Arda Inhabited: Environmental Relationships in The Lord of the Rings

chapter twoDialectic, or “Power From”

50 arda inhabited chapter two Dialectic, or “Power From” Ents, Hobbits, and Elves all live in community with their places and hold power with their environments. Dwarves, the Rohirrim, and the people of Gondor, though, derive power from their environments. These relationships are not the rhizomatic, interconnected nodes of difference discussed in Chapter 1, but are instead relationships based on hierarchy, connected dialectically. These groups are not particularly concerned with replenishing or growing these environments except as such growth is beneficial to or reflective of themselves. All three groups use elements of their environment as symbols, in which the symbolic meaning replaces the inherent meaning of the thing used as a symbol. Dwarves, the Rohirrim, and the people of Gondor connect to their environments dialectically, using nonhuman environmental features as symbols. They also connect to their environments symbolically through language and artifact. Symbols such as mithril, the Horse, and the White Tree, as well as language, all stand in the place of the natural world for these groups. They cannot negotiate a one-on-one, symbiotic relationship like that of the Ents and Fangorn Forest, but they do involve the environment in their lives and cultures. A “power from” relationship occupies the borderland between “power with” and “power over” relationships. There are elements of their relationship with their environment that approach community. There are other elements that approach oppression. However, they do not fully embrace either of these positions. They gain “power from” their environments in that the connection that they do recognize or allow empowers them. In the characterization of these groups, Tolkien again resists the temptation to easily categorize something. Just as Ents are not hu50 dialectic, or “power from” 51 man and not trees, so too these groups are something other than community or oppression. A typical feature of a “power from” relationship involves being tied to one’s environment through dialectic. To briefly review this common idea, Hegel’s theory asserts that any given thing is inherently connected to its opposite or to anything designated as “Other” by virtue of its oppositional qualities. The construction of something as Other is a move to define the Self. In defining something as Other, the Self claims it has authority to do this and exercises power over the Other in doing so. However, the Other is “not the other of something to which [the Self] is indifferent, . . . rather it is the Other in its own self.”1 How the Other is constructed is extremely important to the Self because the construction of the Other also constructs what is not-Other, that is, what is the Self. Dwarves, the Rohirrim, and the people of Gondor all participate in a dialectic relationship with their environments. There are two categories: “People” and “Nature.” Hegel points out that from the position of the Other, the Self is an Other, but these particular groups do not seem aware of this irony. Instead, they construct nature as something that exists to serve their needs. The “power from” relationship is still dependent on connection, but it is a connection that is always one degree removed from the kind of true interconnectedness felt in a “power with” relationship. It is not a one-on-one understanding between equals, but instead an understanding that is either mediated through something else, or one in which the environment is used to mediate other understandings. Interestingly, this sort of relationship is also preserved in the kind of ecocriticism that constructs nature as anything that is not material and also not human. Ishay Landa argues that an understanding of the dialectical quality of the relationships in The Lord of the Rings is essential to a just reading of the text that attempts to comprehend its complexity and significance.2 Many aspects of the relationship between these people and their places can be understood in terms of dialectic. “Power from” relationships are also mediated through symbolism, including language. De Saussure’s notion of the connection between signifier and signified is important to this argument. He claims that a linguistic sign connects “not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image.”3 So the word “tree” does not refer necessarily to an actual tree, but to the idea of what a tree is. Likewise the language of the Rohirrim points to how they conceptualize nature. Furthermore, natural 52 arda inhabited symbols are used by these groups to suggest...