The Two Towers

• 1. Introduction

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  In January 1954, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote that he was "not at all happy about the title The Two Towers." The book was the second volume of The Lord of the Rings, first published that same year. Five towers are named across its pages. Which two the title meant, Tolkien could never quite settle. The volume covers Books Three and Four of the larger novel. Each book follows an entirely different group of characters in places far apart. How Tolkien balanced two separate stories, and what critics made of the whole, are questions embedded in the book's architecture.

• 2. The Treason of Isengard

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  Boromir's death opens Book Three. A party of Uruk-hai, sent by the wizard Saruman, attacks the Fellowship and kills Boromir as he tries to shield Merry and Pippin. The two hobbits are captured and carried off. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas give chase. In the kingdom of Rohan, Éomer's band of Riders hunts down the Orcs, and Merry and Pippin slip away into Fangorn Forest.

  Fangorn is where Tolkien springs his most unexpected reunion. Deep among the ancient trees, Aragorn's party encounters Gandalf, who had fallen fighting the Balrog. He explains that he was killed in that fight but was sent back to complete his mission. He now wears white and holds the title Gandalf the White, having taken Saruman's place as chief of the wizards. He assures the others that Merry and Pippin are safe, under the care of Treebeard, the oldest of the Ents.

  Gandalf rides with the others to Edoras, the capital of Rohan. There he frees King Théoden from the corrupting influence of Gríma Wormtongue, who serves Saruman. Théoden marshals his forces and rides to the ancient fortress of Helm's Deep. While the army marches for Helm's Deep, the Ents take action of their own. Roused by Merry and Pippin, they attack Saruman's stronghold of Isengard, flood it, and trap the wizard inside the tower of Orthanc.

  Gandalf brings a force of Rohirrim to Helm's Deep, and together they defeat the besieging Orcs. The survivors flee into a surrounding forest of Huorns and are never seen again. Riding afterward to the ruins of Isengard, Gandalf's company finds Merry and Pippin resting contentedly amid the wreckage. During the confrontation with Saruman, Wormtongue hurls a hard round object from the tower. It misses Gandalf, and Pippin picks it up. The object is a palantir, a seeing-stone that Saruman used to speak with Sauron. Pippin steals it in the night and gazes into it, and Sauron sees him. Because Pippin is a hobbit, Sauron draws the wrong conclusion: he believes Pippin has the One Ring.

• 3. The Ring Goes East

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  On a moonlit night in the hills of the Emyn Muil, Frodo and Sam capture Gollum, who has followed them from Moria. Frodo, as Ringbearer, makes Gollum swear to serve him. Gollum then leads the two hobbits across the Dead Marshes toward Mordor. Sam overhears Gollum debating with his alter ego Sméagol over whether to steal the Ring and break his oath.

  The Black Gate of Mordor is too heavily guarded to enter directly. Gollum instead guides them south through the land of Ithilien to a secret pass he knows. Rangers led by Faramir, Boromir's younger brother, intercept the group along the way. They bring Frodo and Sam to Henneth Annûn, a hidden refuge. Faramir, unlike his brother, refuses the temptation of the Ring. He releases Frodo and Sam, defying standing orders to arrest all strangers found in Ithilien.

  Gollum guides the hobbits to the pass of Cirith Ungol. The pass leads through the tunnels of Shelob, a great spider. At her first attack, Frodo holds up the Phial of Galadriel, a gift from Lothlórien that carries the light of Eärendil's star. The light drives Shelob back, and the travelers get through the pass. Once outside, Shelob attacks again. Sam fights off Gollum and then wounds Shelob seriously, driving her away. He finds Frodo lying still and believes him dead. Sam takes the One Ring to carry on the quest alone. He is still nearby when Orcs arrive; he overhears them and learns that Frodo is alive, now captive in the tower of Cirith Ungol.

• 4. A Title in Dispute

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  In August 1953, Tolkien wrote to Rayner Unwin proposing the volume's title and already wondering whether to leave the reference vague. He listed three possible pairs: Orthanc and Barad-dur, Minas Tirith and Barad-dur, or Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol. By January 1954, he had tentatively settled on Orthanc and the Tower of Cirith Ungol. He wrote that the title, if it had "any real reference in it to Vol II," could only point to that pair. But he immediately called the choice "very misleading." So much of the narrative, he felt, turns on the opposition between Sauron's Dark Tower and Minas Tirith.

  A month after that letter, Tolkien reversed course entirely. He wrote a note for the end of The Fellowship of the Ring and drew a cover illustration. Both named Minas Morgul and Orthanc as the pair. In the illustration, Minas Morgul appears as a white tower with a thin waning moon above it. This evokes its original name, Minas Ithil, the Tower of the Rising Moon. Orthanc is drawn as a black tower, three-horned, with the sign of Saruman's White Hand beside it. Between the two towers, a Nazgûl flies.

  Minas Morgul was once Gondor's own Minas Ithil before Sauron's Nazgûl seized it. The nine Nazgûl are bound to Sauron's will by Rings of Power he gave them. Among the other candidates, Barad-dur is Sauron's fortress and Minas Tirith is the chief city of Gondor. The Tower of Cirith Ungol is garrisoned by Orcs serving the Dark Lord. The leader of the Nazgûl is the Witch-King of Angmar, ruling from a tower that was once Gondor's own.

• 5. The Art of Interlacing

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  The Tolkien scholar Richard C. West notes that every reader must notice "the apparently meandering manner of the plot." Events appear to happen by chance, as in daily life. West traces one thread to show how precisely this is calibrated. Merry and Pippin meet the Ents because Saruman's Orcs captured them. They escaped because Éomer's Riders of Rohan, disobeying orders from King Théoden, hunted the Orcs down. The Ents then overthrow Saruman, freeing Rohan to join Gondor's war against Sauron. Each group acts on its own motives, yet the outcomes interlock. West states that the structure may appear loose but "everything is interconnected."

  Book Three does not advance the main quest of destroying the One Ring; Book Four leaves all other storylines untouched. The two books unfold in sequence. This places the reader in the same position as the characters: knowing only what one traveler can see, not knowing what lies ahead. Whether friends are alive, or whether the quest has already failed, remains uncertain.

  A brooch dropped by Pippin and later found by Aragorn is one example of what West calls "narrative landmarks," synchronizing the two timelines. These anchors work alongside another structural tool: the cliffhanger ending. The sudden appearance of Ents and Huorns at the battlefield of Helm's Deep is one such moment. Shippey writes that these turns feel like luck, hovering between "something completely humdrum and practical or something mysterious and supernatural."

• 6. Critical Reception

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  Donald Barr wrote in The New York Times that The Two Towers was "an extraordinary work." His review praised its "pure excitement, unencumbered narrative, moral warmth, barefaced rejoicing in beauty."

  Anthony Boucher, writing for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, was more mixed in his verdict. He found that the book "makes inordinate demands upon the patience of its readers." Certain passages, he wrote, "could be lopped away without affecting form or content." Yet Boucher also lavished praise on the volume. He wrote that no writer except E. R. Eddison had so satisfactorily "created his own mythology and made it come vividly alive." He described the writing as "some of the most sheerly beautiful prose that this harsh decade has seen in print."

  The Times Literary Supplement described the book as a "prose epic in praise of courage." It placed Tolkien's invented realm of Westernesse alongside Asgard and Camelot in the imagination. John Jordan, reviewing in the Irish Press, admired the blend of epic, heroic romance, parable, and fairy tale. He also singled out what he called "the more adventurous kind of detective story." Jordan compared Gandalf's death and return to Christ's resurrection. He wrote that Tolkien could manage this "without irreverence," given his seriousness about good and evil.

  Edwin Muir, the Scottish poet, writing in The Observer, had praised The Fellowship of the Ring and continued in the same vein here. He singled out Tolkien's invention of the Ents and the account of the Battle of Helm's Deep as magnificent. Muir also addressed a question circulating among readers: whether the One Ring stood for the atomic bomb. He rejected that equivalence, arguing that the Ring directly represented evil.

  Mahmud Manzalaoui, in the Egyptian Gazette, acknowledged that the book "has not pleased readers of the staple modern psychological novel." He argued nonetheless that it pointed toward a new trend in fiction.

• 7. From Page to Film

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  Peter Jackson's 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers drew on the book but reshaped it considerably. Jackson added material with no equivalent in Tolkien's text, including a scene in which Aragorn falls over a cliff. He also imported scenes from The Fellowship of the Ring, among them the Wargs' attack on refugees from Edoras. The film was acclaimed by critics and was highly successful at the box office. Jackson reserved the encounter with the giant spider Shelob for the following film.