[image description: tweet by Netchimenâs Reverie that reads âTolkien describing places that are evil: no trees grow thereâ /end description]
This is doubtless because of his experience of the trenches in the Great War.
Like, this is what things looked like to soldiers who fought in that war (image in black and white of a solitary soldier walking across a muddy wasteland pocked with puddles):
Hereâs Delville Wood, the site of a battle in 1916 (sepia image of a wasteland dotted with broken and dead trees):
Hereâs an image from the Battle of the Somme, in which Tolkien participated (image of soldiers standing above and inside a trench or earthwork in a grey wasteland; smoke from artillery is on the horizon)
So yeah: no trees = evil was Tolkienâs own direct lived experience. Itâs precisely why Mordor and the wastelands around it look like they do in his books.
the plateau of gorgoroth, the heartland of mordor, is described as being scarred by countless pits dug by orcs the true seat of evil is full of foxholes and trenches
Thereâs a lesson to be learned here.
I hope Tolkien would be happy to learn that a hundred years on, trees grow again here:
From The Atlantic.
I think that Tolkien would be very happy to see that.
