Started: December 20, 2021
Finished: February 6, 2022
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
Background Information
Originally published in 1954, this is the second book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (following on from The Hobbit, and The Fellowship of the Rings).
...although the word "trilogy" may be slightly misleading in this case, because although The Lord of the Rings was published in 3 separate volumes, Tolkien composed it all together as one whole. For this reason, a lot of people regard it as just one whole work--including the publishers of my box set edition, who write in the introduction to the trilogy (placed at the beginning of the previous volume):
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes. (Notes on Text, p.ix, Douglas A. Anderson)
Presumably for this reason, the page numbers in my box set are continuous over the 3 books. The Fellowship of the Rings ends on page 536, and The Two Towers starts with its first page numbered as 537, even though it is in a separate binding.
As you can probably guess from this, the tone, plot, pacing, and feel of this book is remarkably similar to its predecessor, and consequently there might not be a lot of new things to say in this review.
My History With this Book
I mentioned in my review of Fellowship that I did Fellowship as an audiobook back in early 2001. As I mentioned, I found the experience of doing this series by audiobook dissatisfying, and was feeling more and more confused about what was actually going on. After I finished Fellowship, I checked The Two Towers out of the library next. But very early on in The Two Towers, I decided that I had completely lost comprehension of the story, and that I wasn't getting anything out of this series by doing it as an audiobook, and I bailed on it.
And then, like everyone else in the world, I saw the Peter Jackson movie when it came out in 2002. So, like everyone else, I've known the story from the movie.
But I've felt guilty ever since about never finishing this trilogy (as I confessed before here and here). I mean, everyone is always talking about this thing. So for the past 20 years, I've always been meaning to come back to it. I even bought the trilogy again at one point when I lived in Japan (around 2007 and 2008) with the intent to give it another go, but only got a few pages into it before I realized it was just as slow moving as I remembered it, and that I would need to clear out some space in my reading schedule so I could give it more attention. And then I just never got around to it.
I don't remember exactly at what point I bailed on the audiobook 20 years ago, but it was fairly early on. I remember the scene of Boromir's death. And I think I remember Aragon, Gimli and Legolas starting to track the Orcs, but I don't remember much more than that.
And as for Boromir's death, I had known that scene was coming ever since middle school. My best friend was reading these books in middle school, and on a school field trip (7th or 8th grade) we were sitting next to each other on the bus, and he suddenly groaned while he was reading. "Oh no!" he said. "Boromir's dead!"
"What?" I said.
"One of the Fellowship of the Ring. He died," my friend explained mournfully.
Summary of the Plot
As with last time, I'm going to assume everyone knows the plot already. Everyone has either read these books, or seen the Peter Jackson movies, right?
Although if you've only seen the movies, it's worth noting that the story is distributed slightly differently in the books. In the movies the death of Boromir was at the end of Fellowship, but in the books it is in the beginning of The Two Towers. In the movies, the encounter with Shelob the giant spider is in the beginning of Return of the King, but in the books it is in the end of The Two Towers.
The book is also structured differently. The book is split into two halves--the first half dealing with the battles, the second half dealing with Frodo and Sam and their journey. (The movie, if memory serves, cut back and forth between these two story lines, but the book just splits them into two separate halves.) Thus the big battle scenes that make up the climax of the movie occur halfway through the book.
Evaluation
As I mentioned above, this is part of the same work as Fellowship, so a lot of the same comments I made about Fellowship are going to be the same here as well.
Although it's not exactly the same. This book gets off to much more of a running start than Fellowship. Fellowship took forever for the story to get going, but in The Two Towers, we start out right in the middle of the action. And, although there are a lot of slow sections, there's generally speaking a lot more action in this book than there was in Fellowship.
Also, there's a lot less songs in this book. The Two Towers has a couple songs at the beginning, but it's nothing like Fellowship were characters were breaking into songs every couple pages.
This book does have some great moments.
The battle at Helm's Deep comes is pretty intense and exciting.
And the confrontation with Shelob the giant spider is delightfully creepy. (I think Tolkien could have been a great horror writer if he had wanted to be.)
Tolkien's great strength is, of course, the world building. When we encounter the Riders of Rohan, Tolkien does a good job of imagining the simple warrior culture of men who ride horse on the plains Riders of Rohan. There's also a lot of mythos built up around the ancient Kingdom of Gondor and its lore. And, of course, there's all the world of the Ents, and their lore. There's a lot of stuff to immerse yourself in in this book.
...but, let's face it, the plot of this trilogy isn't all that impressive, is it? I mean, it's basically just a big evil force that wants to conquer the world. And the whole quest to destroy the ring is kind of a MacGuffin , isn't it?
There is still a lot of descriptions of landscape in this book. And, as with the previous book, I often had trouble visualizing Tolkien's descriptions. (And I sometimes did not recognize his vocabulary). I occasionally had to fight myself to keep my mind from wandering off during the descriptions of landscapes, but I was able to get through this book.
Extended Quotation
The bubbling hiss drew nearer, and there was a creaking as of some great jointed thing that moved with slow purpose in the dark. A reek came on before it. 'Master, master!' cried Sam, and the life and urgency came back into his voice. 'The Lady's gift! The star-glass! A light to you in dark places, she said it was to be. The star-glass!'
'The star-glass?' muttered Frodo, as one answering out of sleep, hardly comprehending. 'Why yes! Why had I forgotten it? A light when all other lights go out! And now indeed light alone can help us.'
Slowly his hand went to his bosom, and slowly he held aloft the Phial of Galadriel. For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo's mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame, a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Earendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow. The darkness receded from it until it seemed to shine in the centre of a globe of airy crystal, and the hand that held it sparkled with white fire.
Frodo gazed in wonder at this marvellous gift that he had so long carried, not guessing its full worth and potency. Seldom had he remembered it on the road, until they came to Morgul Vale, and never had he used it for fear of its revealing light. Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima! he cried, and knew not what he had spoken; for it seemed that another voice spoke through his, clear, untroubled by the foul air of the pit.
But other potencies there are in Middle-earth, powers of night, and they are old and strong. And She that walked in the darkness had heard the Elves cry that cry far back in the deeps of time, and she had not heeded it, and it did not daunt her now. Even as Frodo spoke he felt a great malice bent upon him, and a deadly regard considering him. Not far down the tunnel, between them and the opening where they had reeled and stumbled, he was aware of eyes growing visible, two great clusters of many-windowed eyes-- the coming menace was unmasked at last. The radiance of the star-glass was broken and thrown back from their thousand facets, but behind the glitter a pale deadly fire began steadily to glow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape.
Frodo and Sam, horror-stricken, began slowly to back away, their own gaze held by the dreadful stare of those baleful eyes; but as they backed so the eyes advanced. Frodo's hand wavered, and slowly the Phial drooped. Then suddenly, released from the holding spell to run a little while in vain panic for the amusement of the eyes, they both turned and fled together; but even as they ran Frodo looked back and saw with terror that at once the eyes came leaping up behind. The stench of death was like a cloud about him.
(**ENDQUOTE--This is from page 942-943 in my edition)
This quotation illustrates a couple of different things.
First of all, that description of an evil giant spider is just really creepy, isn't it?
But then secondly, all the lore crammed into this little passage. Stuff about the ancient elves and the Simarils.
And speaking of lore, there is so much ink spilled about all of this stuff. Heading over to Wikipedia to read more about Shelob, we can read:
The Tolkien scholar Carol Leibiger writes that Shelob is presented as a disgusting female monster in the story.[5] The Anglican priest and scholar of religion Alison Milbank adds that Shelob is undeniably sexual: "Tolkien offers a most convincing Freudian vagina dentata (toothed vagina) in the ancient and disgustingly gustatory spider Shelob."[6] Milbank states that Shelob symbolises "an ancient maternal power that swallows up masculine identity and autonomy", threatening a "castrating hold [which] is precisely what the sexual fetishist fears, and seeks to control".[6] The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance mentions "Sam's penetration of her belly with his sword", noting that this may be an appropriate and symbolic way of ending her production of "bastards".[7]
The scholar of children's literature Zoë Jaques writes that Shelob is the "embodiment of monstrous maternity"; Sam's battle with Shelob could be interpreted as a "masculine rite of passage" where a smaller, weaker male penetrates and escapes the vast female body and her malicious intent.[8] The Tolkien scholar Brenda Partridge described the hobbits' protracted struggle with Shelob as rife with sexual symbolism.[9] She writes that Tolkien derived Shelob from multiple myths: Sigurd killing Fafnir the dragon; Theseus killing the Minotaur; Ariadne and the spider; and Milton's Sin in Paradise Lost.[9] The result is to depict the woman as a threat, with implicit overtones of sexuality.[9]
Where did all these Tolkien scholars come from? I mean, Tolkien only just published this stuff 70 years ago--it's not like this is some ancient Greek text. But I guess that's how influential these books have become.
Odds and Ends (Random Observations)
* In my review of The Hobbit, I mentioned some concern that the goblins are portrayed as the Amalekites--that is, there seems to be some sort of unspoken rule that you had to kill them all whenever you encountered them, and that it was a sin to leave any goblins (or orcs) left alive. There are multiple passages in The Two Towers which give the same impression. As with my thoughts on The Hobbit, I'm conflicted about whether or not this is problematic, or whether having evil monsters in the story is just part of fairy tales.
What's interesting about the orcs though is that in The Two Towers for the first time the reader gets to listen in on extended conversations that the orcs are having with each other. And it's clear that the orcs are not mindless monsters. They talk to each other just like humans do.
In fact, for some reason, Tolkien has written the orc dialogue as sounding more like modern English than the other races. All the other characters in the book speak somewhat like they're in an ancient epic. But the orcs just use a 20th century dialect.
* And then speaking of the problematic stuff, in this book we get some brief description of the human peoples who have aligned themselves with Sauron. They are described as having black hair and dark skin ("swarthy"). Tolkien doesn't really harp on this. (The hair and skin color just get briefly mentioned). But it's something you can't help but notice nowadays.
I'm not sure this necessarily means that Tolkien is racist. It's not clear that the humans are joining up with Sauron because they have dark skin--they could just happen to have dark skin. But given the increased sensitivity of today's times, I'm sure this would have been written differently nowadays.
There is, it probably won't surprise you to learn, a whole Wikipedia article about how Tolkien's portrayal of race has been dissected by scholars.
* The sections with Frodo and Sam journeying to Mordor were always my least favorite parts of the movies (both the Peter Jackson trilogy, and the Rankin Bass animated one.) I always thought the emotional struggles of Frodo were just so boring.
I was dreading it, then, when I realized that the whole second half of the book was Frodo and Sam. But it wasn't as bad as I feared. The emotional struggles of Frodo aren't harped on too much. Tolkien's main concern is, as always, describing the landscapes. And as always I struggled to visualize what he was describing, but it could occasionally be interesting at the same time. Some of the visual imagery stuck in my mind--for example the description of the swamp where the dead spirits were looking up from the pools of water, etc.
* The names Sauron and Saruman are so easy to confuse, aren't they? Especially when reading.
I believe research on reading has indicated that people don't look at every letter of a word when reading. We just look at the general shape of the word. So my brain was constantly like 'Okay, there's an "Sa" at the beginning, an "r" in the middle, and an "n" at the end. They're talking about "Sauron".' And then only several lines of dialogue later did I realize the characters were talking about Saruman, and I had to go back and re-read the section.
I wonder why Tolkien gave them such similar names.
* While I was reading this book, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about how he was reading this same book to his son every night. "How about that!" I thought. "What a coincidence!" And then the comments to that post were filled with people (many of them mutual friends) all talking about how they were also currently reading this trilogy.
Is this just the noticing effect? Or is everyone reading these books right now?
Connections with Other Books I've Read (And Other Links)
* In this volume, the dwarf Gimli has become obsessed with the Lady Galadriel, and insists that everyone else he meet acknowledge her as the "fairest of ladies" or he will fight them.
This strikes me as straight out of Don Quixote. (Many of Don Quixote's misadventures resulted from him attempting to fight anyone who did not acknowledge his lady to be the most beautiful.) Given how well-read Tolkien was, I suspect the allusion must be intentional.
* Steve Donoghue posted a video earlier this month on The Seven Signs of Classical Fantasy which touches on a lot of the themes in Lord of the Rings.
This is largely the same as Fellowship, but with the plot and pacing increased. I gave Fellowship 6 stars, so I suppose, I should bump this one up to 7 stars.
Weekly Reading Vlogs (as mentioned above, the page numbers for this edition start from 537):
December 26, 2021 p.537-652
January 2, 2022 p.652-682
January 9, 2022 p.682-738
January 16, 2022 p.738-790
January 23, 2022 p.790-828
January 30, 2022 p.828-876
February 6, 2022 p.876-960
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
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