The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings

 

 

Each time I consider re-reading The Two Towers, it’s with a certain amount of dread. It doesn’t start well: the Fellowship has been dissolved, Merry and Pippin are prisoners, Frodo and Sam are off on their own with little idea of where they’re going. And (spoiler alert!) the book doesn’t end well either with Frodo and Sam in as bad a situation as can be. Even though there are some great adventures and victories in this volume of The Lord of the Rings, and new and exciting characters to meet (Eomer, Eowyn, and Treebeard to name a few), The Two Towers has always been, for me, a bit of a downer.

Much like my recent re-experience of The Fellowship of the Ring, however, I loved this book more than ever this time around. Yes, all the sad and pitiful and disgusting and hopeless things were still in the story, but this time I really gained an appreciation for the way Tolkien’s skills with language and storytelling build those strong emotions in a reader. Here is a fantastic example, a description of the scene Sam and Frodo face as they approach Mordor:

 

Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about.  High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.

 

And as they grope their way through the tunnels, unknowingly following Gollum to Shelob’s lair, there is nothing to see and describe. Instead, Tolkien gives us a stunning description using the only sense available:

 

And still the stench grew. It grew, until almost it seemed to them that smell was the only clear sense left to them, and that it was for their torment.

  

Peeeeew!

 

My point is that this middle volume in the trilogy is no place-holder. It’s not just pages of padding to fulfill a three-book contract. There are preliminary battles in the upcoming great storm of war and early victories that build momentum for the “good guys.” There is further introduction to the grand histories, peoples and places of Middle Earth. The narrative is full of anticipation, of building urgency, of building need for world-wide (or Middle Earth-wide) action, of lurking evil and the despair it evokes, of the lingering hope in and for likely and unlikely heroes.

What a fine, fine story!

 

 

 

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