Editing Old Forest (section)

=== Turning to evil ===

The Tolkien scholar [[Verlyn Flieger]] has observed that the Old Forest contradicts Tolkien's protective stance for wild nature and his positive views of trees in particular. Indeed, although the [[Hobbit]]s in ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' had close shaves with the [[Black Riders]], the first real antagonist which they encountered directly is Old Man Willow. She writes also that the Bucklanders cutting and burning of hundreds of trees along the Hedge is not different from the destruction caused by [[Saruman]]'s [[orc (Middle-earth)|orcs]] in the woods around [[Orthanc]].<ref>{{cite book |chapter=Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-conflict in Middle-earth |first=Verlyn |last=Flieger |author-link=Verlyn Flieger |title=J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views of Middle-earth |editor-first=George |editor-last=Clark |editor2-first=Daniel |editor2-last=Timmons |pages=147–158 |year=2000 |publisher=[[Greenwood Publishing Group]] |isbn=9780313308451 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ES0Hs75IVg0C&q=Tolkien%20Old%20Forest&pg=PA148}}</ref> 
She notes further that Old Man Willow first appears as "a predatory tree" in the 1934 poem "[[The Adventures of Tom Bombadil]]", and that the character is developed in ''The Lord of the Rings'', as documented in ''[[The Return of the Shadow]]''. In an early draft from 1938, she writes, the "Willow" tree and the "Old Man" character had not yet become a single "indivisible being". Instead, Tolkien writes of "how that grey thirsty earth-bound spirit had become imprisoned in the greatest Willow of the [Old] Forest."<ref name="Flieger 2013">{{cite journal |last1=Flieger |first1=Verlyn |author1-link=Verlyn Flieger |title=How Trees Behave-Or Do They? |journal=[[Mythlore]] |date=15 October 2013 |volume=32 |issue=1 |at=article 3, pp. 23–25 |url=https://dc.swosu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1084&context=mythlore}}</ref> Flieger writes that in this draft and in the 1943 "Manuscript B", Tolkien links "a tree and a spirit, a 'non-incarnate mind'" which is "imprisoned" in an individual tree. She comments that Tolkien solved the problem of how a spirit might become trapped in this way by turning them into a single being, at once a tree and a malevolent spirit.<ref name="Flieger 2013"/> Old Man Willow is accompanied in the Old Forest, she writes, by "trees" that do what ordinary trees do – "dropping branches, sticking up roots", but which appear to be reacting to the presence of the hobbits, "giving an impression of motivation and intent that is enhanced by the ominous crowding that herds the hobbits 'eastwards and southwards, into the heart of the forest'",<ref name="Old Forest" group=T/><ref name="Flieger 2013"/> exactly where they do not wish to go.<ref name="Flieger 2013"/>

Tolkien wrote that all inhabitants of Ea can be corrupted, and even "trees may 'go bad'".<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=#212 to Rhona Beare, unsent draft, 1958 }}</ref> [[Matthew T. Dickerson|Matthew Dickerson]] notes in the ''[[J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]]'' that Old Man Willow is a prime example.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Dickerson |first=Matthew |author-link=Matthew T. Dickerson |title=Old Man Willow |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |encyclopedia=[[J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia]] |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |page=471}}</ref>