Content Synopsis

“The Two Towers” picks up exactly where “The Fellowship of the Ring” leaves off. While the group searches for Frodo, Orcs attack. Boromir is killed defending Merry and Pippin, who are nevertheless carried off by the Orcs. These Orcs bear the white Hand, symbol of Saurman. Boromir lives long enough to tell Aragorn what has happened and to repent for his attempt to take the Ring from Frodo. Aragorn is torn, believing his decisions have all gone astray, but ultimately decides that Frodo has made his own decision, to proceed to Mordor with only Sam, so he chooses to lead Legolas and Gimli after the Orcs, to try to rescue their friends. Their pursuit is swift, and they trail the Orcs into the country of Rohan, but they meet the Rohirrim, Riders of Rohan, who report having killed the Orc party. Éomer, leader of the Rohirrim, gives them horses to continue their quest, but he fears the hobbits are among the dead. However, when Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli come to the battleground, they find evidence the hobbits escaped into the woods. That night, a mysterious old man in a tall hat appears, and their horses escape.

The narrative now circles back—a recurring motif—to recount what happened to Merry and Pippin. Pippin manages to escape briefly in order drop his brooch and leave evidence for Aragorn to find. Aragorn indeed finds the clue, and that gives their pursuing friends hope. The Orcs, taking the Hobbits to Saruman, meet a band of Sauron's Orcs; there is a fight, and Sauron's Orcs are killed. The conflict suggests the conflict between the supposed allies, and Saruman's desire to get the Ring for himself. Indeed, Pippin plays on the desire of the Orcs for the Ring by pretending to have it. This ruse gets him and Merry carried some distance form the rest of the Orcs, as one greedy Orc searches him. As a result, they are able to escape when the Rohirrim slaughter the Orcs. They escape into the forest, where they meet a tree-like creature, Treebeard. He is an Ent, and Ents are the sentient shepherds of the trees. They find an unexpected ally in Treebeard, who has been growing troubled by the change in Saruman and other indicators that dark times are come again. Treebeard calls the Ents together and rouses them; they march on Isengard, or Orthanc, Saruman's fortress tower, to attack Saruman.

The narrative circles again, back to Aragorn and company. When they enter the forest, they encounter the resurrected Gandalf, who tells them of his struggle with the Balrog, his death, and his temporary return to Middle Earth to complete his task. He tells his companions that Merry and Pippin are safe and urges instead that they travel to Edoras, chief city of the Rohirrim, to aid King Théoden. Théoden has fallen under the sway of Gríma Wormtongue, who has become a servant of Saruman. Gandalf rouses Théoden, who recognizes Wormtongue's treachery but gives him a choice. He either rejoins the good, or goes to Saruman. Wormtongue chooses Saruman. Gandalf goes to gather what other assistance he can, while Théoden leads his army to Helm's Deep. This is the stronghold of the Rohirrim, where, aided by Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, they withstand a siege by Saruman's Orcs until the forest led by Treebeard and the Ents arrives and turns the tide of the battle. To those in Helm's Deep, this event is uncanny and mysterious until it is explained to them later. The amazed humans learn—from Gandalf, who has also returned—something of the explanation, but they must travel to Isengard to get the full story.

The troupe rides to Isengard, where Merry and Pippin tell their friends of the siege and fall of Isengard (another narrative circling to events occurring during the muster of Rohan and the siege of Helm's Deep). Saruman attempts to use his hypnotic voice to turn events in his favor again, but nobody is fooled any longer. When Saruman refuses to surrender, repent, and rejoin his former allies, Gandalf breaks Saruman's staff and strips him of his color, casting him out of the order of wizards. Gandalf leaves Saruman imprisoned in Orthanc, instructing Treebeard to keep him there, for he could still do harm if free, since he has not chosen to do good. In a final attack, Wormtongue throws an object out of the tower (one of several examples of evil performing an act that ultimately does its own cause harm, a major and recurring thematic element in the trilogy). This proves to be a palantír, an ancient stone that allowed men to communicate across vast distances. Saruman has been using it to communicate with Sauron. Pippin picks it up and because of this contact falls under its malign sway (just as the Ring can tempt the weaknesses of anyone near it, so can the palantír influence any who touch it). He is tempted to look into the palantír, so he steals it from the sleeping Gandalf, looks in, and is gripped and questioned by Sauron; by looking in to the stone, Pippin opens a connection, and Sauron assumes Pippin is at Isengard, in Saruman's custody. Fortunately, Pippin reveals little, and this act probably saves Gandalf from being revealed to Sauron himself, since he had planned to gaze into the palantír (one of many examples of accident turning to the good, another major theme). The forces separate again, Gandalf taking Pippin to Gondor while the rest return to Edoras.

The narrative circles back again, to Sam and Frodo just after they left the Fellowship. Their progress is slow until they capture Gollum, who has been following them. Frodo “tames” him, and he promises to lead them into Mordor, taking Frodo as his master. On their way to a secret way into Mordor (after trying the main gate and finding it impassable), Sam and Frodo (but not Gollum, who is off on his own at the time) are captured by Faramir, leader of an outpost band of men from Gondor. He is also Boromir's brother, but when he learns of the Ring, he shows his quality by helping the hobbits. However, the men capture Gollum, who has been following them since the capture of Frodo and Sam. They use Frodo to entice him, a betrayal that serves as a key turning point in the Frodo-Gollum relationship.

When they part from Faramir, Gollum leads them to an enormous staircase, leading to a secret tunnel. There he plans to betray them by letting Shelob, the giant spider who lives there, eat Sam and Frodo. She will not be interested in the Ring, which Gollum hopes to collect from the clothes Shelob discards. Shelob stings Frodo, but Sam drives her off, assuming briefly the role of martial hero. Because Sam believes Frodo is now dead, he is faced with a terrible choice (the final such instance in this volume). Though his heart misgives, he takes the Ring from the body, determined to continue the quest on his own. However, when Orcs investigating the disturbance find Frodo, Sam learns to his horror that Shelob's sting has merely rendered Frodo unconscious. The Orcs carry Frodo into their stronghold to question him when he awakes, and Sam is locked outside, with the Ring, but with no Frodo and no apparent way to go on. The novel ends at this suspenseful point.

Symbols & Motifs

The Ring: The Ring is not only a major plot device but also the primary symbol in the novel. As the ultimate weapon, it has often been seen as symbolic of the atomic bomb, though Tolkien rejected such a reading. However, no such specific connection is necessary to see the Ring as symbolic not merely of ultimate power but also of the dangerous seductiveness of such power. The Ring is repeatedly presented as tempting people to take and use it. However, the Ring will inevitably corrupt and possess whoever uses it, regardless of their intentions (or rationalizations) for that use. This symbolic association is rendered somewhat more complex. The power of the Ring is not merely to malign, but is also tied up with the nature of Middle Earth itself, without its power, the “good” Rings of Power held by the elves will lose their force, and Middle Earth will decline. Rejection of the Ring and what it represents has real and permanent consequences; this is not simply a matter of good and evil, despite appearances. Though this is the Ring's primary symbolic association, Tolkien invokes the idea of the ring in other ways. In “The Two Towers,” for instance, the Ring is especially associated with greed and hunger, not merely power. Gollum's desire for it is linked with his constant hunger, and Shelob's lack of interest in it reflects the fact that, as a creature of pure appetite and consumption, she represents a pure manifestation of the Ring itself. In this, she contrasts explicitly with Tom Bombadil in “The Fellowship of the Ring.” Circle motifs recur in the trilogy in various ways, even structurally. Quest narratives are by nature circular, carrying the protagonist back to his or her beginning place, and Tolkien plays further on this narrative structure by invoking narrative “circling” within the text in various ways. For example, he invokes narrative by the recounting of historical events precede the novel, as well as through the retrospective narration of events that occur simultaneously. The multiple simultaneous narratives of “The Two Towers” create numerous narrative loops and even loops within loops. In this context, the idea of a ring as symbolic of wholeness and completion contrasts with the idea of a ring as imprisoning and destructive associated with the Ring itself. Both motifs play out complexly through the book.

Dualism: As the title suggests, dualism, especially (though not always) in the form of paired opposites, is particularly important in this volume of the series. “The Two Towers” of the title are Isengard, or Orthanc, the tower of Saruman, and Minas Morgul, at the entrance to Mordor. Even here, though, the idea of simple opposition is undercut. These are both towers of the enemy, not opposed towers of good and evil. Furthermore, Minas Morgal is twinned and answered by Minas Tirith, the city of Gondor. Orthanc itself is a dual tower, consisting both of the ancient original tower, not constructed by Saruman but almost of a piece with the landscape, and his technologically, modernized additions. This has rendered Orthanc “a child's model or a slave's flattery” (199) of yet another tower, the Dark Tower of Sauron. There are no simple oppositions between good and evil. This point is rendered most explicit, and most poignant, in the figure of Gollum/Sméagol, who is almost a dualistic figure himself, as the two names suggest. His Sméagol persona is the more sympathetic one, the one showing the potential for reclamation by Frodo, whereas the Gollum one is his heart of darkness. Gollum is of course also paired on the one hand with Sam, as the contrasting model of the loyal servant, and on the other with Frodo himself, as the image of what the Ring bearer can become if the Ring overwhelms him. Indeed, the burden of the Ring makes clear to Frodo what was not clear in the first volume: why Gollum deserves pity and mercy. Because of his recognition of kinship with Gollum, Frodo tries to redeem him, an act of mercy of central significance to the trilogy. Careful attention to the multifarious doublings in the novel is richly rewarding.

Choice: “The Lord of the Rings” hardly seems like an existential text, but the terrible necessity of choice is a major thematic element in “The Two Towers.” It begins and ends with characters (Aragorn and Sam respectively) confronted with situations in which no right choice seems possible (a point made explicitly by Gimli regarding Aragorn's dilemma), and throughout, it presents many major characters, both good and evil, faced with defining moments of choice. Wormtongue must choose whether he will repent his alliance with Saruman or persist in it. Saruman must choose to either repent his alliance with Sauron or persist in it. Most significantly, perhaps, Frodo is confronted by the terrible necessity of choosing either to let Gollum be killed or to save his life through what must inevitably appear to Gollum as an act of betrayal. Gimli is perhaps right that the right choice is indeed impossible, though the existential despair of that position is mitigated in the novel, since, inevitably, the choices made by the heart end up turning out for the best and even perhaps leading to better ends than a rational decision might have provided.

Nature: The fact that major characters are sentient trees makes clear Tolkien's interest in the importance and vitality of the natural world. One of the trademarks of evil in the novel is its propensity to destroy not only life and property but also nature wherever it manifests itself. Legolas (a wood elf and therefore himself something of an environmentalist) notes of the Orcs, “It seems their delight to slash and beat down growing things that are not even in their way” (20). The activities of the forces of evil inevitably render the fertile world waste. Saruman has converted Orthanc to a waste of pits and forges, with no green or living things left. Mordor is a literal wasteland. Even the marshes through which Frodo, Sam, and Gollum pass are fields of death, not fertility, as a natural marsh would be. Though nature may be vulnerable nature to attack, Tolkien presents it as able to fight back. The most spectacular example of this is the forest army that sacks Orthanc and lifts the siege at Helm's Deep. The most powerful and symbolically resonant image of the regenerative power of nature, however, occurs late in the novel, when Frodo and Sam come across a desecrated statue of a long-dead king. The head has been knocked off the statue and replaced by a stone, but the head, lying on the ground, has a new crown of silver and gold flowers (390). This image of the king re-crowned anticipates the conclusion of the trilogy and provides a powerful image of the regenerative power of nature. Not incidentally, this discovery provides hope and determination for Frodo and Sam in their quest.

Historical Context

Tolkien was a combatant in World War I and though he began working on the materials that informed “The Lord of the Rings” before that War and did not begin working on the novel proper until 1936, World War I clearly influenced the novel. World War II was also an obvious influence, since Tolkien composed the bulk of the novel during the war, though it was not published until 1954. These two conflicts are clearly the most important historical context for the novel, though Tolkien denied any conscious intent to allegorize either in the novel. Nevertheless, Tolkien himself noted the applicability of aspects of the novel to World War II when he equated some Allied tactics against Hitler in World War II with the use of Sauron's weapon against him (Croft 58). Numerous aspects of the book, from general elements to specific examples, can be paralleled to aspects of World War I or II.

In “The Two Towers,” Tolkien's knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon world also stands him in good stead. The Rohirrim are in most respects based on the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The one key exception is their heavy reliance on horses, against which the Anglo-Saxon peoples had a strong aversion (they had no cavalry, whereas the Rohirrim are clearly cavalry warriors) but otherwise, they reflect the traits of Anglo-Saxon culture, or at least Anglo-Saxon culture as a literary construct. Even their language and poetic forms are based on Anglo-Saxon (see Shippey 90ff, for more extensive commentary of the indebtedness of the Rohirrim to Anglo-Saxon tradition).

Societal Context

Various aspects of Tolkien's social world influence the novel. Women are largely absent from the novel not because they were absent from Tolkien's life (he deeply loved his wife and had several children) but because Tolkien's world was one in which women were still expected to inhabit the domestic sphere. Women in Britain had achieved the vote less than twenty years before Tolkien began writing the novel. His formative experiences in World War I were homosocial. The deep, intense focus in the novel on male friendship, almost to the exclusion of female companionship, reflects not only Tolkien's World War I experiences (Croft 65) but also his professional life as an academic at Oxford. Women had been admitted into degree programs only five years before Tolkien took his position at Oxford and still faced various restrictions on campus, so though he had female students, his colleagues and his academic life generally involved predominantly male relationships, a reality reflected in the limited roles granted women in the novel (Moseley 13ff). In “The Two Towers,” Downy is a good example of the woman relegated to domestic functions, even against her own desires, an element of the narrative with further ramifications in “The Return of the King.”

While Tolkien's background was middle class, the death of his father left the family in straitened circumstances and a life almost of genteel poverty. His work was heavily influenced by his experiences in the grey areas of the British class structure; there is some tension between Tolkien's preservation of the social hierarchies of England with the democratizing advancement of Sam as a heroic figure, and the work's attitude towards the working classes is generally ambivalent. Though Frodo and Sam are friends, they are equally clearly master and servant; Sam is Frodo's employee, his gardener, and Tolkien acknowledges a debt in Sam as well to working class soldiers and batmen (a batman was an officer's military servant) in World War I (Croft 16). The master-servant hierarchy, as well as the male-female hierarchy, continues throughout the work. The “working class” characters tend either to be salt of the earth idealizations like Sam or virtual caricatures of a disaffected laboring class, as in the depiction of the Orcs. In Sam and Gollum, Tolkien contrasts models of service and servility. Though Tolkien celebrates the simple, rural life of the Hobbits of the Shire, however, he does also suggest the limits of its insular complacency. Though the novel is essentially politically conservative in its affirmation of inherent nobility and primogeniture, it does suggest the limits and even dangers of a monarchical system. Rohan, for instance suffers because its monarch has allowed himself to be led from the path of proper rule by Wormtongue. Lacking a powerful king, the country almost falls apart.

Religious Context

Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and though he deliberately omitted anything that smacked of religious ritual or practice from “The Lord of the Rings,” he also freely acknowledged that the novel was deeply informed by his Christian beliefs—not in a schematic or conscious way but rather as any lived experience must inform a writer's work (Kirby 56). Sauron is clearly a devilish figure, the Ring representing temptation to fall. The Ring works its malign power as do devilish tempters in any number of Christian texts. Both Frodo and Gandalf become Christ-like figures, though they do not clearly do so until subsequent volumes. Gandalf, however, begins his Christ-like cycle in “Fellowship” in his confrontation with the Balrog and his death. The details of this conflict are recounted by Gandalf in “The Two Towers.” Randal Helms has noted the Miltonic echoes in Sauron and Gollum (32ff), but surely Gandalf's battle with the Balrog, and its long plunge to death, echoes the war in Heaven and the fall of the devils in “Paradise Lost” even more obviously. Gandalf is here associated with the warrior Christ as well as the dying and resurrected Christ. The initial failure of Aragorn and company to recognize him recalls the disciples on the road to Emmaus: they met a man who walked with them and discussed scripture, but they did not recognize him as the resurrected Christ until He broke bread with them—whereupon he vanished. In addition, like Christ, the reborn Gandalf has been sent back for a limited time only. He is repeatedly associated with the sun, especially when he is first recognized. “The eyes under his deep brows were bright, piercing as the rays of the sun; power was in his hand” (119). There is nothing explicitly Christian in the description, but making such connections is natural, if not inevitable.

Scientific & Technological Context

The novel is set in a mythical past, so the role of science is minor. Nevertheless, Tolkien uses the novel to comment on scientific approaches and technological developments he saw as harmful. In both cases, Saruman is the primary figure through which Tolkien makes his critique. Scientific methodology divorced from a moral and ethical concern—in effect, the pursuit of knowledge unmoored by wisdom—is associated with Saruman's quest to acquire the Ring. The critique of scientific methodology and industrialization is evident in Saruman's methodology. He has been engaging in experiments to modify Orcs, perhaps crossbreeding them with humans, to make them more able to bear sunlight. He has clearly provided the Orcs with something like gunpowder to use in the siege at Helm's Deep. As Treebeard notes, “He has a mind of metal and wheels, and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment” (90). He has converted Isengard from an environment at one with its natural surroundings to one that consumes those surroundings, relying (foolishly) on machines. Though Isengard itself, the work of ancient and more powerful builders, can withstand the Ents, Saruman's mere industrial might cannot. The industrialization that Tolkien so deplored in the England of his time is here associated with the power-driven and destructive ambition of Saruman.

Biographical Context

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on January 3, 1892. His father died in 1896, and his mother returned to England, raising Tolkien and his brother in the West Midlands. There Tolkien saw both the rural England he idealized and the industrialized England he deplored, though the odd words he saw on train cars inspired his life-long love of language, from which “The Lord of the Rings” was born. In 1900, Tolkien's mother (and therefore Tolkien) converted to Roman Catholicism, which faith Tolkien observed devoutly throughout his life. After being orphaned in 1904, he lived with an aunt while being mentored by the local parish priest. His linguistic skills helped him master Latin and Greek, and his interest in languages led to his studies in the Classics, Old English and Germanic languages, as well as Welsh and Finnish at Exeter College, Oxford. He first began developing his masterpiece as an adjunct to the languages he invented based on the real languages he studied. His grades were disappointing, so he switched to English Language and Literature, earning a first-class degree in 1915. He enlisted in 1915, and was married in March 1916, before being sent to the Western Front in the same year. He fought in the trenches before contracting trench fever, an illness that recurred throughout the war. Two of his closest friends were killed in battle in World War I; a loss that deeply influenced and informed Tolkien's early writing and formed the genesis of “The Lord of the Rings.”

After the war, he worked for two years as an assistant lexicographer on what became the Oxford English Dictionary, before he was appointed to the English Department at Leeds University in 1920. In 1925, he was appointed to Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and he shifted to the Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature in 1945, a position he held until his retirement in 1959. His academic publications were relatively few, but he published a major edition of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and a handful of influential articles. More importantly, he was one of the founders of “The Inklings,” a group of Oxford men with common interests. The group included C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams, and it served as a major breeding ground for some of the most important fantasy literature of the twentieth century, as members frequently shared works in progress with the group. Tolkien's first literary success was the children's book “The Hobbit” (1937), but the publication of “The Lord of the Rings” in 1954 and 1955 (in three volumes due to the exigencies of publishing; Tolkien conceived of it as a single novel) soon catapulted him to major fame and wealth. These two books constitute Tolkien's major novels. A handful of other texts, notably “The Silmarillion” (1977), which provides much of the mythological background for the trilogy, and several shorter works also appeared sporadically, but Tolkien was not prolific. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973 (Dougham).

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