"To trees all Men are Orcs": The Environmental Ethic of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The New Shadow"

Abstract

"To trees all Men are Orcs":The Environmental Ethic of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The New Shadow" Stentor Danielson (bio) In the last few decades, a number of works have aimed to examine the environmental ethics implicit in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. The bulk of this scholarly attention has focused on the text of the published Lord of the Rings, with some secondary consideration for The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. In doing so, most scholars1 have passed over what may be Tolkien's most explicit statement about environmental ethics in his writings about his legendarium: a debate in "The New Shadow"—his abortive attempt to write a sequel to The Lord of the Rings (Peoples 409–21)—between the characters Saelon and Borlas that directly considers the proper relationship of humans to nature, and the limits of our exploitation of it. This paper's purpose is twofold. After introducing recent scholarship on Tolkien as an environmental writer and the text of the Saelon-Borlas debate, I first bring these two bodies of writing together, showing how the debate in "The New Shadow" reflects and extends the environmental perspective contained in Tolkien's better-known works. Second, I bring the debate into conversation with another significant body of literature, that of normative environmental ethics. I show how the claims made by Saelon and Borlas reflect sophisticated thinking about questions of biocentrism and anthropocentrism, and of the possibility of respectful use of nature, which environmental ethicists have weighed. Tolkien as an Environmental Writer J.R.R. Tolkien never self-identified as an environmentalist, nor did he make extensive comments on the issues being addressed by the environmental movement. Nevertheless, many readers have felt a strong environmental sympathy emerging from his works. There is now a substantial body of scholarship examining the environmental perspective implicit in Tolkien's writings, especially The Lord of the Rings.2 Though no two scholars take precisely the same view of the topic, there is a broad consensus around several points that we can see as a sort of Tolkienian environmentalism: [End Page 179] 1. Tolkien had a deep love of growing things, particularly trees. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, he famously declared "I take the part of trees as against all their enemies" (Letters 419), and affection for trees is evident throughout his fiction in places too numerous to attempt to catalog here. 2. Tolkien was critical of industrial modernity. He lamented the changes that had come to the English countryside (particularly his boyhood haunts in the West Midlands) during the course of his life. The landscape of the Shire is the most obvious expression of this concern, and it is not difficult to find real-world analogues for the depredations of Saruman. 3. Tolkien prized an engaged, cooperative relationship with the land and environment. This engagement could take many forms, but he did not endorse a hands-off attitude toward nature, or call for protecting nature by separating it from people. His Hobbits are praised for their working of the soil, and even the wildest wilderness ought to have caretakers, such as the Ents of Fangorn or Bombadil in the Old Forest. 4. Tolkien linked the health of the land to the health of the community. Social strife and environmental degradation go together, and vice-versa, as symbolized by the death and rebirth of the White Tree of Gondor, and the cutting down of the Party Tree and its subsequent replanting as bookends to Saruman's dominion over the Shire. 5. Tolkien saw evil as characterized by an instrumental, greedy, power-seeking approach to the world around one—human and non-human alike. Mordor and Isengard are places of both human slavery and ecological ruin. Treebeard condemns Saruman for having "a mind of metal and wheels" (TT, III, iv, 76), and when Frodo and Sam enter Mordor, the narrator informs us that the blasted and desolate landscape of Gorgoroth is complemented by vast slavetilled fields around Nurn (RK, VI, ii, 201). Tolkien's environmental perspective is specific enough to be both compared to and contrasted with the positions of other environmental thinkers. Matthew Dickerson, for example...