The Two Towers Highlight

Rather than an observation of an event in the novel, as with The Fellowship of the Ring - I would like merely to record my favorite exchange from The Two Towers.

It is on the precipice of ill events, just as Gandalf's tumble in the previous part... while Sam and Frodo dine upon what they expect will be a final substantive meal, after climbing the stairs of Cirith Ungol...

"I don't like anything here at all," said Frodo, "step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid."

"Yes, that's so," said Sam. "And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose if's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, of the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually - their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on - and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same - like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into?"

"I wonder," said Frodo. "But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to."


Not only is this a clever wink to the audience of the story (both those who know how it turns out and those who don't), but I think it's a simultaneously humbling and uplifting summary of things. I don't really know where I'm headed, but perhaps it's okay that I don't. I may not like the adventure that I'm in the middle of, but it will never be told if I don't see it through. This section, in its own round-about way, has put much in perspective for me.

I just wanted to put that down.

Now for the Return of the King.