The Two Towers: What Sam Cannot Know

A review of The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

By H.R. Zimmerer

Spoiler warning: This review discusses The Lord of the Rings with spoilers, including references to other volumes.

For much of The Two Towers, the people who love one another have no reliable way of finding out whether the others are still alive. They must make decisions in that absence, without the reassurance that the reader might like to give them.

On a yearly return to Tolkien, I notice how much of the courage in this volume consists of continuing under those conditions. A person can know what they ought to attempt and still have almost no reason to expect that the attempt will be enough.

THE BOOK

The Two Towers

Author
J. R. R. Tolkien

First UK publication
November 11, 1954

Series
The Lord of the Rings · Volume 2

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The opening gives Boromir’s death the space it did not occupy at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring. His confession to Aragorn and the evidence of his defence of Merry and Pippin complicate any temptation to let his attempt on the Ring become his entire character.

He has done something terrible. He has also returned to the work of protecting people. The latter does not make the former disappear, but it matters that he chooses it when the opportunity remains.

Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli then have to decide what kind of fidelity is still possible. They cannot repair the breaking of the company by insisting that its original arrangement continue. Pursuing the captured hobbits gives their loyalty an immediate task.

The first part of the volume widens into Rohan, where weariness and political manipulation have entered the king’s household. Théoden’s recovery is moving because it restores his ability to act in a life that still has obligations. He does not become young; he becomes present to his people again.

The defence of Helm’s Deep has force because those people are vulnerable. Tolkien can give a battle grandeur without making its terror incidental. Shelter, walls and the possibility of help matter to bodies that cannot endure indefinitely.

Saruman’s treatment of the land gives the conflict another dimension. His ambition regards trees and labour as materials whose proper purpose is to be consumed. The Ents’ response makes an apparently patient landscape capable of answering the damage done to it.

Merry and Pippin are important to that answer, but their involvement does not make them the inventors of every grievance they encounter. They arrive among beings with their own histories and reasons for anger. Their success depends on listening and making a connection, as well as speaking.

Then Tolkien leaves these larger movements and returns to Frodo and Sam. The structural separation can be difficult on a first reading. Once a particular group has become urgent, the narrative refuses to keep cutting back to reassure us.

I have come to value the discipline of it. Frodo and Sam cannot borrow the relative public confidence of a victory in Rohan. Their path must be experienced through hunger, suspicion, difficult ground and the inadequate knowledge of the person walking beside them.

Gollum makes that closeness dangerous. He possesses information they need, and his dependence on the Ring gives every apparent improvement an unstable foundation. Frodo’s pity includes a recognition of what prolonged possession might make of him.

Sam’s distrust is not absurd. He is trying to keep Frodo alive, and the danger is real. Yet his protective judgement can also become harsh enough to miss a moment when Gollum’s attachment might have moved in another direction. The scene in which Gollum approaches the sleeping Frodo is painful because the possibility is slight and easily damaged.

It would be unfair to make Sam solely responsible for Gollum’s betrayal. Tolkien gives him neither complete knowledge nor unlimited emotional resources. The moment instead reveals the difficulty of responding well to somebody whose need and danger are entangled.

Faramir provides another crucial encounter with the Ring’s possibilities. He has reasons to fear for Gondor and to ask hard questions of strangers. His refusal to seize the Ring is therefore a decision made with something at stake, rather than evidence that temptation only happens to weaker people elsewhere.

He also makes an alternative to Boromir visible without requiring the brothers to become a simple opposition between a good man and a bad one. Their different judgements belong to different people formed within the same threatened household.

Shelob’s attack brings the volume’s concern with inadequate knowledge into its most intimate form. Sam must act on what he believes has happened to Frodo. His grief, his sense of obligation and the Ring’s presence do not arrive in a tidy order.

The discovery that Frodo is alive changes the meaning of decisions Sam has already made. It does not instantly give him the means to reach him. The book closes with responsibility sharpened by information that has come too late to prevent the immediate separation.

The movement between open warfare and the claustrophobic journey towards Mordor is not seamless. Readers may find one strand more compelling than the other, and the narrative’s willingness to postpone a return can feel severe.

But the form serves the emotional truth of the volume. Love cannot provide a complete report from every distant road. The companions must keep faith with people whose present circumstances they cannot see.

Sam ends the book knowing more than he did, and still unable to do what he most wants. That is where Tolkien leaves the reader: beside a loyalty that has become harder to carry, with the next action still to be found.