The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

The Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien, 335 pages

The Fellowship is broken. Boromir lies dying after his failed attempt to seize the Ring; Merry and Pippin have been captured by Saruman’s Uruk-hai, pursued by Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli; Frodo and Sam have crossed the Anduin River and set out for Mordor on their own, with Gollum close behind. In the land of Rohan, King Theoden sits, passive under the influence of his counselor, as Saruman prepares to unleash his armies upon them. Only in the fastness of Helm’s Deep does Rohan have the power to withstand Saruman’s horde.

In the second volume of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien departs from the expected method of telling a story with multiple points of view (namely, switching between them from chapter to chapter) and instead opts for something rather unique, and in my opinion, quite odd. The first half of The Two Towers follows Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli (with interludes of Merry and Pippin), and the second half follows Frodo and Sam exclusively. On the one hand, this makes for a smoother reading experience, as the reader isn’t constantly switching perspective, but on the other hand, it feels like the events in each half have little to do with each other, rather than being each pieces of one interconnected tale.

Tolkien’s writing really shines as Frodo and Sam begin the penultimate stage of their journey. Presumably drawing on his own experiences during World War I, his depiction of these two friends relying wholly on each other as they cross a miserable land, exhausted but persevering, is truly moving. It’s worth reading just for a scene at the very end that didn’t make it into the movie (to avoid spoilers, I can’t explain further, except to say that I started crying in a Starbucks while reading).