• Welcome to The Tolkien Forum! Connect with fellow Tolkien enthusiasts and join a community that is over two decades old, and still going strong. We look forward to meeting you.  Register

I Found the Entwives!

so did anyone ever find out what paragraph/sentence this person referred to? or was he just joining two words together in order to form the phrase Ent-wives ???

I cant honestly beleive Tolkien would have bothered to put a little riddle like that in the books, otherwise he would have at least put on in each book, if he enjoyed that sort of thing ???
 
Last edited:
Oh - I get it!
I understand the riddle completely.

I don't know how I didn't see it before, and how noone else has either! Especially scholars like Nom, Itchy and Walter! Shame on you all!

I'm going to contact the Tolkien Estate to claim my prize! But I won't tell you what the answer was...because you are not worthy.



:rolleyes:
 
Aulë said:
Oh - I get it!
I understand the riddle completely.

I don't know how I didn't see it before, and how noone else has either! Especially scholars like Nom, Itchy and Walter! Shame on you all!

I'm going to contact the Tolkien Estate to claim my prize! But I won't tell you what the answer was...because you are not worthy.



:rolleyes:

Yeah, shame on me... ;)

But, thanks anyway, for considering me a scholar... :p
 
Aulë said:
Oh - I get it!
I understand the riddle completely.

I don't know how I didn't see it before, and how noone else has either! Especially scholars like Nom, Itchy and Walter! Shame on you all!

I'm going to contact the Tolkien Estate to claim my prize! But I won't tell you what the answer was...because you are not worthy.



:rolleyes:
Everyone knows they could get you tell, if you really knew! They would just challenge you to a debate on 'Is there a secret clue on where the Entwives are?', and take the No side. Then you would have to reveal all, or lose. Your resolve would crumble immediately, methinks!;)
 
Snaga said:
Everyone knows they could get you tell, if you really knew! They would just challenge you to a debate on 'Is there a secret clue on where the Entwives are?', and take the No side. Then you would have to reveal all, or lose. Your resolve would crumble immediately, methinks!;)

Why stop there?
We could have a whole bunch of debates on the matter in some sort of... uh... tournament!! Yeah. That would work out quite nicely. We could spilt up into teams called "guilds" and fight continuously about the rules until the cows come home! ;) In the end we would discover that none of us actually know the answer to the riddle, but someone would still claim to have hidden it all along in an attempt to appear superior to his or her peers!




Methinks, Teleporno = Fraud
 
I think Aule's right, but the good thing that came out of this is the opportunity to reread parts of TTT for the first time (in my case) in several years. Talk about going from a diet of gruel to filet mignon! Until now, I have been lazy and popping in the TTT DVD whenever I wanted to revisit that part of the story. I'd forgotten so much of the delightful dialogues, descriptions and subtle nuances that are in the book, it was really a breath of fresh air to me.

I couldn't figure out what Teleporno was talking about, but so what!! My thanks to him for getting me to reread the book! My guess, after rereading the "Treebeard" chapter, is they migrated to Mirkwood and got killed off or corrupted by the Necromancer

Incidentally, I really like Nom's theory about the stump that Sam tied his rope to being an old Entwife. The image of an old twiggy hand untying his knot is so much more satisfying than just saying it was "magic".
 
If Teleporno were really holding the key to some massive inside joke, some clever clue to the whereabouts of the Entwives he'd share it with the rest of the Tolkien-world.

His name suggests a few options:

1) He's a Tolkien-lover who has studied his languages and read his history and letters and taken on Celeborn's almost-name because of his love of Tolkien and a desire to show his knowledge of obscure Tolkien Lore, in which case he would most likely want to share this new Entwife revelation rather than play mind games.

2) He has either read or learned from someone that Tolkien considered and later rejected calling Celeborn's character by the name 'Teleporno' and instead chose its translation 'Celeborn' and thought that Teleporno was a funny sounding name in today's world and decided it would be the perfect name to use in order to mess with people's heads.

I believe it to be a fraud. Did he choose the name Teleporno as a joke? Possibly. It is a bit of Tolkien-lore I have found even the most die-hard LotR/Tolkien fans to laugh at. Perhaps he meant it to be a clue to his true purpose?

I don't know. But I'd take him with a grain of salt. If I thought I'd found some hidden message or clue to some long unanswered question in LotR I'd immediately put it to those around me to see if they felt my hypothesis was reasonable.

This guy just doesn't ring true to me.
 
Possible. Yet I think Tolkien did not even know himself where the Entwives were. Earlier I may have said otherwise, but for having read certain sections again, I doubt there is a definite answer. Old Forest? Perhaps. Into Mordor? Maybe. But what then? I think Treebeard says somewhere that Trolls were made in mimicry of Ents, just like orcs and elves. The first orcs were made by changing elves. Is it possible this is what happened? Sauron turned the Entwives into the Trolls?
My other theory is that the Entwives were where they started from: Fangorn. Treebeard couldn't remember what the Entwives were like, so maybe they had become as treeish as Ents can. Treebeard did say the Ents were becoming more like that, so maybe that's what happened. What do you guys think?
 
Noldor_returned said:
Possible. Yet I think Tolkien did not even know himself where the Entwives were. Earlier I may have said otherwise, but for having read certain sections again, I doubt there is a definite answer. Old Forest? Perhaps. Into Mordor? Maybe. But what then? I think Treebeard says somewhere that Trolls were made in mimicry of Ents, just like orcs and elves. The first orcs were made by changing elves. Is it possible this is what happened? Sauron turned the Entwives into the Trolls?
My other theory is that the Entwives were where they started from: Fangorn. Treebeard couldn't remember what the Entwives were like, so maybe they had become as treeish as Ents can. Treebeard did say the Ents were becoming more like that, so maybe that's what happened. What do you guys think?

Tolkien does say in his letters that he doesn't know what became of the Entwives. Your theories are as good as his. Maybe they went to Mordor, maybe they were burned when the enemy was scouring the forests, maybe the went off to dwell in more well-tended areas of the world.
But he does say he didn't have any specific idea for the end of the entwives.

Furthermore where does it say that Tolkien modeled the Ents after his Inkling friends?

I read here in a footnote to letter 163 to W.H. Auden:
Take the Ents, for instance. I di not consciously invent them at all. The chapter called 'Treebeard', from Treebeard's first remark on p. 66, was written off more or less as it stands, with an effect on my self (except for labour pains) almost like reading some one else's work. And I like Ents now because they do not seem to have anything to do with me. I daresay something had been goingon on in the 'unconscious' for some time, and that accounts for my feeling throughout, especially when stuck, that I was not inventing but reporting (imperfectly) and had at times to wait till 'what really happened' came through. But looking back analytically I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life. They owe their name to the eald enta geweorc of Anglo-Saxon, and their connexion with stone. Their poart in the story is due, I think, to my bitter disappointment and disgust from schooldays with the shabby use made by Shakespeare of the coming of 'Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill': I longed to devise a setting in which the trees might really march to war. And into this has crept a mere piece of experience, the difference of the 'male' and 'female' attitude to wild things, the difference between unpossessive love and gardening.

His experience in the differences between male and female creating the Ents and Entwives does not mean he is putting in secret joke about the wives of his friends. It means he modeled the general idea of male and female pursuits on his experience of life, not necessarily on actual people.


And um...I can't believe I just posted that whole quote...what a waste of time.

This guy, I seriously believe, is just full of it. I shouldn't take it seriously. Bah.

Ignore.
 
Settle down Wonks.....s/he hasn't been around long enough to know that about you, especially considering you just made a rather sudden return after a somewhat long period of inactivity.....not to mention that Wonko kinda seems like it might be a name a guy would use (don't ask me why, but it just seems like it to me at least) :D
 
Maeglin said:
Settle down Wonks.....s/he hasn't been around long enough to know that about you, especially considering you just made a rather sudden return after a somewhat long period of inactivity.....not to mention that Wonko kinda seems like it might be a name a guy would use (don't ask me why, but it just seems like it to me at least) :D

The character from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy called Wonko The Sane IS a guy.
And there's a member here just called wonko (my brother) that is also a guy. He can't remember his password and doesn't post here ever.

He's too cool for school.
 
There is an interesting passage in the Shadow of the past:
- My cousin Hal for one. He works for Mr. Boffin at Overhill and goes up to the Northfarthing for the hunting. He _saw_ one.
- Says he did, perhaps. Your Hals always saying hes seen things; and maybe he sees things that aint there.
- But this one was as big as an elm tree, and walking – walking seven yards to a stride, if it was an inch.
Walking trees, eh?
 
There is actually a book written by an English professor about a time in the 4th Age when descendants of Sam Gamgee and a few others actually discover Treebeard, and they go off on a strange (and unfortunately poorly written) adventure, where they discover some of the Entwives. If only the book had been better written (someone actually got raped — more than a bit crude and vulgar for this genre...), it could have been great fun.

On another subject: I am working away editing all the hundreds and hundreds of pictures I took while we were away in Hawaii, and at the same time learning the ins and outs of Mac Tiger. The browser and the mail program have a serious learning curve, at least for me. In some respects not as easy to configure as Netscape. Hang in there, people...:cool:

Barley
 
Maeglin said:
Settle down Wonks.....s/he hasn't been around long enough to know that about you, especially considering you just made a rather sudden return after a somewhat long period of inactivity.....not to mention that Wonko kinda seems like it might be a name a guy would use (don't ask me why, but it just seems like it to me at least) :D

I am a guy...and sorry Wonko...I have read Hitchhikers, and instantly assumed you were male.
 
There is actually a book written by an English professor about a time in the 4th Age when descendants of Sam Gamgee and a few others actually discover Treebeard, and they go off on a strange (and unfortunately poorly written) adventure, where they discover some of the Entwives. If only the book had been better written (someone actually got raped — more than a bit crude and vulgar for this genre...), it could have been great fun.

Do you have the author/title of this book? even if it is poorly written, it could be interesting...

Also, concerning the ages of ME, I read somewhere online about if the world really was the world of Middle Earth, the author of it described the different time periods of each age, like the first age was 10,000 BC, the second was from like 5000 BC third was 3000 BC or somethin like that. Then he said the fourth would be from around where it began in the book until the assention of Christ. Then the fifth would be up until the fall of the Roman Empire or osmethin the 6th would be up until the end of WWII and we're currently in the 7th. I could be wrong about the events, and this doesnt have to do with the entwives, but i found it interesting, if anyone knows where the link was for it, id appreciate it.
 
What Hal saw could have been just an Ent, though. I don't think it says anywhere that Ents are confined only to Fangorn.

I always thought that Entwives would resemble fruit trees and maples rather than elms or oaks or more towering 'masculine' trees. Especially since the Entwives were more into cultivated growth, and 'sheep get like shepherd and shepherd gets like sheep, but it is quicker and closer with trees.' If they were tending more cultivated and orderly orchards or woods it would seem to me that they'd probably be more like the trees they were tending.

How out of place would a giant walking elm be in an orderly apple orchard. :p
 

Similar threads

Back
Top