Towering Above The Rest

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

When I came down with strep throat in January, I sent my husband out to secure two items for my comfort. No, I didn't send him to the local Quality Dairy for Vernors. Nor was it to the drug store for cough drops. It was to the library for J.R.R. Tolkien's The Two Towers and Return of the King (we had managed to save the first in the trilogy--Fellowship of the Ring from our basement flood last summer).

I first read the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in elementary school after falling in love with The Hobbit. It is the type of series that never quite leave you. After all, our culture is saturated with references to the trilogy and Tolkien was one of the founders and early giants of the fantasy genre.

Since all of the characters and most of the themes and plot had stayed with me, I had been under the impression that I had read the series more than once. As I began re-reading the series, I tried to recall when I had last read it and realized that I probably hadn't since elementary school. This might explain why there was so much that differed from my memory of the series.

The Two Towers picks up right where The Fellowship of the Ring left off, barely giving the main characters a breath. Whereas the first book in the series gave the background of the ring and the formation of the company that would accompany the Ring-Bearer on his quest, the second book begins with the parting of the company. Frodo and Sam are off toward Mordor; Pippen and Merry have been kidnapped by orcs; Boromir dies; and Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas are chasing after the two kidnapped hobbits.

There are many touching moments in this book, with the death of Boromir being the first. At the end of the first novel, The Fellowship of the Rings, Boromir acts in a rash manner that is primarily responsible for the breakup of the company. He is given the opportunity to redeem himself in this book. There is also the growing friendship between Gimli and Legolas, a dwarf and an elf who shared much of their races' distrust of each other earlier in the trilogy.

The first half of this book is fascinating. Events begin to pick up speed and the overwhelming urgency is felt on every page. Tolkien introduces us to more fascinating elements of Middle Earth, including the Ents and the Entwives. Some of the incidents in the book (especially the ones with Wormtongue) seemed much shorter than I remembered-probably because they took me much longer to read as a child.

I became bored with the second half of the book. This surprised me, as my memory of the series was that I enjoyed the parts with the hobbits and lost interest when they talked of battles and the political maneuvering of the rest of the company. To have that experience reversed was slightly unsettling.

Yet, with the exception of the meeting of the hobbits with Faramir, the second half of the book seemed to be the same thing page after page. I quickly tired of Tolkien's tedious descriptions that included every place name given by every race to every field the hobbits walk by. It's very bardic in tradition but makes for dull reading. I think I would have enjoyed the second half of the book if it had been condensed into three chapters: One on the meeting with Smeagol, one on the meeting with Faramir and the other with the final encounter before the book ends.

The Two Towers is very much a connecting book. Yet, unlike many trilogies where the second novel is merely a dull narrative of getting characters from an exciting beginning to the action-packed climax, this book is just as satisfying as the other two in the series. --B. Redman