The Haunted Forest In The Hobbit

Anthony Gurgess
Period 4
Sislian
Murky Mirkwood
The Hobbit is full of unique and memorable settings, all of which are fully fleshed out. The haunted forest of Mirkwood is a great example of one such highly developed setting. Tolkien establishes the ancient forest’s dark character with details about Mirkwood’s environment, wildlife, and magic.
The environment of Mirkwood, its physical features, create a dark and oppressive atmosphere that distinguishes it from other settings in Middle Earth and gives it a sense of reality. When the group first enters the Mirkwood, “the entrance to the [forest-]path [is] like a sort of arch leading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great trees that leant together, too old and strangled with ivy to bear more

The Company did not know what creatures were amongst them because “They [the creatures] were careful never to let their bodies show in the little flicker of the flames” (100). Tolkien also deciphers the creatures in the forest with the color black. Just like the “black squirrels in the woods”, the “dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick”, The “thousands of dark-grey and black moths”, and finally the “huge bats, black as a top-hat”(100). Tolkien even goes further by explaining how the black squirrels “proved horrible to taste, and they shot no more squirrels”(100). The darkness of the forest was caused by the Necromancer. The necromancer is also known as the “spider cult” because where the necromancers spirit lays, great spiders dwell. The great spiders were creatures with “hairy legs waving, nippers and spinners snapping, eyes popping, full of froth and rage”(140). The great spiders injected the dwarves with spider-poison which paralyzes them and were “dangling in the shadows, to see a dwarvish foot sticking out of the bottoms of some of the bundles”(141). Also, in Mirkwood; many insects dwell. In a regular forest, there would be some insects and more animals; but in Mirkwood, the forest is filled with insects and dark animals. Furthermore, Tolkien compares the normal, everyday wildlife to Mirkwoods dark