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the Shire through the gift from Galadriel, and he won the honored family name
“Gardener” for doing this. In short, the Shire is a place that embodies an agricultural
society that shares the genuine understanding and care of the land.
2.3 Exploitive Relationship with Nature: Industrialization in LotR Compare with the idealized co-existing state of the Elves and the undying forest, the Hobbits’ agricultural society is a direct mirror of the relationship between
human and nature before the change brought by industrialization. However, even the Shire is forced to be industrialized under the control of Saruman in the later part of the story. After the War of the Ring, the Hobbits went back to the Shire and found that it has completely changed. The beautiful rural scenery is gone and being replaced by ugly factories and environmental pollutions:
Many of the houses that they had known were missing. Some seemed to have been burned down. The pleasant row of old hobbit-holes in the bank on the
north side of the Pool were deserted, and their little gardens that used to run down bright to the water’s edge were rank with weeds. […] An avenue of trees
had stood there. They were all gone. And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End they saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance. It was
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pouring out black smoke into the evening air. (Tolkien, The Return of the King 1004)
The portrayal of the destructive impact on ecology brought by industrialization is apparent. Later in the same chapter, the imagery of industrial destruction on the environment is again emphasized when the Hobbits are saddened by the felled trees
and the pollution of the river in the Shire.
However, the ecological destruction is only part of the Shire’s misery. Apart
from the environmental destruction, the Shire has also become a police state under the control of Saruman. The men of Saruman monopolize the goods of the Shire and made the Shire into a totalitarian society. Hobbits who protest against the unjust distribution are all put into jail. In many ways, the enslavement of nature and people is related. In LotR, the exploitation of nature often parallels the racial and class
exploitations. Just as the men of Saruman felled down trees in the Shire, the hobbits in the Shire also become objects of control for Saruman.
Yet the Shire is only an epitome of the exploitive power of Sauron and Saruman. It is not difficult to notice that the depiction of Mordor and Isengard are direct references to the destructive effects brought by industrialization. Compared with the symbiotic way of living with nature in the Shire and Lothlórien, the relationship between nature and the people in Isengard and Mordor is more
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hierarchical and exploitive. While people in the Shire and Lothlórien also make use of natural resources, their attitude towards nature is significantly different from Isengard and Mordor.
For the Hobbits and the Elves, their land is a place that nourished them and also where they belong to and identified with. However, for Saruman and Sauron, nature merely exists as a resource for them to extract. In this mindset, nature is objectified and becomes an object of exploitation. Treebeard talks about the deteriorating relationship between the land and its inhabitants when relating the story of the Ents and the Entwives to Merry and Pippin:
Birds used to flock there. I like birds, even when they chatter; and the rowan has enough and to spare. But the birds became unfriendly and greedy and tore
at the trees, and threw the fruit down and did not eat it. Then Orcs came with axes and cut down my trees. […] It is the orc-work, the wanton hewing –
ra´rum–without even the bad excuse of feeding the fires. (Tolkien, The Two Towers 483-485)
The greed and wastefulness are the maladies of modern society and the tree-felling of the orcs is a direct reflection of the ecological disaster during the industrial revolution.
The Industrial Revolution signifies a turning point in our relationship with nature. Instead of trying to coexist with nature, we now view nature as something
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separated from us, a passive “environment” for us to conquer and exploit. It is after
industrialization that we start to separate ourselves from nature. While the Shire and
Lothlórien are surrounded by nature, Isengard and Mordor are geologically isolated and lifeless. Orthanc, the tower of Isengard, is enclosed by “a great ring-wall of stone,
like towering cliffs, stood out from the shelter of the mountain-side” (Tolkien, The Two Towers 554). The ring-wall of Isengard makes Orthanc well protected but also
isolated from the outside world. In the early days, Isengard was a fertile land “filled
with avenues, and groves of fruitful trees, watered by streams that flowed from the mountains to a lake” (Tolkien, The Two Towers 554). However, under Saruman’s rule,
Isengard went through a great change:
…no green thing grew there in the latter days of Saruman. The roads were paved
with stone-flags, dark and hard; and beside their borders instead of trees there marched long lines of pillars, some of marble, some of copper and of iron, joined by heavy chains. (Tolkien, The Two Towers 554)
After Saruman made Isengard his stronghold, Orthanc stands alone as an
inapproachable tower and Isengard becomes a furnace of machinery power, an armory of metal and steel. In some way, the change of Isengard symbolizes the change of the relationship between human society and the natural environment. Treebeard also relates the change of Saruman’s attitude towards nature:
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I used to talk to him. There was a time when he was always walking about my woods. He was polite in those days, always asking my leave ... and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself;
but he never repaid me in like kind. I cannot remember that he ever told me anything. And he got more and more like that; his face ... became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside. […] I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him
for the moment. (Tolkien, The Two Towers 473)
Saruman’s attitude towards the Fangorn Forest reflects how the relationship between
nature and human change from the agricultural society to the industrial society. After industrialization, human society becomes obsessed with acquiring power and material resources, and nature is gradually separated from our daily lives and exists merely as a resource for us to utilize.
In Deep Ecology, David Devall and George Sessions point out the correlation between how a society treats its people and how it interacts with nature:
It is surely no coincidence that humans would also come to be looked upon as a resource to be managed in the best interests of the emerging urban-industrial society. The shift from "people" to "personnel" (and "consumers") to which
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modern scientific management principles are to be applied for more efficient production of commodities is but the flip side of the mentality and consciousness that sees Nature as but a resource to be managed and manipulated for the benefit of those in power. (Devall and Sessions 56-57)
In a post-industrial society, both nature and people are objectified and seen as resources instead of a living entity. Similarly, in Isengard, humans and orcs are not seen as individuals but as cogs in the machine and Fangorn Forest becomes merely a resource for the munitions factories of Saruman.
The juxtaposition between the enslavement of nature and humans can be seen in Isengard. Saruman’s fortress, Isengard, is a center of machinery power, and the power
of Isengard is built on the exploitation of both the free peoples and nature. In many aspects, Isengard symbolizes the rapid rise of endless acquiring desire after
industrialization. The double subjugation of the disadvantage people and nature can be seen in the change of the environment of Isengard:
That was a sheltered valley, open only to the South. Once it had been fair and green, and through it the Isen flowed […] there had lain a pleasant, fertile land. It
was not so now. Beneath the walls of Isengard there still were acres tilled by the slaves of Saruman; but most of the valley had become a wilderness of weeds and thorns. […] No trees grew there; but among the rank grasses could still be seen
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the burned and axe-hewn stumps of ancient groves. It was a sad country, silent now but for the stony noise of quick waters. Smokes and steams drifted in sullen
clouds and lurked in the hollows. (Tolkien, The Two Towers 553)
Saruman’s rule of Isengard represents the change of the mindset of viewing nature:
the earth becomes an object to conquer, and humans are also enslaved by the power
group in the process of nature’s subjugation.
The Shire is also an epitome of Isengard. Tolkien’s distaste and fear of the
human over-reliance on the machine and over obsession with acquiring power are evident in the depiction of Isengard and the industrialized Shire. The forced industrialization of the Shire by Saruman is in fact related to the author’s personal experience with the threat and destructive consequence of industrialization and
modernization. In a letter to Michael Straight, he writes: “the spirit of 'Isengard', if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case” (Tolkien, Letters 253). For Tolkien,
modernization often represents a threat to the peaceful pastoral life.
As numerous critics have speculated, Tolkien’s wartime experience also
intensifies his fear of the modern age and the destructive power brought by
technology. For instance, writer Simon Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien’s grandson, points out that evil is often connected with industrialization in LotR:
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Evil in Middle Earth is above all industrialised. Sauron’s orcs are brutalised workers; Saruman has ‘a mind of metal and wheels’; and the desolate
moonscapes of Mordor and Isengard are eerily reminiscent of the no man’s land of 1916. (Tolkien, “How WWI inspired The Lord of the Rings”)
This distrust of technology and the fear of human obsession with power is most
evident in the depiction in the force of Isengard and Mordor. It is no coincidence that the deadly weapon of the Orcs, “blasting fire”, resembles the bombs in our world and is described as “devilry from Orthanc” (Tolkien, The Two Towers 538). Shadows of the author’s experience of the World War I can still be found in his portrayal of the
destructive sides of the machinery power of the modern age. Moreover, the dominant mindset that transforms knowledge into a force of violence is also being questioned.