Where do ants come from?
Audience of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of Lord of the Rings will recognize Ant from Two towers, where they play a big role in helping in the fight against Saruman. Although they are included in a small part of the story, their existence to protect Middle-earth covers a much broader period of time. Ants are arboreal hosts or shepherds, which means they tend to the trees, but they are also allies of the creatures of Middle-earth against Sauron’s darkness. Their name, Ent, is Old English meaning “giant” but the elves call them Onodrim.
In some ways, they resemble the tree that is told in stories around the world. They can live that long because time affects them the same way it affects real trees. A long period of time for non-Ent beings is nothing but a few minutes in the Ent world. Ants are large and strong, but their unusually laid-back nature prevents them from showing it off. However, when they attacked Isengard in Lord of the Rings trio we see the full potential of their power. Despite their strength and impenetrable bark, they were still, in a way, a dying species as only the male Ant-Men remained in Middle-earth.
The ants are separate but similar to Huorns, who come from the result of Ants living among the trees. Although not as mobile as the Ants, Huorns developed the ability to communicate through language. The original language of the Ents, Old Entish, was a very slow-paced and difficult to pronounce language. It is believed that non-entish beings cannot pronounce the language correctly. The difficulty of speaking Old Entish had made the only creature with whom Ant-Man could communicate effectively was the Huorn. Due to their interactions with the elves, the Ant-Man acquired their language, but still spoke in the Entish dialect, creating the New Entish.
Treebeard, based on CS Lewis, Tolkien’s friend, is the Ent that audiences are most familiar with when he plays a big role in Two Towers. In the movie, he explains a lot about the existence of Ant-Man for Pippin and Merry, even claiming to be the oldest living being on Earth. However, his explanation gives some details about where Ant-Man came from.
To understand the background of Ant-Man will help you understand how epic their attack on Isengard was. To fully understand it requires looking at Tolkien’s texts and examining their history. The story of Ant-Man begins with trees of great forests, who, in the Age of Stars, is under threat. Thus, great spirits, created by Eru lluvatar at Yavanna’s request, came to the forests to live among the trees and protect them. They were later called Ant-Man.
They appeared in Middle-earth at the same time as the Dwarves, because it was Dwarves threaten the trees. As time passed, they became more like the trees they had looked after. The Forest of Fangorn is the last remaining place where Ant-Man lived at the time of the trilogy’s timeline.
Tolkien, once resentful of industrialization, likely wrote Ant-Man into the story as a physical representation of nature battling against the damage that technological progress and mass production caused. out to the Earth. Tolkien used Yavanna send Ant-Man to protect trees and plants, literally, like a godsend to the planet.
The biggest missing piece of the puzzle of their beginnings – to which even Tolkien has no clear answer – is Ent Wives. The Ent wives had left Middle-earth where the male Ants remained, preferring different ways of life. Ent Wives chose to live in peace among men, teaching them how to garden.
Though for a time the Ent men visited the Ent wives, Sauron’s darkness soon destroyed the area where they lived, and the Ent men have not seen them since. . There is a legend among the elves that one day the male Ents and the Ent Wives would be reunited. Their story in Lord of the Rings the trilogy even ends with Aragorn introducing Treebeard to the concept of Ant-Man now capable of spreading across Middle-earth, in search of Ent Wives.
Being of divine origin, it’s safe to assume that some Ant-Man elements will be present in Middle-earth, even after they disappear. Whether they find Ent Wives and regenerate forests with Entings, or they develop their language skills and share it with creatures of Middle-earth, the spirit of Ant-Man will always be there. Their existence in Middle-earth was too woven into world history to disappear altogether.
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