Review of The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Review of The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien. As I continue my journey through The Lord of the Rings, I have to say I love the Ents! I have always wondered about the lives of trees, how they stay in one place and grow for as much as five thousand years and are a great comfort to humans. Tolkien answers the question of what trees would be like as sentient beings with the ability to move around. He shows great empathy for trees and forests and for their plight, as civilization hacks away at them with little concern. In the words of the hobbit Pippin, “’One felt as if there was an enormous wall of them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking…’” (452) At the necessary moment, the trees themselves take action against what threatens them.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the blasted area around Mordor, “a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing” (617), which resembles the poisonous battle-fields of World War I and II--or the garbage pits of the post-industrial world. I thought of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ 1937 painting, The Echo of a Scream, in which a half-naked child sits on a wasteland of industrial detritus. The faceless marching minions of the Dark Lord also remind me of expressionist paintings of struggle and imperialism from the same period. The terrible pull of the Ring becomes a heavy burden for Frodo, the closer he comes to Mordor. It is both a psychological force and a physical one. The blasted landscape and armies of orcs and wraiths might become too much for the reader, if they were not leavened with moments of surprise such as the appearance of an “Oliphaunt” (elephant), and excursions into more pleasant landscapes, such as the woods of Ithilien. Gollum, repugnant and malevolent, is yet rather touching and funny, with his babyish speech and craving for raw fish--almost as strong as his desire for his Precious, the Ring. Near the end of The Two Towers, Tolkien offers an unusual aside in which he contemplates the nature of tales, their characters, and their audience. Of Gollum, he says through the voice of the hobbit Sam, “I wonder if he thinks he’s the hero or the villain?” (697) And speaking through Frodo, Tolkien says, “You may know what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know”(696). And that’s part of the pleasure of reading The Lord of the Rings: we may know how the tale ends, but we identify so fully with Frodo and Sam and Pippin that we strongly feel their peril, their loyalty, and the uncertainty of their fate.




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