The following old photo of the Triumph oil-field in Bradford, Pennsylvania, serves to illustrate the point well. Note that the wooden derricks look strangely similar to the bizarre Orc constructions around Isenberg.

William Blake worshiped Nature and its gifts as evidence of God's creation and goodwill, and utterly loathed the money-hungry industries who sought to despoil it. His ideas and imagery were well known to J.R.R. Tolkien when he wrote his epic in the 1940's.

When we see the city of Isengard again towards the middle of the second film, "The Two Towers", the entire area around it has acquired the grey and lifeless appearance of a lunar landscape, yet the fires that power the production wheels around the tower continue to burn. The scene is witnessed by Treebeard leader of the Ents, the huge walking trees who are the ageless guardians of the big forest.

This is a most important turning point in the entire epic, because the desolation causes the tree guardians to finally decide to wage war on Saruman and his Orcs. Prior to that, Treebeard complained a great deal about the on-going destruction, but was not willing to do anything about it. But having seen the extent of it with his own eyes, he decides to muster his fellow Ents to attack the evil city of Isengard, to silence its factories and stop the killing of his friends, the trees.

The actual depiction of Isengard's fall is, in my opinion, the most beautiful sequence of the entire series. Initially, the Ents appear to be getting overwhelmed by the sheer vast numbers of their Orc enemies. But then one of them does a very simple thing - he breaks the dam which was holding the big river at bay up the mountain, its controlled fall powering yet more machinery. The released water instantly floods the entire valley, extinguishing the fires, drowning the Orcs with all their devices, and filling the filthy cavity of their factories. The huge Ents grip the ground and stand firm against the current, not harmed by it.

This amazing scene of Pure Evil being washed away by the doubly purifying force of the river is shown towards the end of "The Two Towers". In the background we hear the voice-over of the most significant monologue the Hobbit Sam Gumjee gives throughout the adventure. It is the Monologue of Hope, which spurrs his companion Frodo on to continue on the last and most difficult leg of their journey into Mordor.

The action switches several times during Sam's inspiring speech, as he talks about stories of heroes and their deeds, and what makes them special. And this is what he says when we see the waters rushing around Saruman's tower in Isengard and drowning the Orc city: "Darkness has passed. A new day will come! And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why."

These beautiful lines of hope are taken nearly verbatim from Tolkien's book, but by combining them with the scene of the destruction of Isengard, Peter Jackson undeniably intended to send a doubly powerful message here. Its intensity is such that it is absorbed by most viewers on a strictly subliminal level, as few are consciously aware of the horrifying parallel which is being in fact drawn here between the Orc civilization and our own.

But the underlying point is that as adults we should understand the meaning of those folk-tales we had read when we young. These tales described Evil as personified by beings bent on destroying Nature and the beautiful things which live in it. And Nature itself, represented by its Forests, Rivers, and the "little people" who are their spirit guardians - arises to shake off the menace.

In our real world here on Earth it is us humans, who are waging an incessant war on Nature. With each passing day we demolish more of its beauty, killing its animals, tearing down its forests, saturating its waters and air with filth and disease. Our civilization has become Evil in its proliferation, leveling everything in its path, just like the Orcs did.

And Tolkien's immortal message to us, brought to nearly every home now and greatly amplified through the magic of moving pictures, is that the Earth itself, Gaia, is not going to stand for it. It is going to Rise up its waters and rocks, and wage a Big War against us, and then we shall see how pitifully weak against it we really are. Our cities and all our works will be leveled by its power with the same ease as that river drowned Isengard. Beware, we have been warned.