Silence and Speech in the Woods

One of the joys of reading Tolkien is that simple things -- like silence and speech -- seem fresh and profound.  Consider these examples from the chapter "Three is Company."  In a rare example of animal expression, Tolkien gives voice to a fox, who remarks upon his strange encounter with a group of hobbits.  The words are simply thoughts, but the reader is aware of them -- and the "talking" animal reinforces the idea that the natural world is full of awareness, of sorts not customarily recognized by humans, or even hobbits.  The eventual appearance of the elves reinforces this sensation -- in harmony with the environment, they make camp and feast in a place where "the green floor ran on into the wood, and formed a wide space like a hall, roofed by the boughs of trees."

For Tolkien, words seem to be more than the expression of an indvidual's will -- they are part of a deep legacy which emerges almost of its own accord.  Thus, Frodo recites Bilbo's road poem, but says, "It came to me then, as if I was making it up; but I may have heard it long ago."  The elves are also speaking, or singing, when they make their appearance.  Even the hobbits that didn't understand "the fair elven-tongue" could experience something: "the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words which they only partly understood."  The silence of the mind, the song in the forest, Elvish and non-Elvish, all mingle together as a cloud of grace and beauty.  What's more, Frodo seems to identify them as High Elves because of a single word: "They spoke the name of Elbereth!"

Despite the song, the elves are often associated with silence.  They were silent as the hobbits watched them pass, and again once the hobbits joined them.  But this time the quiet of their movement is linked with other natural imagery: "They marched on again in silence, and passed like shadows and faint lights..."  The elves are bound to the landscape.  Born under starlight, when first they appeared in the world, they are the music in the shadows, the light in the darkness.  One might think of Henry David Thoreau's description in Walden: "In the midst of a gentle rain... I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me."  (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/walden/hdt05.html)  The hobbits will have to contend with the anger of trees, eventually, but in chapter three nature and its elvish allies -- or incarnations? -- are on their side.  And they need not fear the silence as long as they have the stars.