Essay on “The Lord of the Rings”: Tolkien's Geography.

A lot has been said about Tolkien’s geography. Maps have been created and even video and computer games have been launched to take the players through the intricate designs of Middle-earth. Scholars and critics keep on wondering where Middle-earth is, and they still struggle to find associations between the locations of Tolkien’s romance and real, tangible places in England or Europe. Tolkien’s detractors have even blamed his long descriptions of landscape for what they call “a slow development of events” and a “loss of rhythm” in Tolkien’s narrative. But, what people who dislike Tolkien’s detailed pictures of landscape do not seem to be considering is how these descriptions help the author to paint, and the reader to understand, the inner state of the main characters in this epic narration.
As W. H. Auden said, “quest narratives like Tolkien’s use the image of the physical journey as a symbolic description of human experience.” In other words, these descriptions are not there just for the sake of filling in pages and enlarging the story so that publishers can sell more books. On the contrary, the landscape is there to reflect the stage of the spiritual journey the protagonists are going through. If Tolkien takes so much effort in giving his readers so many details of the realm’s geography is because his mapping and his intricate designs have a special significance, for each land that our heroes traverse is analogous to the travelers’ experiences.
The first and perhaps more obvious chapter in which the description of the landscape seems to correspond to the protagonists’ spiritual state is that of “Minas Tirith”. The great city and fortress of Gondor, situated on the border with Mordor, seems to have decayed because of the spiritual depravity of its ruler, Denethor, who allows the evil lies of the Palantír to convince him that he is incapable of saving Minas Tirith from Mordor’s power. Minas Tirith also symbolizes the precarious condition of the West in the conflict against Mordor. As a city, Minas Tirith evokes a sense of human history and the hope of future progress. Its survival determines the survival of humankind. The white walls of Minas Tirith, organized into the beauty and order of seven concentric circles, symbolize the ability for moral choice among the dwellers of the West. The white exterior can be damaged or preserved, but the physical condition of the ailing King is mirrored in the barrenness of the land. In fact, Sauron’s corrupting influence over Denethor has caused the walls of Minas Tirith to deteriorate; and for the same reason, the White Tree, the city’s symbol, remains broken until Aragorn’s rise to the throne.
Similarly, the chapter named “The Old Forest”, in book One (The Fellowship of the Ring), seems to highlight, with Tolkien’s descriptions of the landscape, the initial bewilderment of the Hobbits who, in spite of their doubts and fears, are still eager for adventure. The variety and complexity of the many trees and vegetation of the Old Forest seems to portrait the mixture of feelings the Hobbits are experimenting. First, their fear and curiosity for the unknown is expressed in their own words: “But the Forest is queer. Everything in it is very much more alive, more aware of what is going on… but something makes paths. Whenever one comes inside one finds open tracks; but they seem to shift and change from time to time in a queer fashion…” Later, their confusion is depicted by the landscape:
The hobbits now left the tunnel-gate and rode across the wide hollow. On the far side was a faint path leading up on to the floor of the Forest, a hundred yards and more beyond the Hedge; but it vanished as soon as it brought them under the trees. Looking back they could see the dark line of the Hedge through the stems of trees that were already thick about them. Looking ahead they could see only tree-trunks of innumerable sizes and shapes: straight or bent, twisted, leaning, squat or slender, smooth or gnarled and branched; and all the stems were green or gray with moss and slimy, shaggy growths.
It does not take long before we readers learn how this environment affects our heroes: “For the moment there was no whispering or movement among the branches; but they all got an uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched with disapproval, deepening to dislike and even enmity.” Even as Frodo tries to cheer them up with a song, the landscape is so overwhelming that he fails in his intent: “He spoke cheerfully, and if he felt any great anxiety, he did not show it. The others did not answer. They were depressed. A heavy weight was settling steadily on Frodo’s heart, and he regretted now with every step forward that he had ever thought of challenging the menace of the trees.”
The description Celborn makes of the Anduin River in the first book, chapter named “Farewell to Lórien”, seems to work as an omen of the tough choices Frodo will have to make in the following stage regarding the future of the fellowship: “As you go down the river… you will find that the trees will fail, and you will come to a barren country… a wide region of sluggish fen where the stream becomes tortuous and much divided.” But his premonitory words were nothing compared to reality and how it impacted our heroes, for, in the chapter about “The Great River” we learn how the company went on the third day of their voyage through lands that changed slowly where…
”the trees thinned and failed altogether. On the eastern bank to their left they saw long formless slopes stretching up and away toward the sky; brown and withered they looked, as if fire had passed over them, leaving no living blade of green: an unfriendly waste without even a broken tree or a bold stone to relieve the emptiness. They had come to the Brown lands that lay, vast and desolate, between Southern Mirkwood and the hills of the Emyn Muil. What pestilence or war or evil deed of the Enemy had so blasted all that region even Aragorn could not tell.”
The landscape is coherent with the hard decisions the fellowship has to make since Boromir has been trying mightily to convince the Company to make for Minas Tirith, while the rest of them remain undecided about pushing on further towards Mordor, where the Ring must ultimately go.
In Book VI, Mordor’s wretched lands mirror the evil of Sauron. First the Fortress of Sauron, Barad-dur, whose cruel pinnacles and iron crown at the topmost were the seat of Sauron’s piercing eye, left our heroes hopeless when the shadows finally allowed them to get a glaze of it. Then, in Morgul Pass, that “deep gulf of shadow” which led to the walls and tower of Minas Morgul, we are told how “even the moon light wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse light, a light that illuminated nothing” seemed to our heroes like the demented forms in an uneasy dream. The effect this scenery has in the protagonists becomes evident in the following lines: “They felt their senses reeling and their minds darkening as a faint sickening channel-smell, an odour of rottenness filled the air.”
It would be interesting to analyze how Mordor’s topography parallels also the physical and mental gradual destitution of the Ring-bearer, or how Mount Doom itself symbolizes the spiritual ascent that Frodo and Sam must make to destroy the Ring. But for the sake of brevity, let us simply emphasize by now, specially for those who complain that much of Tolkien’s narrations consist on the Company walking through countryside, how Tolkien’s eye for scenery, and his talent for making the scenery reflect mood, make the natural environment almost another character in itself, whether it is the sleepy Shire, the enchanted Lothlórien, or the bleak Brown Lands.
Each land through which the Company passes has its own topography and its flora and fauna. Such descriptions of landscape allow Tolkien, not to demonstrate how thoroughly he has thought out his realm of Middle-earth –we are sure that was not his intention, but each river the party fords and each mountain range they cross is there to provide the readers a sort of bird’s-eye view all along the way. Besides, the maps which add an aura of the arcane, as if we were poring over an ancient manuscript, give the sense that the novel is a record of a past age and place, without which, we would probably get a feeling of incessant slog through unending terrain.

TOLKIEN’S GEOGRAPHY
By XAVIER ROSALES SOTO
Essay on “The Lord of the Rings”
December 2007
http://xavier-rosales.blogspot.com