#THE TWO TOWERS MUD FULL#

Perhaps it wasn't until the world had gotten more perspective on the huge trauma and pain of World War II that they became ready to read an anti-war novel about the fight between good and evil. Even though the books were published in 1954, it wasn't until the sixties-that decade of anti-war protests-that The Lord of the Rings 'explod into popularity almost overnight' ( source). Plus, Tolkien's anti-war sentiment may have also played a role in bringing so many readers to The Lord of the Rings, especially in the 1960s.

#THE TWO TOWERS MUD FULL#

If you want to find out more about how Tolkien saw this book fitting into his The Lord of the Rings project, check out our learning guide for The Fellowship of the Ring, where you'll find a full discussion.Įpic battles between Good and Evil? Sounds like a recipe for a great read, right? It's no wonder, then, that this series was so popular in its early days of publication. But because The Two Towers is a bridge, it doesn't truly stand on its own. This build-up of momentum, from the smaller-scale events of The Fellowship of the Ring to the huge face-offs in The Return of the King, only becomes possible with The Two Towers to act as a bridge between the other two parts of the trilogy. All of Middle-earth is getting involved in the War of the Ring, and we get the giant battle scenes to prove it.

This isn't just a story about a couple of guys trying to complete a quest anymore. Tolkien has taken the smaller, more personal scale of The Fellowship of the Ring and multiplied it tenfold to give us an epic clash with thousands of players.Ĭlearly, by the second book of the series, Tolkien is trying to raise the stakes. Middle-earth is experiencing a World War of its own, and we readers witness the drama, action, and bloodshed that come with. We talk about this topic of real-world war and The Lord of the Rings in greater detail in our ' Symbols, Imagery, Allegory' section, so for now, we'll just say that it's in The Two Towers that we start seeing battles of truly huge scale. Clearly, war was on everybody's mind, whether it was the recent, real war with Hitler, Mussolini, and the Emperor Hirohito, or Tolkien's fantastical, fictional war against Saruman and Sauron. And by the time Tolkien got around to publishing the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 1954, the world had just emerged from another hellish war, World War II. Tolkien spent some time fighting in the trenches in World War I. See, as we discussed in our 'In a Nutshell' section of The Hobbit learning guide, author J.R.R. In fact, all three books of the Lord of the Rings series are. (And if The Two Towers does represent your real-life experience of the world, we want to hear about it.) Yet, while the plot of The Two Towers doesn't actually sound ripped from the headlines, it really is. We don't often go on huge quests to rescue our friends from a band of orcs.

The basic point we're trying to get across is that the events of The Two Towers do not bear any obvious resemblance to our regular, daily lives. Oh, and then there are two more hairy-footed youngsters doing some seriously strenuous mountaineering, all so they can chuck a perfectly nice ring into a volcano. In brief, The Two Towers is about a man, an elf, and a dwarf chasing down two hairy-footed young guys before joining a super-powerful wizard and going on an epic campaign to defeat another wizard and his army of vicious, man-eating goblin-creatures.

The two towers mud