Ents

I saw the movie The Two Towers yesterday. It was quite good, although I didn't have the same experience of being fully caught up into another world that I did with the first movie. Part of the reason was I didn't see it on the 60-foot screen and, also, the theater was full of elementary and junior high school boys who were a little young to understand all that was going on. Thus, they tended to laugh at inappropriate scenes, such as when the two voices of Gollum were contending for his soul.

The line that struck me was Treebeard's [the talking tree, or Ent] characterization of Saruman:

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 (p. 76).

Treebeard continues:

He and his foul folk are making havoc now. Down on the borders they are felling trees—good trees. Some of the trees they just cut down and leave to rot...but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc....Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost for ever now. And there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves. I have been idle. I have let things slip. It must stop! (p. 77)

And then he rallies the other Ents to go against Saruman's Isengard.