“The Beeches Were their Favourite Trees”: An analysis of peoples’ relationships with Trees in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”

Abstract

This Master Thesis investigates the relationships the different peoples of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit have to trees. Plants exist in nearly all forms of literature, but are often reduced to the background, and seldomly play a large part in the story. Over the last years, the fields of ecocriticism and critical plant studies have developed to investigate the representation of nature in literature. Drawing on research from these fields, I here analyse one of the classics in children’s fantasy literature, The Hobbit, to investigate the relationships between the different peoples in the story and the trees that surround them. In this thesis, I pay analytical attention to both the verbal text and the illustrations, to gain a better understanding of the ways in which Hobbits, Elves and Humans interact with, use, and describe the trees around them, as well as the ways in which trees are presented in their environments. In the analysis, I have not least used the Phyto-Analysis Map, an analytical tool developed by Lykke Guanio-Uluru (2021) to facilitate investigations of plant representation in children’s literature. The findings show a striking similarity in the ways the different peoples in The Hobbit value trees. Their main value to all the three peoples analysed here is utilitarian. Trees are overwhelmingly passive in the narrative, suggesting anthropocentric attitudes.