The themes surrounding Saruman and his hideous destruction of the once beautiful Isengard, is Tolkien’s way of setting down in words his grief at the state of the world’s woodlands and wildernesses. These once-wild places have all but been tamed, ordered, or chopped down completely. He poured all of these feelings into the Ents, the mythical creatures who are tree-herders of Middle Earth. The Ents have existed since the beginning of time to protect the woods, and raise the trees that the elves woke and taught to speak. But within the Lord of the Rings, the peaceful Ents have a less than genial counterpart. These similar creatures exist to show the anger and the violence of a natural spirit or being whose home is under threat: the Huorns.
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The Huorns are a warning to Mankind of the wrath of nature, and the power that can be unleashed when the environment is not shown the proper respect and care. They are, in some senses, a reflection of the natural disasters that exist globally in real life. They signify and foretell the crisis of climate change, and the havoc it is wreaking on the world’s ecosystems and landscapes. The Huorns are another tree-like species, vastly tall and strong, but they are of a much more violent and aggressive nature than the Ents. They have no qualms or hesitations in squashing the enemy who threatens their forest. Pippin says of them in the Two Towers book:
The Huorns are strong both individually and in great numbers. During the attack on Isengard, they storm through the Wizards’ Vale, trampling an entire host of orcs and then burying them where they lay. Aragorn, Theoden, and a march of other riders overhear them in the night:
“Treebeard won’t say much about them, but I think they are Ents who have become almost like trees, at least to look at. They stand here and there in the wood or under its eaves […] deep in the darkest dales there are hundreds and hundreds of them I believe.”
These tree-creatures of Tolkein’s world have become twisted and corrupted over centuries of wrong-doing. As such, they are symptomatic of the much larger signs of evil going on in Middle Earth at the time. The Two Towers is also not their first appearance — it is thought by many fans that Old Man Willow, who traps the four hobbits trying to make their way out of the Shire and nearly kills them in the Old Forest near Bree, is probably also a Huorn. He has lorded over his woodland bitterly, and become vicious and violent over the years in order to protect his creatures from the burning and destruction they are subjected to. He turns his anger on the hobbits, even though they mean his land no harm, because he distrusts all those who look like them.
‘Above them a few stars still glimmered faintly, but on either side there arose walls of impenetrable gloom, they were in a narrow lane between moving towers of shadows. Voices they heard, whisperings and groanings and an endless rustling sigh, the earth shook under them.’
The Huorns will stop at nothing to protect their own. Luckily, this often works in the favor of the fellowship. They are on the side of the forest, and against the likes of Saruman, who chooses to chop the trees down. Still, the Huorns are not too picky about who they choose to squash, and Pippin wisely warns the others:
Overall, the Huorns represent Tolkien’s warning about the dangers of the natural world, and the consequences that happen when it’s not shown proper respect. Tolkien believed very strongly that nature would one day rise up and overthrow the mechanized world that humans have been increasingly building over the last century. The Huorns storming Isengard are the literal representation of this concept within the Lord of the Rings.
“There is a great power in them, and they seem able to wrap themselves in shadow: it is difficult to see them moving. But they do. […] They still have voices, and can speak with the Ents, but they have become queer and wild. Dangerous. I should be terrified of meeting them, if there were no true Ents about to look after them.”
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