Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

I had a thought a while ago and I can't seem reconcile in my own head so, for better or worse, I'm coming along to ask your thoughts and opinions.

Do Ents and Dwarves, effectively Eru's stepchildren, have fëa? I would assume that they do based on their free will and the fact that they are, you know, alive. However, I've not seen anything that suggests specifically that they do (keep in mind I don't have all the Histories at my fingers tips so I'm not sure if Tolkien himself ever addressed it) and the fëa seems to be something specially made for Eru's children.

In the end, I suppose it might not matter and I could be delving into something akin to "sentiment on unimportant matters".

Thoughts?

I want to point out the prospect of ents becoming treeish, as that has great implications with their fea and hroar. Does that imply that the two combine and become one eventually, in a form of a tree-like thing? The soul becoming the vessel?

That's an interesting thought, especially when we compare the different degrees to which ainur seem to "embody" themselves -- growing more and more tied to their physical form based on various decisions. We have a couple of examples of this (I'm lacking for citations at the moment, but I'll find them later if I get the chance):

- Melkor and Sauron both lose the ability to change their "raiment" following injuries / defeats
- Melian becomes more materially tied down thanks to her relationship with Thingol, and especially after the birth of Luthien (this is the big one I need a cite on... if anyone remembers, please let me know)
- Possibly most interestingly, we see a degree of this embodiment in the Wizards, where both Gandalf and Saruman's deaths mean something more than the destruction of their physical forms. I know I've written on the similarity between Saruman and Sauron's "final" scenes at some length before, but isn't it interesting that Sauron's is brought about by the immolation of the Ring, whereas Saruman gets... shanked? and that seems awfully permanent?

I think the idea of an ent becoming huorn, binding the fea closer and closer to the hroa, is interesting and sort of tangentially supported.

Ents, from my readings, have a special relationship with the spiritual and the physical, a much better blending of competing ideological points than the elves and men (both of whom seem to value the spiritual and the physical more, respectively). That was initially why I wondered if there might have been something special/different about them in terms of hröa and fëa. The ents, from all of Merry and Pippen's conversations with Treebeard and Quickbeam, seem to have a better grasp of how to deal with both.

Some stray, unorganized thoughts that might (or might not) support this:
1) Elves are deathless and thus are able to pursue a more spiritually based existence while Men being mortal are predisposed to focus on the physical aspects of life
2) Ents, like trees, are both deathless and mortal at the same time. They seem to be able to live forever, there are trees that have lived for hundreds and hundreds of years all over the world, but as they live and grow they physically change, adapt, and/or mutate.
3) Something similar could be said of dwarves and stone, hardy and difficult but potentially malleable and changeable given the correct parameters, though I feel like this one might be a reach and not wholly supported by the text or geology in general
4) Maybe Yavanna creating the ents for a specific purpose granted them a better understanding of physical and spiritual? Again, this one might be a reach but I think there's a grain of possibility
5) I am bound to wonder about what will happen to dwarves and ents after their deaths, elves don't seem to think they're significant enough to have an "afterlife" but elves are also rather arrogant with matter like that. Dwarves though, have given enough thought to eschatology that while they might not be 100% correct, they certainly believe they have a significance in Arda's past, present, and future
6) the idea of treeishness being a sort of metaphysical combining of fëa and hröa is fascinating. It's not quite the same as elves fading over time since that more an effect of Arda Marred, might they be connected in some way? I might be seeing things here but what if "treeishness" was the original intention for the elves?

King Otis wrote: ↑Tue Aug 30, 2022 7:44 pm Do Ents and Dwarves, effectively Eru's stepchildren, have fëa?
In the end, I suppose it might not matter

i don't mean to be all hissy-fit call the police or anything, but i do think your first step in such a place as this might be to ask one of us. tis actually a subject that i have discussed with this and that friend over long sessions chewing hard stones in a nasty wet hole in the Shire, and we both feel that it is none of your g-d-damned business! unless you ask us nice.

it does matter in the end, to us.

Might I ask, who pissed in your cheerios this morning? My first step should have been to ask you? Isn't that rather, exactly what I did? I'm not sure where you think I took a misstep because I don't believe I did. This thread is over a year old at this point and might have been during a point of hiatus for you and thus you couldn't attempt to regale us with Nicaean "hissy-fits" to use your own nomenclature.

To your point and attitude, I stand by Constantine quotation in calling this a potential "sentiment on unimportant points". Perhaps you can throw in a few sharp stones with the hard one's you've been chewing on.

Or perhaps you're just "trying" to be humorous. In that case: vete a la chingada