What happened to the entwives?
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
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Like Tolkien’s solider friends, the entwives are “missing in action” - they’re not considered “dead.”
That may just be the words He had in mind while writing about the Entwifes. But i think IDGs conclusion, that we are missing the point if we are wondering, is not true
Tolkien gave us a hint that there is at least one moving tree close to the shire and he never said 'the entwifes? Oh yeah, no the are all dead' so in my option wondering where they went and hoping to some day see them, even tho we wont nor will the ents is the point, the same kind of feeling returning soldires have when they come home to wayt and see how is left, alwas hoping so see one more familliar face and wondering where the others went, what ways the they had to go and where they rest now...
@@Glitsch99Thank you i understand it a little better now.
Made me realize; he must've been processing his experiences from the war during a lot of the writing of the lotr world's history
I love the dichotomy between the Ents and the Entwives. The Ents are herders and the Entwives are gardeners.
It gives me the sense that the entwives are more compassionate and less implacable. Less rigid and more willing to bend to their situation. The ents possess physical characteristics to mirror their mental and emotional characteristics, and there are many types of wood with a wide range of properties, like pliable but strong Ash wood
Almost like the old English life, and by that I mean post war to mid 90s.
Don't ye worry: if Amazon has any say in the matter, the Ents will be non-binary and no-one will get lost. Oh, and some will be in wheelchairs.
It almost seems like an allegory for humanity's shift from hunter-gathering to agriculture.
@@saraha8219absolutely. with the implicatation that the Entwives were among us throughout our history of agriculture,
[slain by the Green Revolution and modern agribusiness in the 1970s and 80s, RIP]
That was really quite emotional at the end there
Yeah it got kinda heavy there for a sec.
The disappearance of the Entwives still troubles me as if it really happened.
Just like everything else disappeared, the entwives taught us the joy of gardening, the dwarfs the joy of forging, and the elves the joy of arts.
It is the age of man.
@@thelandlord111 Yeah.. but now where are all the human maidens? 🫤"equality without distinction" they shouted - before they went away to learn new things
What is a w0men? We (of Western society) ask ourselves now a days🤨
@@NPC-bs3pm Humans aren't meant to live in segregated, separated groups. Ents/entwives should have remained together. The longer people are apart/don't share information, the more distance/distrust/misinformation they experience.
@@NPC-bs3pmjesus christ got touch some grass mate
@@gbf111 May i ask YOU what is a "w0men" ?
Honestly one of my most pondered questions in LotR, i love the ents and treebeards description of the entwifes and i feel soooo sorry for all the ents ...
It's so weird how we can get so emotionally attached to talking trees.
It surprises me that Yavana creator of the Ents did not or does not intervene to save her created children. Aule protected the Dwarfs, but they never go extinct until the forth age.
If some wives remain, why doesn't she get Manwe to send eagles to seek them out and send them to Fangorn to the Ents can rub leaf and branchs to get some new seedlings.
@@The-Mstr-Pook that is an interesting question, and i just read up on her just to not miss anything but actually i rhink you gave the awnser yourself, the creation of the ents where in direct response to the creation of the dwarfs, because Yavanna had the forsight that all things living in the earth needed protection from the dwarfs. So i guess if they enter the world togethere they also should leave it togethere, Yavanna migh have forseen that the age of the Dwarfs is almost at an and let her creation fade out as well (givin that ents live far longer that fading neded to start sooner) that would fit nicely into the working of Eru Ilúvatar, both dwarf and ent had forfilled there part both in the world and in Erus plans, so they move on out of middle earth and Arda itself...that would be in line with Tolkiens kind of writing
Thanks for your inputt, was a good question to thunk about
Anyone who's estranged from a loved one, specially if she passed away during that time, can more than sympathize with the Ents: you can actually feel their pain...
I thought from the first time I read LotR that the Entwives might be the awakened trees in the Old Forest.
My thoughts exactly
I'm always frustrated that Merry & Pippen never raised the possibility with Fangorn or with each other. Early portions of the Fellowship even describe the trees of the Old Forest as moving about and wanting Hobbits to stay where they were put. "Old Man Willow" seems very ent-like, and the whole point of the Hedge on the east of Buckland was to keep the forest at bay. I was hoping this video would at least mention the possibility, but at least the "walking ent" of Sam's tale was discussed.
I always suspected the shifting trees in the Old Forest were Huorns and Old Man Willow an Ent that has gone very treeish. Since Fangorn Forest and the Old Forest were once part of the same huge forest, they could have been isolated there once the trees in between were cut down.
In light of the points rasied in this video, I start to suspect that the creatures in the old forest were likely not ent-wives but huorns. It’s possible that if the hobbits made the connection and talked to Treebeard, it might only have gotten his hopes up😢
The Entwives had a ladies’ night out and, since there were so many of them, they haven’t yet finished their introductions.
That’s it. That’s my head canon.
Cuz women talk too much 😅
I was weeping by the end of this video. Made me think of things I've lost that were dear to me and for the things I know I will lose in the future.
I could see it as an allegory on loss, grief, and even denial. Perhaps they really are truly gone for good, we certainly have more evidence for that than their continued existence. Treebeard's response - the almost angry denial that they are not dead - that's not uncommon for someone in denial of the loss of their loved ones.
Inpersonally think that they are not dead but still gone for good, many pointed out the living trees already and i think it likely that the entwife eventually rooted down so to spek and became no more then spirited trees, whitch would make it all the more sad ..
Ents: "Thank you, kind Elves, for teaching us to speak."
Elves: "Of course, great shepherds of the forest! What do you wish to day?"
Ents: "Can you please be quiet and let us sleep?"
Elves: "...."
This video and the one you made about Christmas in Middle Earth really does showcase your talent for writing. You present your thoughts eloquently, with a sensitivity often lacking from other similar channels. I thoroughly enjoy your content. Please keep making more.
I feel like much of tolkien's stories have a strong element of grief in them. Many modern stories have a hero who saves the day and all is like it was. I like how tolkien sets this up in such a way that some things can't be fixed. Some things have irreparable consequences. It makes the story more colorful and real.
The sense of loss in the LOTR is one of the things that makes it so rich. It can be so sad even when there’s very few deaths amongst the main characters (unlike the potter books which have to shoe horn loss by killing characters all over the place). I always thought it was a special talent of tolkiens to weave it in so carefully into the story’s fabric. Anyway, this was an excellent and moving analysis Robert and I appreciate it very much
Oh my word, this is one of the only times I've heard someone use "scorched earth" correctly. Thank you for that, ha.
Tragedy made story. Alas, poor Ents, they shall forever mourn what is lost as they slowly turn into trees themselves.
The tail of the Ents and the Entwives is almost a tragedy seeing as they're really not that far apart. Too bad Merry and Pippin never talk to Sam or his cousin about it
My headcanon is that in the 4th age some extra motivated ent went out and found then in the old forest... maybe even quickbeam, or some other, hasty, newcomer.
Yes! That's my thoughts too 😁
I like to think, keeping the tragic theme of the Ents, is that some Entwives were found, but none from before Sauron burned their garden. Those from then were lost or became tree-ish. It may be small comfort to the older Ents like Treebeard but at least some comfort.
Sometimes I’ll be laying out under a tree having a good time, then suddenly get sad wondering what happened to the entwifes
Along with Tom Bombadil, the Ents are my favorite characters in LotR. The song of the Ent and the Entwife is so heartbreaking. To me, it's what turns LotR into more than just a story of adventure and war. Thanks for the video!
I really do like how with Tolkien's attitude to his works is seemingly of a chronicler. Apart of the world of works not it's omniscient creator. Tolkien knows less that Eru. It's humbling.
Great point. Sadly missing from an otherwise excellent video. I don't know about being under some divine providence, but many misses the fact that Tolkien treated much of his works as having a life of its own in some ways. That's why he almost never gives completely definitive answers, but "I think" or "I don't know".
A part, not apart
@@BodywiseMustard Thanks for highlighting a typo :/ I'm sure you never make any mistakes when you type.
That was one of the most intelligent, well-spoken analyses I’ve ever heard regarding a Tolkein subject. Well done!
In my first few read throughs when I was young I thought Goldberry was an Entwife. I dont remember Treebeard ever giving a description of what they look like and we assume they look like Ents. I thought Goldberry would pick a shoot or berry or nut off of a Ent and plant it and tend it make it grow. I still like to think this to this day.
That's quite beautiful in it's simplicity.
I’ve heard this telling several times but this was the best. Both the details of what is, and is not, known but also the meaning behind the Entwives being lost.
Thank you.
One of the things about Tolkien is how he was okay with leaving questions unanswered 😊 therefore giving his story a bit of magic (ex: Tom bombadil, entwives missing)
You know what would be great? A video about what exists down in the "forgotten south".
This is exactly what I felt when reading the books my first time. All of what treebeard was saying seemed like hopeful wishing. And I felt like Tolkien was saying that the world will go on without the ents and that the march is their last act they will do to fight the darkness
Most likely they are in the gardens of Lorien on Valinor.
That's a wonderful idea.
I was surprised how sad i felt while watching the triolgy when Treebeard talks about how they lost them. Cus it's just fiction. But I wished that they could be reunited.
It is not 'just' fiction, it is a world we all parttook in, we laught with the hobbits, we feared for the rohirim, we whitnest the crowning of a new king and the departure of the elves and we griefed with ents, just becaus the charakters arent real dose not mean their storrys and hardships are irrelevant, we are humans and whe have empathy
The end of this video really shouldn't have choked me up the way it did. I've known the ents for decades. Never saw how I related until just now
For me, the ents and ent-wives represented the two existant states of nature. The untamed, wild, and free - where nature can grow large, overtake, be brutish and violent at times - the masculine, i.e. the Ents.
And the harmonious balance where it is nurtured, cared for, beautiful and bountiful, the feminine - i.e. the Ent-Wives.
In this regard, the Ent-Wives disappearing means that the other beings of middle earth lost the knowledge of harmonious balance with nature...an almost Garden of Eden-esque state.
Another commentary by Tolkien, perhaps, on the negative side of the growth and industrialization of Man in our own world. Yes, we've grown and mastered the forests and hills and mountains and oceans (or think we have)...but we've lost the harmony, the beauty, and the balance. The mutually beneficial relationship with nature we once had long, long ago.
It's what Tolkien seemed to be saying in my opinion, anyways. Best nerd channel on youtube! Cheers!
I liked that Sam had mentioned hearing a story about a possible Ent sighting. As the male Ents apparently never made it as far north as The Shire, that sighting was more likely an Entwife. Being female, they'd have been smart enough to know that trouble was coming and returning to Fangorn might not be the safest option, or even feasible. They'd also have been smart enough to know that heading East wasn't wise either, so they went north. I figure they ended up north of The Shire. Either that or they were given a safe OUT if things got bad. Prolly doesn't hurt to have a Vala on your side. 😊
I want to say that the _type_ of tree seen walking is a hint to possibly being an Entwife, because elms are associated with fertility and pastoralism.
Idk how you do it, but somehow you answer the questions that are on my mind several times in a row now. Ty
Would love to see Raymond E. Feist covered and his world of Midkemia.
I like to think Aragorn and Arwin's son sets off on an adventure to collect any palantirs remaining and tracks down the ent wives. I enjoy picturing a couple ents in a garden in Minas Tirith's courtyard telling stories to the children of the nobles and stuff.
"I've tried to keep the spirit of what happened in my own hasty way" 😄😄😄
I like to imagine that some did survive and are living out the days in the beauty of The Shire
I love that these stories are still being discussed, and new videos are made on a regular basis. Keep up the good work!
When the Fellowship went to Isengard on their way home,
Why did Sam forget about what his cousin saw on the North Downs? He said in the Green Dragon that his cousin “Hal” saw a walking Elm tree. Now although Mary and Pippin were not their when Sam said it, Sam was present on their way home from Rohan when Treebeard asked Mary and Pippin to send word about the Entwives around the Shire.
(Sam should have spoken up then)
I like to think that the Elves taught the Ents to speak because they wanted therapists. That’s why they were always yapping away to the Ents.
I enjoy your rationalizing and pondering of Tolkien's world. It always comes across as insightful and respectful. Growing up I fell in love with the movies and the books shortly after. I'm currently enjoying Andy Serkis' rendition of the audiobooks - a treat to revisit Middle Earth with. Anyways, thank you for creating these videos!
In an irony and a little less common fact, the voice of treebeard in the movies is voiced by the actor who plays gimli.
I always love the idea Treebeard was just messing with people and made stuff up to stunt progress and punish them for hurting trees.
I think it’s also important to note that although there will probably be no reunion between the ents and the entwives, there still is a tiny bit of hope that they may. The possibility isn’t 0%
Old Man Willow is also an indication that something Ent-like is taking place around the Shire.
Tolkien's wisdom is unceasing. And this channel deserves for more subscription than it currently has. Top job, Robert. 👏🏻👏🏻
It has always been MY favorite theory (whatever Master Tolkien may say) that the Ents and the Entwives DID indeed meet again ... perhaps after some message from Merry and Pippin of the rumors of "walking trees" near the Shire. But, to maintain the sadness of the tale, even *I* imagine only a few Ents, though perhaps even Treebeard himself, coming to the area around the Old Forest. (Probably after many years of considering the question.) Arriving to find themselves grown too old, too tired and too estranged from each other for any great and joyous reunion. Given by all their journeying, in the end, merely a last chance to sadly say "good-bye" and "We are sorry things did not work out differently." in the long, slow language of the Ents sighing among the trees and the gardens... Then parting a final time, never to meet again within the circles of the world.... 😔
That would somehow even be sadder
when i clicked on this video with the whimsical and curious title i didnt expect to be saddened and deeply depressed by the funny slow side charecters of a fantasy story being in denial and actively looking for their beloved partners:'( thanks a lot ROBERT
2:40 out of context goodness:
Feel free to imagine "baby Groot". That's what I did
I’m re-reading the lord of the rings for the first time in a while. I remember the Entwives and how tragic it was, lost. But when I got to Treebread recalling searching for Fimbrethil, I just imagined him calling again and again across various lands and even among towns in desperation. I really began to tear up.
When Treebeard was introduced I was like what the hell? Then, end of the chapter, Im in love with him and wishing he could reunite : (
I wonder if some were enslaved by Sauron and used to grow crops near the Sea of Nurn.
I was thinking maybe they died defending their gardens from Sauron.
Tolkien definitely wasn't an annihilationist in his eschatology so i imagine neither is Eru. The Eldar almost certainly had a place in Arda Healed
LOTR video finally. Thank you!🤘
i remember reading somewhere that sauron endeavored to subliminally encourage the entwives' different interests from the ents & made the brownlands particularly attractive to them.
That's fascinating. I also remember the Old Forest the hobbits crossed through, where Old Man Willow, Tom Bombadil, and River Withywindle lived. I wonder if it is a garden an ent wife once lived.
Galadriel collected the ash from the burned Entwives. Becoming a powerful biochar. I believe this is part of the dirt she gave to Sam..thus becoming a Eucatastrophe as Sam restores the Shire
I always took the missing entwives as a sign that the magic was leaving the world; a foreshadowing of the age of man
I never knew the part about Tolkien losing all but one of his friends in the War, and now I suddenly realize that Frodo going to the Undying Lands due to the injury he sustained, is metaphorical of the wound Tolkien likely carried with him until the day he too would depart to those lands
I'd say they are most likely all dead. Sauron would have had no qualms about turning them into firewood.
Perhaps a handful of them escaped somewhere and then died off of other causes.
The Ents loved them so much that they refuse to accept that they are dead until they see their corpses in front of them.
The Entwives are near the Shire.
Sam's cousin Halfast saw what he thought was a giant elm tree (that did not belong in that forest) moving.
Treebeard even said that the Shire sounded like a place the Entwives would like
Too bad Sam never told Merry or Pipin, or talked to Treebeard himsel,f to make that connection
I find it interesting that Tolkien seems to place much more emphasis on the skills of the Entwives, he writes about them almost as if their very nature is in the craft of agriculture.
They live on in the sense that they taught the men and hobbits to grow crops and flowers and make them flourish.
For some reason, despite knowing that the Ents are described in the book as shepherds of the trees, when I think back on them the term "tree-minder" comes to mind, I don't really know why.
Maybe The ent wives heard about a new In n Out burger place. Still in line waiting for service.
I don't want to know! This is the genius of Tolkien story. Not every detail is clearly, and that's what he wants it to be, to boosting our fantasy with all the misty distances legends, all the layers of story's over a dreamy saga about a ring.
❤️👍
Beautiful video, specially the ending.
How would Tolkien know everything about what happened. He only translated some texts and maybe added some twists here and there but he was not there like some of us. And even we don't know everything and have forgotten a lot
An even sadder possibility is that the entwives are living somewhere, perhaps north of the Shire, but they do not want to be found. We can imagine potential reasons. Perhaps they regret teaching men how to use and abuse plants and have decided to retreat from that world. Perhaps they don't want to produce offspring with the ents, children who would have to see a world becoming more and more industrialized. Perhaps they've rejected the ents for a life all of their own, as indeed a more drastic next step after their initial separation. Perhaps Yavanna, their creator, has a plan afoot, and they are waiting (they are patient!) for the moment to reunite and recreate a new world in which plants are no longer subservient to the rest of creation. There, at the end of history.
I really love this channel. Such a great mix of intellectual and emotional interpretation, and fantastic writing
I love the conclusion to this video. I was worried there was an answer but there isn't. I'm glad to see that my interpretation and yours is the same 😊
If anything is to be learned of Tolkien via his greatest work, it is his honesty. Bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, beauty is lost or destroyed, dread mounts and succeeds ferociously, things and people die, and everything good or bad comes to an end someday.
The Entwives are one of the great examples of this grave honesty. Another is in Tom Bombadil. There is no mystery to the man. He is neither of the Ainur, a side effect of the Music of the Ainur, nor did he come from the void beyond Ea. He is simply a character in a book, and nothing else. Tolkien so loved his work and the world he created therefor, but it was just a fantasy in the end. While he could discuss his fantasy each day until the sun sets, he wanted not for people to get lost to it; to succumb to it as law and debate the intricacies thereof for wont of competition or learned superiority. He saw his work as fantasy, complete fiction, and acknowledged this by giving us a character who is nothing more than honestly just a character in a book.
Sort of the Deadpool of Arda; though whether old Tom knew he was in a book is neither known nor important. Just as Tolkien intended.
It should also be noted that the entwives cant have ever been found because then that race would have survived into more modern times. Ents are creatures of the elder days, they had to have gone extinct or otherwise disappeared between then and now.
Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember
Tldr: they collectively moved out. Probably to find taller ents with thicker branches 😂
Another re-release video?
My goodness my dude, you are very good at this. Thank you!! 💚
Love your hasty videos!!
Oh hey, I'm early! I just discovered your channel about a week ago and have been loving it.
I fear that the fate of the Entwives is worse than you fear. When the Gardens were burnt I fear that those who survived were driven to Mordor to be corrupted and breed a new order of trolls. Trolls after all are a mockery of Ents. There is no hope.
My speculation has always been that the remaining entwives were the reason the Shire was such a lush and habitable place for the hobbits to first settle in as opposed to the rest of Arnor which was never that habitable and downright desolate after the wars even centuries afterward, but as the ents go 'treeish' and that probably is how they pass to Valinor so too do the entwives and they had done so by the time the hobbits came.
Basically it makes Treebeard's proclamation that the ents and the wives only reuniting when both had 'lost everything' a truth, but they would be reunited in Valinor.
I think one of the bigger questions here is are the ents also immortal like the elves? From the way the elves greet Treebird it would seem that he is as old if not older than elves. In a way they are very similar because like the elves that will stay in middle earth, the ents have their own way of "fading". Exept for man kind, all special races seem to fade away in the long tale. So maybe that is a warning in a way to mortal men - as a race we too can fade if we are not careful.
Were the Ents and Entwives only found in Middle Earth? I like to think that given they have been part of the world since the beginning some were also in Valinor, and still dwell there among it's forests and gardens along with the Valar, Maiar and Elves.
I’m reminded of Folding Idea’s video on Annihilation: the diegetic answer is obvious once you approach it thematically.
Whether they were killed or simply moved on, they are lost. Because of who the ents are, they lost the entwives. They are in equal parts unable and unwilling to go where the entwives may be, so they will not find them.
Perhaps, “I don’t know,” is the truest answer, and to try to know is to miss the point. Perhaps, the only way to find them is to understand how they were lost. Perhaps, understanding how they were lost is to understand they cannot be found and, if found, that they are no longer what the ents were looking for. Perhaps, they never were what the ents were looking for. Perhaps, that is why they were lost.
Well damn, that was kind of sad. Some mysteries are never solved. Even in fiction.
A video on Tolkien's influence on modern fantasy (and Dungeons & Dragons in particular) would be rather fascinating.
Early editions of D&D took a lot of elements from The Hobbit and LotR wholesale, and got sued over it.
Funny how the idea of Ents went from Tolkien’s rather more giant-/troll-like description to walking trees with faces made of tree-stuff. Though all that stuff in the books about awakened entish trees and sleepy treeish Ents and Huorns really does invite the idea that there’s no clear line between trees and Ents.
if ents are made to safeguard forests, why are they primarily centered in one forest instead of all the forests in middle earth? doesn't make much sense.
well done thanks for sharing! good day!
love this stuff
They’re gone. Sure Aragorn commissioned parties to search out the land now that he had access to all of it, and as a favor to the ents.
I think the "real lost-ness" of the entwives is necessary for their narrative impact. They are not simply lost to a character in a book, they are well and truly lost to all of us; the fact there there is simply no answer is borderline intolerable to humans, to the point that we theorize and invent stories about where they might be, to cope with the fact that despite never technically existing, they are genuinely lost.
I love the idea of the original Ents being like "omg i woulnt have learned to talk if I knew these chatterbox elves were never gonna shut up!"
An interesting note that the Ents (the men as tenders of the Forrest become ever more tree like), Could too that Ent wives as gardener's become something more akin to gardens... all the same I agree that the loss is what makes them compelling and some things lost to time will never return.
LOTRO had a pretty cool reference to the entwives in the Old Forest. But the mmo's canon is its own thing.
Lotro kinda hints more about moving trees and Ents within the Shire, and there is a quest where you help one out of a spider nest, and it talks like it could possibly be an entwife. A theory I have is that Old Man Willow took the Entwives to the area near the shire and corrupted them to make the Old Forest, and some of the entwives split and went to the shire
I always assumed they surrounded the Shire which is why the Shire was so well hidden.
Well, perhaps J.R. deliberately left us with at least one unsolved mystery..... 🤔
Very realistic actually. They went all strong independent wahmen and of course died without their men. Tolkien was very wise
I think the saddest part is when Treebeard meets the hobbits and gets excited that they may have seen the entwives...even after hundreds of years he still had hope he would see them again 😢
They decided they’ve had enough of the male ents and went on a long holiday
At the end of which they fell into a canyon and died, as told in the Tale of Elma and Oo-Leaves.
They left the toilet seat up one too many times.
They became Botruckles in the Harry Potter universe
I think, from the perspective of such long-lived creatures, the ent-wives feared the same fate for the Ent's forest. Thus, they prepared and set up gardens at the extents in each direction so that the ents, when time came, would find the ent-wives in the homes they made to welcome them back into their arms.
However, the folly of their race was foretold, the ents refuse to leave their forest, even to their own detriment in the end. The ent-wives were never going to see their ents, but they'll still have their gardens of life they nurture.