The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings series takes place in
fivedimensions--length, width,
depth, time, and emotion

Before I write about The Two Towers, I need to go back to Fellowship of the Ring. I note that the last actions of the book are the ones I discuss in my blog. And this brings up the issue of time. The early parts of Fellowship, Bilbo’s birthday, the transfer of the ring, Bree, and even Rivendell seemed like actions from a distant world by the time I got Frodo and Sam to Emyn Muil. I did not address Hobbiton, or even Moria. I’ve read many books where I experienced a sense of travel and of alternate reality, but with no others do I sense the passage of eons of time. This 4-D experience is part of the magic of the whole series. And at the middle of Fellowship, I feel sad to think of the beginning of the book and at the end I feel sad about the middle and feel like the beginning was a beautiful dream. And that is the fifth dimension—the journey of heart and feelings.

In The Two Towers, we go through the search for Merry and Pippin and their perilous journey. This is a story arc from grim to grimmer to victory, concluding with the victory at Helm’s Deep and the influveance (made up that word) of Isengard. The tree people play a stronger role in the book than in the movie. They are much more developed as a culture and as personalities. Merry and Pippin spent the early part of the journey relatively untouched by the strangeness they saw around them and by the seriousness of the quest. But with Treebeard et al., they start to learn and discover perspective. They even grow physically (quite symbolic!). They grow into their roles in the fellowship. They engage in battle at Isengard. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0QSg5f1Kk for a deleted scene between Treebeard and Merry and Pippin.

The Edoras/Helm’s Deep sequence is very much a battle story, as it should be. Slim chance of victory. Nick of time rescue. The Elves do not show up in the book (although they were a masterful stroke in the movie), but the woodlands of middle earth, mustered by Tom Bombidil, play a key role. In the background is the knowledge that Sam and Frodo are out there somewhere…and the second half of the book takes us on their journey. We wonder if Aragorn will ever step forward and claim the authority that is his birthright.

Frodo and Sam are struggling through Emyn Muil, up and down spiked hills, rappelling off of cliffs, and joining forces with Gollum. Gollum is not preposterous. And I do pity him, as Frodo was advised to do by Bilbo and Gandalf. He has lost a dream and there is nothing sadder than that, even if the dream had no chance of fruition. As I noted above, I felt very much that I was moving through space and time. The journey would sound boring if I stated it step-by-step here, but it wasn’t boring in the reading. Go to the website http://www.serkis.com/lord-of-the-rings-movie.htm for more information on Gollum's role in the story.

The book ends abruptly, highlighting the fact that the trilogy is not three books. It’s not even a trilogy, structurally. It’s one book in three volumes because it is too long to print and bind as one volume. Tolkien has total hold of me right now. I’m starting Return of the King in a few minutes. But, I’ll hate to say goodbye to these books.