I’ve been sittin on this piece of Jian Guo’s art since way back in chapter 4. I pulled it up since the chapter called “Treebeard” seemed like the obvious place to include a piece of artwork titled “Shepherd of the Forest,” but when I looked more closely at it I realized that it actually depicts the better part of Book I of TTT. So here, when we readers finally get to hear about what happened to Isengard, is where I decided to include it.
Here again we see Tolkien’s very, very linear approach to divergent storylines. We had Merry and Pippin meeting Treebeard and the Ents going to war, and then the story shifts to Aragorn & company, the introduction of Rohan, and the battle of Helm’s Deep, and now when we get back to the Hobbits we get a direct, clear telling of what they’ve been up to offscreen.
We do get some funny moments:
“When night falls do not linger near this gate or in the old tunnel! Water may come through – and it will be foul water for a while, until all the filth of Saruman is washed away. Then Isen can run clean again.” He began to pull down a bit more of the walls, in a leisurely sort of way, just to amuse himself.
I assume, and no one will convince me otherwise, that Treebeard is humming cheerfully to himself as he casually destroys one of the great fortresses of the Dúnedain in Middle-earth.
And we get an account of their reunion with Gandalf, in a very Gandalf-ian fashion:
He halted just by us and looked down at us. “Gandalf!” I said at last, but my voice was only a whisper. Did he say: “Hullo, Pippin! This is a pleasant surprise!”? No, indeed! He said: “Get up, you tom-fool of a Took! Where, in the name of wonder, in all this ruin is Treebeard? I want him. Quick!”
And probably the most significant part of this chapter, from an overall standpoint, is the foreshadowing of the trouble in the Shire. The Scouring (which naturally we’ll really get in to when we get there) is one of the most important chapters in the trilogy, and Tolkien here is doing some very careful foreshadowing.
And on Friday, we’ll get to listen to the Voice of Saruman whisper sweet nothings in our ear.
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