses prose as well: “[t]he parts of a composition may be poetical, without the composition as a whole being a poem” (Shelley 680).
[2] For the anecdote, Giono was asked to write about a genuine person but decided to use his imagination, a writer’s best friend, instead.
Bibliography:
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Selected Poetry. Penguin, 2000.
Lucas P. Niiler. Tolkien, Leopold and the Land Ethic. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 1999, Vol. 10, No. 3 (39) (1999), pp. 276-285
Moore, Jason W. “The crisis of feudalism.” Organization & Environment, vol. 15, no. 3, Sept. 2002, pp. 301–322, https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026602153008.
Prak, Maarten Roy. Early Modern Capitalism: Economic and Social Change in Europe, 1400-1800. Routledge, 2014.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers. HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.
Wordsworth, William. Selected Poems. Penguin Books, 2005.
© Liam Magin. All Rights Reserved. This work is the intellectual property of the author. Do not copy or redistribute without permission.
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