Kieran Devine’s Reviews > The Two Towers > Status Update

Sam (seeing a dead man in battle):
“He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace…”

Sam seems to have this interesting gift of seeing people as they are — I wonder if this will work out with his suspicion of Gollum.

Get you friends who sing about Elephants outside the gates of Mordor

“The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile that will strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable.”

W/o movies the eye seems very foreign up until now. Seems like a mix of evil will and also the ability of the Ring to physically attract evil. This description makes the eye seem like the feeling of shame.

@Jack Winkert Your favorite character is back… filthy hobbitses…

“A fool, but an honest fool, you remain, Peregrin Took. Wiser ones might have done worse in such a pass. But mark this! You have been saved and all your friends too...” (579)

More than half way done the trilogy — Pippin is so real.

my man Pippin is back and he’s smokin that Isengard pack

For a story about hobbits, there sure have been many chapters now without hearing about any of them. Chapters without hobbits feel particularly tedious to read and I’m enjoying this second book less because of it.

“The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” -Pope Benedict XVI

Theodin takes courage and begins to ascend beyond shackles of his own complacency — exercising virtue of courage and hope in the midst of much uncertainty ahead.

The company experiences their own road to Emmaus: “Beyond all hope you return to us in our need! What veil was over my sight? Gandalf!” (484). Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (Lk 24:32)

Boromir’s life concludes like that of the Penitent Thief. “It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us, if only for [his] sake” (485).