Ents made to destroy Isengard?

[Morsul the Dark]

well with the success of my hobbit chosen people thread I'm encouraged to ask another question haunting my mind

Does anyone knowthe history of dwarves and ents... what I mean is ents were created to prtect trees from dwarven axes...and yet i do not recall any sign of the two duking it out in fact dwarves live in the mines for the most part and you really dont hear about them wastefully destroying forests...

so did they ever battle or did the ents just appear and kind of lay low not doing much until that fated day of basicly taking out saruman

its like chess
knight(ent) takes rook(isengard)
while pawn(hobbit) checkmates king(sauron)

[davem]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

Does anyone knowthe history of dwarves and ents... what I mean is ents were created to prtect trees from dwarven axes...and yet i do not recall any sign of the two duking it out in fact dwarves live in the mines for the most part and you really dont hear about them wastefully destroying forests...

so did they ever battle or did the ents just appear and kind of lay low not doing much until that fated day of basicly taking out saruman

From The Silmarillion (Of The Ruin of Doriath):

Thus it came to pass that when the Dwarves of Nogrod, returning from Menegroth with diminished host, came again to Sam Athrad, they were assailed by unseen enemies; for as they climbed up Gelion's banks burdened with the spoils of Doriath, suddenly all the woods were filled with the sound of elven-horns, and shafts sped upon them from every side. There very many of the Dwarves were slain in the first onset; but some escaping from the ambush held together, and fled eastwards towards the mountains. And as they climbed the long slopes beneath Mount Dolmed there came forth the Shepherds of the Trees, and they drove the Dwarves into the shadowy woods of Ered Lindon: whence, it is said, came never one to climb the high passes that led to their homes.

[Farael]

With the hobbits.... well, you could argue that they DID have a unique set of characteristics that made them more able than the rest to go into Mordor and all the way up to Mt. Doom without falling to the Ring. I did not agree with the term "chosen people" but once that was settled I would agree that yes, the Hobbits were rather well suited to the task in hand.

Yet the Ents not only we KNOW why they were created, but also they did not do something as incredible as the hobbits. Sure, they destroyed Isengard, but most of the troops were gone fighting against Rohan and should an army have popped out of nowhere, they would have probably been able to take Isengard too. The Ents were a fundamental and unexpected piece in the War of the Ring yet so was the army of the dead (my translation) and even Argorn showing up after years of no-one claiming to be Isidur's heir was unexpected to some.

Folowing your train of thought one could say that Rohan was made to save Gondor, Gondor was made to distract the Dark Lord and divert his forces so that the hobbits could accomplish their goals... and Tom Bombadil was made to stir controvercy in this forum

I hope that last paragraph does not come out offensive, it was not meant to. What I meant to say is that there were many important pieces in the War of the Ring yet it does not mean they were created for that purpose. They mobilized and fought for it yet they were there before and had stories of their own.

[Gil-Galad]

i always thought of Ents, as the tree-hearders, to be one with the tree, so they in essence became a tree themselves to help understand them more and more and protect them.

[A_Brandybuck]

Ents are not loving Dwarves, this made Tolkien clear as he wrote Lord of the Rings. But the intention, why Ents and Dwarves have some quarrels, cannot be located in the Silmarillion, because Tolkien invented the actions in the Silmarillion after the creation of the chapters of TTT.
You can read this in one of his Letters from the year 247:
There are or were no Ents in the older stories – because the Ents in fact only presented themselves to my sight, without premeditation or any previous conscious knowledge, when I came to Chapter IV of Book Three

He has created the Ents independently from all of his works from the First Age, etc.
But Tolkien made some connections to the First Age, as he mentioned that Treebeard knows something of Ossiriand.
But since Treebeard shows knowledge of the drowned land of Beleriand (west of the Mountains of Lune) in which the main action of the war against Morgoth took place, they will have to come in.

And then he wrote, that he can foresee, that there was one action, which they made.
I can foresee one action that they took, not without a bearing on The L.R. It was in Ossiriand, a forest country, secret and mysterious before the west feet of the Ered Luin, that Beren and Lúthien dwelt for a while after Beren's return from the Dead

But this formulation indicates (me), that he made this decision afterwards, looking at the date of 1963), so the reason of the quarrel was in Tolkiens conception not there, when he wrote the chapter, but he thought about it later.

Concerning the topic. I remember reading a quote somewhere in HoME, that Tolkien had his very first thoughts about Treebeard as the reason, why Gandalf hasn't come the the departure of Frodo from the Shire. And later then he was replaced by the character of Saruman. But my memory is very vague in the case and I don't find the quote at the moment.

But for the creation of the Ents, how they are, there is a very interesting footnote in his Letter 163:
Take the Ents, for instance. I did not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called 'Treebeard', from Treebeard's first remark on p. 66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on my self (except for labour pains) almost like reading some one else's work.

Then he wrote, that he had some pictures in mind, when he created the Ents.

Their pan in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made in Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war. And into this has crept a mere piece of experience, the difference of the 'male' and 'female' attitude to wild things, the difference between unpossessive love and gardening.

Tolkien had mind, that the Trees will go to war. From the beginning. That could implicate, that Tolkien wanted them to march against something and this could be only Isengart or Rohan. Due to the circumstances, Rohan is not a very good choice.
Consequently I would say, that Tolkien created the Ents (for the plot) only to march against Saruman, not only Isengart. Tolkien has used and created them as an element against the Istar, ironically against this character, who replaced Treebeard in the conception, if I remember rightly.

Besides the plot, the footnotes tells us more about the background of the creation ("male and female attitude to wild things", etc.)

[Wiscott]

Forgive me if I am missing something here, and please correct me if I am, but I don't have the impression that the Ents have any real quarrel with dwarves. They do seem to have a quarrel with axes, weapons that dwarves often carry. In my opinion, there is an estrangement of the two races because of the extreme difference of their preferred environments. Dwarves and Ents never had much interaction, so far as I know. The hesitancy showed in Fangorn regarding Gimli seems to be more closely related to his axe than anything else.


If I were to go a bit farther, I would probably say that any animosity between Ents and Dwarves is most likely a result of the Ents' close involvement with the Elves, who themselves were extranged from Dwarves. The Elves' influence could easily lead to a mistrust of those the Elves themselves mistrusted.