This essay explores the voices Tolkien recognizes in the indigenous population of his Middle-earth. It contextualizes a reading of The Lord of the Rings through ideas presented by climate activist Amitav Ghosh and author bell hooks. Ghan-buri-Ghan and his Wild Men provide invaluable assistance to the Riders of Rohan. In exchange the leader asks only that the Woses of the Druadan Forest no longer be hunted. Tolkien does something different than use his fiction to attempt to give voice to the Woses. Instead he attempts to amplify the voices that they already possess. Their voices will resonate with a message given by creatures of nature as well. Ultimately, the essay points to Tolkien’s resistance (religious and secular) to a cultural reflex that distorts, mutes, or otherwise ignores the voices of subaltern populations (and species). Today, we could stand to recognize that other species and other communities of humans do indeed have voices, if we only let them.
