Trinity Western University

Spiritual Stewardship of the Environment in The Lord of the Rings

Rehan Naqvi
ENGL 590 A
Dr. Monika B. Hilder
2 April 2024

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Since its publication and from its earliest reviews, The Lord of the Rings has been
recognised simultaneously as an epic, an adventure story, as well as a fantasy quest inspired by
medieval romances and ancient myth (Auden 46; Spacks 82, 96-97). While these references are
valid associations for Tolkien’s work of high fantasy, they nevertheless contain another literary
genre that accompanies them: the genre of nature writing. In The Lord of the Rings, the presence
of nature is not relegated to the background as in most novels; it accompanies the plot from the
moment the protagonists begin the quest from the Shire. Tolkien’s continuous detailed
description of locales and landscapes that the protagonists traverse across Middle-earth makes
nature an ever-present companion to the narrative: an all-encompassing member of the
fellowship of the ring in which every environment is rendered a moral reflection of its
inhabitants. This mirroring of environment and inhabitants creates an ethical symbiosis between
nature and the denizens who care or abuse the land around them (Spacks 84). The Shire is not
only the bucolic countryside of an agrarian society, but also a reflection of the hobbits’ ideals of
peace and domesticity; the rolling, open meads of Rohan reflect the spirit of wide-ranging
freedom that is essentialized by an equestrian culture; and at the opposite extreme, the sickened
and corrupted waste of Mordor reflects the lack of being and the infertility that defines Sauron
himself (Spacks 84). As Matthew Dickerson has noted, “It has been rightly said that the true hero
of The Lord of the Rings is not Aragorn or Sam Gamgee or even Frodo but Middle-earth itself”
(269). Indeed, the primary rationale for destroying the Ring, the sorcerous artifact that is the
central symbol of evil in the book, is not only to defeat the dark lord Sauron but to prevent him
from reducing nature to a lifeless waste which is foreshadowed by the state of his own domain in
Mordor. In this context, the protagonists as well as the entire narrative movement of quest and
war are subsumed under the aim of protecting the natural world of Middle-earth, be that the

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woods of the elves, the mountain kingdoms of the dwarves, the farmlands of the hobbits, the
grasslands and plains of the kingdom of men, or the forested wilderness of the ents. Similarly,
Tom Shippey asserts the centrality of nature in all of Tolkien’s work: “the theme that flashes
from much of Tolkien’s work is that of the identity of man and nature…. He created Middleearth before he had a plot to put in it” (131-32). Clearly for Tolkien, the natural world was not
merely a setting to decorate the plot; it was a vital presence suffused with Romantic elemental
beauty and spiritual value expressed through the sub-creation of an enchanted environment
(Letters 146). The Lord of the Rings contains, alongside the tale of an epic quest, the revelation
of nature as sacred and spiritually alive: characters encounter supernatural beings who personify
differing aspects of environmental stewardship or come to exemplify that stewardship
themselves. For Tolkien, as for his great Catholic predecessor Saint Thomas Aquinas, nature
participated in the divinity of its creator (Doede 27; Testi). In this context, within the
environment of The Lord of the Rings specifically, the spiritual can be understood as the power
that nurtures life, the exact opposite to the conventional modern supposition of spirit as a
transcendent reality separate from, or unrelated to, all natural processes (Doede 34-35). Each
character expresses Tolkien’s challenge to the modern technologically instrumentalist view of
nature as a phylogenetic abstraction defined and delimited by scientific nomenclature, a
utilitarian view which is closely allied to Saruman and Sauron’s treatment of the earth.
This essay argues that J.R.R. Tolkien intended to mythologize the idea of environmental
stewardship as a spiritual duty. Tolkien wished to see a sacralization of nature reborn in the
hearts and minds of his readers to confront the environmental destruction produced by the
industrial revolution (Letters 96, 419-20) and continuing past Tolkien’s own lifetime. Tolkien’s
whole legendarium displays an empathetic bond with nature from the creation of Middle-earth to

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its conclusion at the end of the Third Age; however, specific to The Lord of the Rings, four
characters are foregrounded as representatives of Tolkienian ideas of spiritual stewardship and
environmental conservation: the wizard Gandalf; the nature spirit Tom Bombadil whom Tolkien
referred to as the personification of the English countryside; the giant Ent Treebeard, a tree-man
come to life to give voice to the wild forests; and the hobbit gardener and hero Sam Gamgee;
Through these four characters deeply connected to nature, this paper will investigate Tolkien’s
vision of environmental stewardship as a spiritual duty based on the idea that he did not
differentiate between the natural and the spiritual but regarded both as forming a totality of
divine expression.
The inspiration for Gandalf’s character immediately establishes the wizard’s affinity with
environmental stewardship. A postcard of a painting by Joseph Madlener called The Mountainspirit was in Tolkien’s possession and on which he had written, “Origin of Gandalf” (Carpenter,
51). The painting depicts a white bearded old man in a red robe wearing a broad hat seated on a
boulder in a forest with mountains in the backdrop, a fawn nuzzling his hand with a stream
flowing nearby. The fact that the animal, vegetable, mineral, and liquid elements of the earth are
congregated around a figure whom Tolkien deliberately links to the invention of Gandalf
suggests the centrality of the wizard’s connection with nature. Though Tolkien was not the artist
of the painting, he never regarded words or names casually and the idea of a nature spirit would
likely have been attractive to him as it implies the old man is a personification of an aspect of
nature. The title of the work combines the word “spirit” with the more elemental “mountain,”
suggesting metaphorically that the spiritual inheres in the natural and the figure is the guardian of
the alpine environ. As will be seen below, the blending of the spiritual and material into one
whole is a key element of Tolkien’s definition of nature. The mountain spirit’s benevolent

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relationship with the forest’s wildlife to whom he communicates is clearly a visual metaphor of
care and protection. Unusually for a wizard, Gandalf is more closely associated with nature
rather than with occult magic that is generally the leitmotif commonly linked to the magician.
Through the mesh of Tolkien’s imagination, the figure of the mountain-spirit in Madlener’s
painting transforms the idea of wizardry into benevolent stewardship of nature which is evident
in Gandalf’s behaviour and actions across the text. In The Lord of the Rings itself, Gandalf’s
intimate relationship with earthbound life is portrayed in several ways. First, despite being a
personage of great power and authority, he is repeatedly shown as enjoying everyday pursuits
such as eating, drinking, smoking, traveling and entertaining hobbit society with his firework
displays (Tolkien 350-31). Next, Gandalf’s relationship with other characters outside his role of a
guide and advisor is amiable or amusingly paternal rather than otherworldly as one might expect
from a powerful wizard, thereby suggesting he is emblematic of spiritual wisdom and
benevolence alongside earthbound enjoyment; even when scolding others, he frequently sounds
comically exasperated (299, 305). Tolkien establishes Gandalf as part of the web of common life,
which is participatory and natural, unlike the wizard Saruman who holds himself aloof from the
ordinary and brings destruction upon the hobbits and their home (994-96), thus proving himself
the opposite of Gandalf both in his relationship with nature and the hobbits. Gandalf uses his
power coercively only once against a hobbit and even that with the proviso that he was trying to
protect Bilbo from the obsessive attraction of the Ring (33). Most revealingly, in one of the
preeminent inspirational passages from the work, Gandalf openly announces his guardianship of
nature as superior to the political rule of Denethor when the latter boasts of the centrality of
Gondor in the war against Mordor:

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But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or
small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care.
And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if
anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in
days to come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know? (741-42).
Gandalf’s affinity with nature is clear in the speech he gives to Denethor. He movingly uses the
imagery of fertility such as “grow fair” and “bear fruit and flower” to explicitly establish his
protective role of the environment that is further reinforced when he uses the term “stewardship.”
However, except for the mysterious reference to his “task” that hints of a greater providential
plan behind his protective presence, it is harder to demonstrate Gandalf’s spiritual stewardship
relative to his conservational role for two reasons. First, in the foreground of the narrative,
Gandalf is presented in his physical appearance as a wizard with his tall staff and pointed, widebrimmed hat: he is less of a spiritual figure and more of a fantasy character, though obviously
one with a moral vision and the ability to guide, inspire, and lead. Second, Tolkien was
absolutely against using his works to directly express his religious views (Letters 172). However,
Tolkien does hint at the spiritual origin of Gandalf in The Return of the King through the
perspective of the hobbit Pippin who rides with the wizard to bring counsel to Gondor: "Yet by
sense other than sight Pippin perceived that Gandalf had the greater power and the deeper
wisdom, and majesty that was veiled. And he was older, far older…. What was Gandalf? In what
far time and place had he come into the world, and when would he leave it?” (Tolkien 749). The
abstract imagery of power and wisdom along with hidden majesty suggested by the evocative
word “veiled” gives Tolkien the opportunity to suggest the spiritual background of the wizard:
Gandalf had “come into the world” and would later depart from it as though he did not originate

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in Middle-earth itself. Yet this spiritual quality of Gandalf’s character is rarely foregrounded in
the text since Tolkien is always careful to embody the spiritual rather than present it abstractedly,
preferring to view spirituality as an internal element that animates earthly life, rather than an
external imposition that dualistically imparts life as a secondary property. Ultimately, it can be
argued that spirituality for Tolkien is immanent rather than transcendent, not because it was a
vehicle for pantheistic belief, but because it was similar to incarnational theology in which the
divine inheres in the natural without the diminution of either. As Robert Doede argues, “God
does not merely bring creation/nature into existence, but also informs it with his own essence”
(27). It is possible that given Tolkien’s staunch Catholic beliefs, this incarnational view would
have been deeply appealing to him, and it is suggested as such in Gandalf’s confrontation with
the Balrog in Moria. In the dialogue of this confrontation with the demon, Gandalf declares, “I
am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor” (Tolkien 322). In the context of
this dialogue, Clyde Kilby writes in his text Tolkien and the Silmarillion that the Secret Fire had
a personal religious meaning for Tolkien: “Very specifically [Tolkien] told me that the ‘the Secret
Fire sent to burn at the heart of the world’ in the beginning was the Holy Spirit” (59). There is a
clear correlation here between nature and spirit through a Christian lens, especially when it is
noted that in the formative text of his mythology The Silmarillion, Tolkien refers to the spirit as
the Flame Imperishable, the divine force that imbues natural creation (20) which parallels his
views on incarnational theology confirmed in his discussion with Kilby cited above. It is
therefore evident that, through the figure of Gandalf, Tolkien saw stewardship not only as the
conservation of everything “that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower,” but also as a
spiritual duty of serving the “Secret Fire,” the creative force of the divine through whom the
earth is rendered sacred. In terms of spiritual stewardship, Gandalf’s joyful engagement with the

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everyday doings of life, the deeply human relationships of which he is the centre, the sense of
spiritual mystery that surrounds his origins, and finally his call to action in the name of nature
allow Tolkien to blend the spiritual and natural as a moral responsibility fused to the love of the
living earth.
In contrast to Gandalf’s subtle yet powerfully layered stewardship of nature, Tom
Bombadil emerges as a character who is openly mythic in his guardianship of the environment.
Like Gandalf, Bombadil’s character inspiration is closely related to the wild as Tolkien explicitly
referred to him as “the spirit of the (vanishing) Oxford and Berkshire countryside” (Letters 26).
Bombadil is one of the oldest living beings within the legendarium, existing even before the
natural environment bloomed across Middle-earth: “Eldest, that’s what I am…. Tom was here
before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn…. He knew
the dark under the stars when it was fearless–before the Dark Lord came from Outside” (Tolkien
129). Tom Bombadil’s stewardship over the land is not the moral defence of the environment, but
actually an extension of natural phenomenon of which he is an embodiment. With his elf-like
consort Goldberry, Tom fulfills the movement of the seasons and can challenge the darker
aspects nature through the power of his song (Chance 39).
Despite his enchanted control of the environment, the spiritual aspect of Tom’s
stewardship lies in his benevolence and ability to protect his land from the chthonic powers that
are also part of the polarity of nature; however, whereas Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights
are representative of death and decay, Tom is symbolic of life and fertility. Tom’s country is set
between the Old Forest to the west and the Barrow Downs to the east, one controlled by the lifehating Old Man Willow and the other by undead Barrow-wights. The geographic proximity of
Tom’s house to the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs is symbolic of the relationship between the

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spiritual goodness associated with life and fertility set against the backdrop of decay and longing
for death. Tom’s spiritual nature cannot be understood without the admission of the power of
death that is also an intrinsic part of nature and a challenge to the positive life drive he
represents. When the hobbits encounter both Old Man Willow and the Barrow-wights, an
enchanted sleep is placed over them which Jane Chance has associated with the unconsciousness
of death (47-48). The wights inhabit a death mound, a burial place, literally a grave; Old Man
Willow’s name includes the adjective “Old” connoting age, death and the end of the life cycle. In
contrast to both these antagonists symbolic of death, Tom Bombadil is supercharged with
exuberance and youthful energy, his constant singing representative of both bodily and spiritual
joy. Like Gandalf, Tom is an embodied spirit, earthy and alive, the very opposite of the
conventional understanding of the spirit as an insubstantial phantom. In fact, it is the
disembodied wraiths, undead wights, and the non-physical Sauron who are closer to the
traditional popular idea of a spirit: invisible and insubstantial, their clothed presence an illusion,
or as Gandalf explains to Frodo, “the black robes are real robes that they wear to give shape to
their nothingness” (Tolkien 216). In contrast to this attenuated existence that is an enervated
absence of being, Tom is the life-force of nature which is the living spirit.
Tom and his spouse’s stewardship of the environment is partially defined by the power of
their songs to control the weather or defend against the chthonic aspects of nature when a species
oversteps the bounds of the natural order as Old Man Willow does (Chance 40). Songs are a clue
to the revelation that nature manifests itself not only physically but also spiritually since all
singing is expressive of an emotive state springing from the soul. Old Man Willow enchants the
hobbits with a drowsy spell that is expressed as “cool words, saying something about water and
sleep. They gave themselves up to the spell and fell fast asleep at the foot of the great grey

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willow” (Tolkien 114). Tom rescues the hobbits by a counter-spell that is also sung: “I’ll sing his
roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away” (117). Similarly, the Barrow-wight
chants a song of death and despair as a prelude to the human sacrifice it is about to commit on
the unconscious hobbits but is out-spelled, first by Frodo singing a song to summon Tom and
then exorcised from the barrow by Tom’s own retaliatory singing. The Barrow-wight’s song is
filled with the bitterness, envy, and despair representative of existence turned unnaturally against
itself (138), while Tom’s song expresses the joy of life, courage and humour —the one being
symbolic of the death drive and the other of the life force, respectively. Tom proves his spiritual
stewardship of the environment by challenging the chthonic powers analogous to psychological
entrapments that correlate to the darker aspect of the cycle of nature. In this context, when Frodo
sings his praise of Goldberry, Tom’s spouse and fellow spirit, his words skip over the dark cycle
of death and decay, presenting only her own and Tom’s role as life-giving agents of seasonal
change: “O spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!” (122).
However, it is Tom’s role as the spirit of the land that extends his importance as the
ultimate manifestation of nature’s being. When Frodo questions Goldberry about Tom’s identity
she answers simply: “He is” (122). When Frodo asks Tom himself the same question, Tom first
replies with another question that is almost mystical: “Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and
nameless.... Eldest, that’s what I am” (129). Most significantly, the One Ring cannot make Tom
invisible and its evil has no power over him since his essential self is pacifist with no desire for
dominating other wills (Dickerson 21-22). When Tom’s invulnerability to the One Ring is
revealed at the Council of Elrond, he is recognised as a personification of nature whom Sauron is
bent on destroying: “Power to defy our Enemy is not in him, unless such power is in the Earth

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itself” (Tolkien 259). Tolkien himself suggested that Bombadil was an expression of existence
without impure ulterior motives:
[I]f you have, as it were taken ‘a vow of poverty’, renounced control, and take your
delight in things for themselves without reference to yourself, watching, observing, and
to some extent knowing, then the question of the rights and wrongs of power and control
might become utterly meaningless to you. (Letters 179)
This quotation aligns well with the idea of Tom’s role as a spiritual environmental steward who
seeks to observe and understand but acts only occasionally to protect the unwary who accidently
encounter a darker aspect of the land. Tom’s knowledge of the land and its creatures can be
easily paralleled to ecology that recognises the holistic niche of humans or hobbits within his
part of Middle-earth:
He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the
Forest, about the evil things and good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel
things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.
As they listened, they began to understand the lives of the Forest, apart from
themselves, indeed to feel themselves as the strangers where all other things were at
home. (Tolkien 127)
Tolkien recognizes Tom’s unique point of view as closely correlating to nature itself that does not
judge its creations: “He is master in a peculiar way: he has no fear, and no desire of possession or
domination at all. He merely knows and understands about such things as concern him in his
natural little realm. He hardly even judges, and as far as can be seen makes no effort to reform or
remove even the Willow” (Letters 192). Tom understands the perspective and role of all living

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creatures within the broader pattern of nature as a whole. It would not be an exaggeration, in the
context of Tom’s own answer to Frodo’s question about his identity, that Tom is spiritually the
incarnation of nature itself (Dickerson 19) as Tolkien clearly stated in his letter quoted above,
Tom’s stewardship being a watch over the land and only rarely an intervention.
If Tom Bombadil’s antagonist Old Man Willow is a voiceless personification of the Old
Forest which has become sufficiently conscious to fulfill a malicious purpose, then Treebeard is
the exact opposite: an articulate, nuanced, and powerful voice of the wild woods of Fangorn and
of trees generally. Tolkien’s love of trees is well-established, and he recognised them as living
creatures for whom he experienced fellow feelings as he would towards human beings (Letters
220). The origin of Treebeard and the race of Ents is partially inspired by Tolkien’s desire to give
trees a voice and his disappointment with the famous moment in Macbeth when it is discovered
that Birnam Wood moving to besiege Macbeth’s castle is in actuality just a camouflage of
branches used by the English forces to disguise their numbers. In Tolkien’s words, “I longed to
devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war" (212). As critics have noted,
Treebeard is the voice of the untamed forested wilderness that transcends human politics and
designs (Dickerson 119; Flieger, Green Suns 211). Treebeard is the living representative of the
earth become conscious that simply exists and delights in life as pure being, finding joy in the
free pursuit of natural processes such as singing songs, drinking water, breathing air as well as
shepherding trees. The secondary creation of trees that are mobile, conscious, and vocal was
important enough for Tolkien to invent a guardian forest spirit as a representative of that which is
non-human in nature. In their otherness, the Ents represent a different order of being than that
determined by either Sauron or those fighting him, though Treebeard is careful to make a
distinction which aligns the Ents in favour of all those who oppose the destruction of nature

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(Tolkien 461). Treebeard’s stewardship of the wild forests is a reminder that beyond war and
alliances on one side or the other, nature is uninterested in the tides of history unless it must rise
up out of a sense of self-preservation: “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is
altogether on my side, if you understand me: nobody cares for the woods as I care for them”
(461). What is most powerful about Tolkien’s forests, both those under Treebeard’s protection
and those beyond his borders is the spiritual gift of freewill and individuality with which they are
endowed. The dangerous reputation of the Old Forest and Fangorn, as well as the enchantment of
Lothlorien all indicate that regardless of his love and sympathy for trees, Tolkien viewed them
unsentimentally as being independent of human designs and intentions. Treebeard’s own point of
view about the forested wilderness is nuanced because he makes distinctions among trees that
humans rarely do: “Some of us are still true Ents, and lively enough in our fashion, but many are
growing sleepy, going tree-ish, as you might say. Most of the trees are just trees, of course; but
many are half-awake…. When that happens to a tree, you find that some have bad hearts” (457).
This recognition of the individuality of trees is a prime requisite for a guardian of the wilderness
who compares himself to a shepherd and trees to sheep (457) since it highlights what is
intrinsically valuable in living things that human beings reduce to mere utility. In the case of the
Ents, part of their stewardship is to protect the trees from human depredation: once Treebeard
becomes aware of Saruman’s violent destruction of woods, he rouses the trees to fight back.
Perhaps moved by their defenselessness in the primary world, Tolkien for the first time suggests
that a certain militant reaction is necessary if the wild forests are to survive in his secondary
creation of Middle-earth. Similarly, Patrick Curry has pointed out the catastrophic fate of the
arboreal world in the modern age and Tolkien’s disgust with it (65-66). Tolkien also realised that
the human abuse of nature as a mere resource had even predated the industrial revolution (qtd. in

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Ordway, 206) which only accelerated an existing form of exploitation. If the spiritual is
correlated to the natural, since nature is a creation of a divine entity as Tolkien and the Thomists
believed, then a defence of the wilderness, which may on occasion be militant, can be justified as
a part of spiritual stewardship of the environment. Tolkien’s language becomes
uncharacteristically assertive when he speaks of defending trees: “In all my works I take the part
of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved;
elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest
was hostile to two legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries” (Letters 419).
Given that one of the major plot threads of The Two Towers is concerned with the overthrow of
Saruman and his industrialised works at the hands of Treebeard and his forest, it can be
suggested that Tolkien gave the wilderness the voice and the freewill to revolt against its own
destruction. Unsurprisingly, one of the ways in which Tolkien’s works were ahead of their time is
in the depiction of Treebeard’s stewardship and active defence of forested lands which is a
possible reason that they have become sacred texts of parts of the modern environmental
movement (Flieger, Green Suns 262). As the voice of wild nature, Treebeard distinguishes
himself from all the other races in his vegetative patience and his gentle remonstrance against the
impatience that tragically characterises human relations with the wilds due to the fallen nature of
creation (Kocher 77).
Without the recognition that forests are living beings rather than merely resources for
instrumental use, stewardship of the environment would be difficult to sustain and by suggesting
that the wilderness has a right to defend itself, Tolkien asserts the spiritual equality of trees with
humankind, since both are living creatures and thus spiritual by virtue of the life granted them
from a divine source.

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It is in the character of Sam Gamgee that Tolkien reveals the most human aspect of
spiritual stewardship of nature within The Lord of the Rings. Unlike the other characters in this
essay, the race of hobbits is the closest to humanity in its lack of supernatural power and for this
reason Sam’s relationship with nature is the most relatable. The inspiration for Sam’s character
lies in the village youths who became the valets and batsmen of the educated officer class with
the outbreak of the First World War (Garth). The fact that Sam is a rustic not only establishes his
connection with nature, but it is also a depiction of the realistic life of country dwellers involving
courage, labour, and communal relationships. Sam exemplifies the human cycle of love and
work within nature, and Tolkien models him as an environmental steward in a normative,
practical sense that emphasises natural relationships as gardener, tree planter, cook, friend,
husband, and father. Tolkien recognised these life skills as part of what undergirds heroism and
explicitly commented on their importance: “I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie
(nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to
the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting)” (Letters 161).
It should be noted from above that Tolkien regarded Sam as one of the chief heroes of his work
and highlights the strength of Sam’s character as being rooted in the ordinary. Unlike Gandalf
whose character encompasses a high mimetic role as a wizard (Shippey 159), Sam does not come
from a mysterious realm, but is very much part of the land itself, the agrarian fields and woods of
the Shire: Sam’s behaviour and actions are exemplars of Tolkien’s ideas about normative
stewardship beyond the call of Faerie and enchantment. Hugh Keenan has noted that both
Bombadil and Sam wear the ring and relinquish it without evil after-affects (though in Sam’s
case there is an initial psychomachia involving the temptations of pride and power which he
overcomes), perhaps because both Sam and Tom are so vitally close to nature (70).

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However, unlike Bombadil, Sam is not a personified spirit and his spiritual connection
with nature is established not only through his vocation as a gardener but his love for all living
things, expressed particularly by his loyalty to Frodo, but reaching beyond. After the hobbits bid
farewell to Tom Bombadil, it is Sam who verbalises the delight they all experience in his
company (Tolkien 144), establishing an affinity between the nature spirit and the mortal gardener
of nature. Sam’s closeness to the animal world is evident in his relationship with the abused
pony Bill. Though Bill comes to love all the hobbits, he bonds most closely with Sam (194) and
Sam is the angriest of the company when the fellowship is forced to abandon Bill outside the
Mines of Moria (296). Beyond the animal world, Sam’s closeness to woods is highlighted in his
outrage at the destruction of the trees in the Shire foreseen in Galadriel’s mirror (353).
Furthermore, unlike any of the other hobbit protagonists, Sam establishes a marital relationship
and has numerous children, fulfilling nature’s purpose of love and nurturing fidelity as well as
fertility. Unsurprisingly, his wife’s name Rosie is virtually eponymous with rose, therefore
making Sam’s marriage symbolic of his bond with nature. Finally, unlike his companions Frodo,
Merry, and Pippin who typify the Shire’s gentry, Sam belongs to the working class and is
celebrated by Tolkien as the most representative of the hobbit race with all its human strengths
and limitations (Letters 329). Verlyn Flieger has commented on the rural hobbits’ profound link
with nature without supernatural agency which yet retains a spiritual quality in its instinctive
connection with the countryside. “These unshod little people are closer to the earth than [men],
more physically in touch with it and more completely in tune with it. Gaffer Gamgee, whose
speciality is roots, Farmer Maggot, with ‘earth under his old feet, and clay on his fingers,’ Sam,
with his earthly practicality and shrewd common sense—these are the stuff of the earth”
(Splintered 148-49).

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The spirituality that is embodied in nature expresses itself in Sam’s normative
relationships as a gardener, friend, son, husband, and father. None of these commonplace social
roles are seen as spiritual from a modern secular perspective, but Tolkien always regarded the
ordinary as a container for the spiritual, not separated from the normative at an abstract
metaphysical distance (Letters 66). Sam’s moral virtues of courage and loyalty, his supportive
role as Frodo’s closest friend throughout the book, his place as a son to the Gaffer frequently
alluded to in the narrative, and finally as husband to Rosie Cotton at end of the trilogy suggest
that these social relations and moral qualities were simultaneously spiritual since they all partake
of different facets of love. For Tolkien, an orthodox Catholic and profoundly religious individual,
the sacralization of everyday life by Christian love, as opposed to merely romantic emotion,
would have been a deeply spiritual experience. Viewed through the lens of secular
understanding, Sam’s normative social and biological relationships would not be regarded as
spiritual at all; for the modern secular world with its Cartesian split of material and mental
properties, spirit cannot inhere in either social or biological life processes. However, Tolkien
through his instinctual love of the earth, his belief in a creator God who imbued his essence into
his creation, wished to emphasise the enchanted quality of life through growth and flourishing,
whether it be of trees or people. In Sam’s case, enchantment was communicated through
metaphor.
Since Sam lacks a supernatural expression of his connection with nature, it is expressed
metaphorically through the imagery of Galadriel’s gift of enchanted soil bequeathed to him.
Furthermore, it is highly significant that both Aragorn and Sam plant a tree associated with
morality as well as fecundity: the White Tree of Numenor and the mallorn tree of Lothlorien,
respectively (Petty 239); Sam’s actions mirror the role of the High King, one symbolising the

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spiritual rebirth of Numenor in Gondor and the other of the Shire after Saruman’s brief tyranny
over it. As Dickerson has pointed out, by the end of the book Sam has evolved into the primary
steward of the Shire, particularly in regard to reforesting. Dickerson gives Sam the superlative
compliment of almost being an Ent in his care for the woods: “Though not exactly a counterpart
to the Ents—he is not a Shepherd of the Trees, like Treebeard—in his nurturing of them, Sam has
become as much as Treebeard’s assistant as Gaffer Gamgee’s” (156). However, the imagery of
Sam’s afforestation effort, and hence his own role as a spiritual steward, is amplified by the
addition of Galadriel’s enchanted dust.
So Sam planted saplings to all the places where specially beautiful or beloved trees had
been destroyed, and he put a grain of the precious dust in the soil at the root of each….
Spring surpassed his wildest hopes. His trees began to sprout and grow, as if time was in
a hurry and wished to make one year do for twenty. (Tolkien 1000)
The enchanted quality of the spring growth, its source in Galadriel’s dust, is an extended
metaphor for Sam’s own spiritual love of nature and his compassion in sharing his gift with the
whole Shire: “the Lady would not like me to keep it all for my own garden, now so many folk
have suffered” (1000). In this quotation, care for one’s fellow beings encompasses both the
human and vegetative world, rendering them coeval since both species are part of nature which
partake of the divinity of their creator. The animating force behind Sam’s spiritual stewardship is
love and loyalty to the natural environment and all life within it.
Tolkien’s ideas of stewardship of the environment as a spiritual duty is delineated through
the four main characters covered in this essay; however, the nature of that spirituality is not
didactic, since each character’s individuality informs the way they relate to and are also an
expression of nature. Gandalf’s stewardship combines physical opposition to the threat of

Naqvi 18

environmental destruction posed by Sauron as well as a spiritual mission of protecting creation
under the mandate of the Secret Fire; Tom’s stewardship is elemental since he and Goldberry are
seen as personifications of natural phenomena in their spiritually nurturing and fertilizing
aspects; Treebeard’s stewardship is specific to the forested wilderness and expressive of nature’s
spirituality that demands the right to be considered alive in opposition to the reductionist denial
of life to anything other than humanity; and finally, Sam’s stewardship reveals normative human
relationships of marital fidelity, personal loyalty, and environmental conservation to be spiritual
expressions of what is commonly viewed as merely social and horticultural behaviour. In the
case of each of these stewardships, a relationship to the environment is present as an immediate
physical reality, because for Tolkien the Flame Imperishable resides not at an abstract distance
but within direct acts of nurture and lovingkindness towards nature. Ultimately, implicit in all the
examples of environmental stewardship presented by Tolkien is the belief that spirituality inheres
within the phenomena of nature since nature emanates from a sacred source, resonating with the
Secret Fire that lies at the core of life, and is therefore forever in opposition to those powers that
cannot recognise nature as part of the divine and are indifferent to its destruction.

Naqvi 19

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