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Timely, again: Tolkien's fantastic ecology.

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Abstract

Given the enduring academic and pop-culture acceptance of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, the question of how that work can be read and taught is timely as ever. This article therefore models a process by which instructors can demonstrate the environmental implications of Tolkien's work. We move from theoretical to practical concerns, beginning with a review of the warrants of environmental thinking, a study of the genre in which Tolkien writes, and close readings of key moments in The Lord of the Rings that demonstrate the development of an environmental ethic.

Warrants: Deep Ecology, the Land Ethic, and the Frontier Hypothesis

In teaching environmental literature, I have faced the significant pedagogical challenge of demonstrating the "warrants" of ecological thinking, the grounds upon which environmental consciousness--and, ultimately, action--rest. In Tolkien's work, however, I have found a tool through which students can recognize "environmentalism" as a way of perceiving their ontological positions, both individually and collectively, with respect to the natural world. As Carol J. Verburg has indicated in her excellent reader, The Environmental Predicament: Four Issues for Critical Analysis, we see no real consensus in the media, government, or in some cases scientific communities about environmental practice and policy. Yet here is where Tolkien proves timely. In terms that elegantly transcend whatever problematic connotations "environmentalism" might currently muster, Tolkien demonstrates environmental consciousness as a system of values and model for action.

A "green" teaching of Tolkien can begin by introducing students to some of the key tenets of environmental thought. Fritjof Capra's The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems is an excellent starting point. Capra, an Austrian physicist, names Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess' term "deep ecology" as a way of perceiving the world "not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent" (7). Contrasting this form with "shallow" ecology, which is anthropomorphic and views the natural world strictly in terms of its value to human culture, Capra notes that Naess understands humans "as just one particular strand in the web of life" (7). Treating Naess' contentions in terms of a "new ecological paradigm," Capra suggests that both the thinking and values of industrialized cultures have diminished the "integrative" and celebrated the "self-assertive" (9-10). If we are to recognize, as per Naess, that all living things have innate value, we must change our thinking and values accordingly. We tend to think rationally, analytically, notes Capra; this thinking works in service to values of "expansion, competition, quantity, and domination" (10). Less self-assertive and more integrative means of thinking might include intuition and synthesis; the values that might direct that thinking are "conservation, cooperation, quality and...

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