falling in love with an imaginary tree
No, I'm not kidding. And let me explain.
The first thing you need to know is that I fall in love with things quite loosely. Passionately, yes, but loosely. I fall in love with lots of things: colors, kittens, stars, chairs, paintings, clothing, and, yes, trees that also happen to be book characters. But I refuse to feel silly about this because people have been falling in love with human and non human book characters alike for YEARS. (I was team Jacob, Team Gale the first time through, (Team Peeta the second); I adored Dionysus and Thalia from Percy Jackson; Anubis from The Red Pyramid; Tamani from Wings; Fang and Iggy from Maximum Ride, Edmund Pevensie (specifically in Voyage and Last Battle); Bastet from The Alchemyst; Laurie and Amy from Little Women; Susan from Stargirl; Lizzie, Jane, Elinor, Catherine, Fanny, and Emma from various Austen novels; Crowfeather and Leafpool from the Warriors series; Jonas from The Giver; and a character named Ben Blue from a book who's title and plot were forgettable*). Points if you knew any of those characters.
But the book series that I want to talk about here is the infamous, tree-filled trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. I'd read through the series once when I was younger, but over Christmas break this year, my parents and I watched all of the movies again. While I watched, I was able to explain all the confusing plot points to them, because if you haven't read the books you are bound to be confused at some point with the multiple storylines being told at once and the fact that everything has more than one name.
I won't say that the books are better than the movies, or vice versa, but I will say that the two go together very well. It's true, they leave out some things in the movies, most notibly Éowyn and Faramir's love story, but other than a few minor things, the movies are a good representation of the books. And they give really good visuals to have when reading the books, because a lot of care was put into casting (looking at you, Aragorn).
The first time through the series, both reading and watching, I'd already fallen in love with several characters. Of course there's Legolas and the entire elven race, who are not only practically immortal but also physically stunning. Everyone falls in love with Legolas. But there's also Aragorn, the rugged ranger dubbed Strider and later crowned king; the two mischievous and arguably clueless hobbits, Meriadoc and Pippin; Galadriel, the mystique of Lothlórien, and the brilliantly strong Éowyn, who not only falls for Aragorn but recovers like a queen when he doesn't return her love. Her best feature is her strength, which is astounding for a character written in 1948, but is barely second to her beauty and courage. I like to think of her as if Lucy Pevensie from Narnia grew up.
All of these characters caught my eye and my heart the first time through, but I was very excited to pick up the series for a second time and discover more of Tolkien's brilliance and beauty waiting for me. The other day I went for a walk and took with me The Two Towers, which I had started in January but had to put down when school resumed. The part I'd stopped at was when two of the hobbits, Merry and Pippin were taken captive after the breaking of the Fellowship at the point of Amon Hen and the river Argonath (see what I mean about the names?). After being captives for a chapter, the hobbits escape and run into Fangorn forest, where they meet Fangorn himself (other names include Treebeard and another, longer title that he refuses to reveal). He is an Ent: a walking tree, and one of the oldest creatures on Middle Earth.
I know this part of the story well, as I've seen it on film and read it before, but I'd forgotten how the book describe's Treebeard's eyes:
These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating. They were brown, shot with a green light. Often afterwards Pippin tried to describe his first impression of them.
‘One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present; like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake. I don’t know, but it felt as if something that grew in the ground – asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between root-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky had suddenly waked up, and was considering you with the same slow care that it had given to its own inside affairs for endless years.
Isn't that just like a tree? But seriously, wow. The way he describes their eyes is what I feel about meditation and the peace that comes with it. I think it was after reading this that I started to fall in love with the Ents. It's a little difficult to do, because even though they are wise and patient, they are so rough, awkward looking, and gravelly-sounding in the movies.
But then came a detail--a character--that isn't featured in the movies. The Ents convene to decide what to do about Isengard, a tower near Fangorn Forest whose once peaceful wizard, Saruman, has now turned evil and is digging Orcs (goblin-like warriors) out of the ground. The Ents eventually decide to storm Isengard, break a dam, and flood it. But first, they have to talk it through, which in their language, takes a very long time.
So Treebeard passes off the Hobbits to an Ent named Bregalad, or Quickbeam:
He was tall, and seemed to be one of the younger Ents; he had smooth shining skin on his arms and legs; his lips were ruddy, and his hair was grey-green. He could bend and sway like a slender tree in the wind.
Nothing like a tree to describe a tree. But did I fall a little bit for grey-green? Yes. Anyway. This is what he says to Merry and Pippin:
Ha, hmm, my friends, let us go for a walk! I am Bregalad, that is Quickbeam in your language. But it is only a nickname, of course. They have called me that ever since I said yes to an elder Ent before he had finished his question.
He proceeds to pick them up and carry them while he walks about and they wait. This is the part where I really fell in love with this fictional tree-man:
All that day they walked about, in the woods with him, singing and laughing; for Quickbeam often laughed. He laughed if the sun came out from behind a cloud, he laughed if they came upon a stream of spring; then he stooped and splashed his feet and head with water; he laughed sometimes at some sound or whisper in the trees. Whenever he saw a rowan-tree he halted a while with his arms stretched out, and sang, and swayed as he sang.
That passage is about a third of what we read about Quickbeam. After what I've typed up, he goes on to explain that he is a protector of the rowan trees, but that a majority of them were chopped down by Orcs. He recalls their noble lives and sings a song with their names in it. Shortly after this, the Ent meeting ends and the hobbits rejoin Treebeard. We don't hear from Quickbeam again. I think he makes a short appearance in the flooding of Isengard, and that's about it. But it's enough for me.
Quickbeam is a fairly simple but noble character. He is different from the other Ents because he possesses a zealous disposition: he is not reserved and expresses his emotions truthfully and kindly. While he never forgets the memory and importance of the past, he also refuses to let his sorrows weigh him down. I love everything about this character. And I love the fact that he plays a small but wonderful role, one that was overlooked in the movie, because there's no way that a CG-ed tree could ever do Tolkien's beautiful imagery justice.
Of all the characters I've fallen in love with, Quickbeam is, where plot is concerned, the most insignificant. But I love him anyway.
*I looked up the book with Ben Blue in it by searching "ben blue dog sci fi book" on Google. The book is called Virals and it's about a group of friends that rescue a dog caged for medical testing and "are exposed to an experimental strain of canine parvovirus that changes their lives forever"!!!!!
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