Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Two Towers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Decline and Decay
Good and Evil
Duty
Joy and Optimism vs. Despair
Power
Heroism, Honor, and Glory
Summary
Analysis
At dusk, Gandalf and his companions leave Isengard for Helm’s Deep, and they notice that the ents have toppled the white hand, the sign of Saruman, from its pillar and broken it into pieces. Merry, riding with Gandalf, bothers him with questions about their destination and travels until Gandalf tells him to find someone else to teach him about Rohan—Gandalf is too preoccupied with other thoughts. Merry agrees to ask Aragorn but wonders why they’re planning to split the party up to ride in secret. Gandalf explains that though they’ve won the first battles, they’re still in danger. Sauron will be watching Isengard and Rohan carefully, and he still doesn’t know how Saruman communicated with Sauron.
With the toppling of the white hand, the ents have declared that Isengard no longer belongs to Saruman. Orthanc may be his prison, but the land is no longer his to abuse. Though they’ve won an impressive battle against Saruman, Gandalf is still troubled by Saruman’s corruption and the danger this foreshadows. Merry’s conversation with Gandalf serves to remind the reader of two facts that will remain important: Saruman possessed some way of speaking to Sauron, and Merry and Pippin are particularly curious hobbits.
Themes
When they stop to make camp, the hobbits lie together, and Pippin is strangely restless. He asks Merry if he got any interesting information out of Gandalf, but Merry replies that Pippin heard most of it since he was close by. The hobbits agree that Pippin can ride with Gandalf tomorrow and that he hasn’t changed much since his reappearance, though he seems somehow to have grown to be more than he was. Pippin is curious about the glass ball and why Gandalf was so quick to take it from him. He wants to look at it. Merry reminds Pippin of the phrase Sam used to quote—“Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger”—and tells him to go to sleep.
Like Merry, Pippin wants to hear news of their plan from Gandalf. Both hobbits are naturally curious, but Pippin is unusually intrigued by Saruman’s crystal ball, which he briefly held outside of Orthanc. Merry isn’t very interested in it, and his quoting Sam suggests that Pippin should mind his own business.
Themes
Pippin lies awake thinking about the glass ball until he can’t stand it any longer and gets up, wrapping himself in his cloak. He finds Gandalf sleeping with the ball wrapped in cloth next to him and replaces it with a stone. Pippin calls himself a fool and suddenly wants to put the ball back, but fears he’ll wake Gandalf up if he tries. Instead, he takes it away to a hill and sits staring at it until it begins to glow. Pippin is unable to look away as the lights spin and then go out. His body is rigid, trapped leaning closer and closer to the ball. Eventually, he is able to scream and wrench himself away, falling onto his back.
Pippin’s curiosity about the ball doesn’t just bother him, it tempts him, as Boromir was tempted by the Ring. Pippin’s desire to see the ball again exceeds his natural curiosity, indicating that there is some magic at work, and probably sinister magic, since Pippin knows that stealing it from Gandalf is wrong. Once he has it, Pippin is clearly entranced by some evil force.
Themes
Gandalf, looking haggard, finds Pippin there and throws his cloak over the ball. Pippin is still rigid, staring unseeingly up, and Gandalf lays a hand on his head. Pippin sits up, shuddering and confused, and shouts, “It is not for you, Saruman!” When Gandalf calls out to him to wake him up completely, Pippin immediately asks Gandalf for forgiveness. He saw visions in the ball of a dark sky with nine winged creatures and then Sauron spoke to him, thinking at first that he was Saruman. When Pippin revealed to Sauron that he was a hobbit, Sauron laughed and hurt him, then gave him a message for Saruman that the “dainty” was not for him.
The scene with Pippin and the ball is frightening and confusing. Just as Pippin doesn’t know what the ball is or what’s happening to him, neither does the reader, and both must wait for Gandalf’s help. Pippin is deeply shaken by his experience speaking to Sauron through the ball and appears more afraid now than he ever has in physical peril. Sauron, as Pippin describes him, is arrogant, mocking, and cruel. Though neither Pippin nor Sauron specify what the “dainty” is, the reader can infer it means either the Ring or the hobbit carrying it (Frodo).
Themes
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Gandalf forces Pippin, who is frightened but unharmed, to look into his eyes and hold his gaze. Gandalf smiles slightly, then comforts Pippin with a hand on his head. Sauron didn’t speak to him long and wasn’t able to get vital information from him, though only because of Pippin’s good luck. Sauron didn’t want information from Pippin as much as he wanted to bring Pippin back to the Dark Tower to deal with him slowly. Gandalf forgives him for his theft, urges him to say something if he feels drawn to the ball again, and carries him back to bed to sleep with Merry.
Though Pippin made a nearly catastrophic blunder in accidentally contacting Sauron, the quest isn’t endangered, partially because of Sauron’s own arrogance and cruelty. He wastes his opportunity to interrogate Pippin because he believes he can retrieve him from Orthanc to torture in person in Mordor. Gandalf reassures and forgives Pippin, despite the seriousness of his transgression—which he knew was wrong and which could easily have led Sauron to the Ring—and the matter is quickly closed. Gandalf’s mercy and matter-of-fact attitude contrast with Sauron’s relish for brute power and control.
Themes
When Gandalf returns to the others, they discuss how close to disaster they came that night. Aragorn asks how Pippin is, and Gandalf explains that hobbits have “an amazing power of recovery” and that the horror of Pippin’s experience will probably fade too quickly for it to really teach him a lesson. The ball is a palantír, a communication device, and Gandalf gives it to Aragorn for safekeeping, though he cautions him not to use it yet. Aragorn reminds Gandalf that he’s never been a hasty person and Gandalf advises him not to “stumble at the end of the road” and to ensure Pippin doesn’t know where the palantír is kept.
Hobbits, Gandalf has learned from his long history with them, are so resilient and have such capacity for joy and optimism that he believes Pippin will recover as quickly from this ordeal as he does from any traumatic event. The palantír can tempt those who touch it—a power similar to the Ring’s, though less potent. Gandalf believes Aragorn can withstand the temptation and advises that they keep it away from Pippin to avoid tempting him further. Though Gandalf trusts both Aragorn and Pippin, he also understands that even the best people are fallible and susceptible to corruption, and so he gives Aragorn his warnings anyway.
Themes
Pippin may actually have saved Gandalf from a terrible mistake—if Gandalf had the chance to investigate the ball, he might have accidentally revealed himself to Sauron. Gandalf decides to split the party up immediately. He’ll ride ahead with Pippin, while Théoden takes Éomer and some of the riders, and the rest go with Aragorn. Suddenly, a shadow falls on them as a Nazgûl passes in front of the moon. Gandalf shouts for everyone to ride away quickly. They break apart as they planned and flee. Merry jokes to Aragorn about Pippin’s good luck—he gets to ride with Gandalf like he wanted.
Pippin’s theft has become a very fortunate accident. It wouldn’t necessarily be catastrophic for Sauron to know Gandalf still lives, but Sauron’s ignorance of the fact gives them a slight advantage. Still, there are consequences to Pippin’s actions, and they’re swift. Sauron has sent his Nazgûl, and once he realizes the hobbit isn’t in Orthanc, he’ll send the fearsome creatures to search the surrounding countryside. The party that rode to Isengard has to split up and leave the area as quickly and stealthily as possible. Despite the disastrous night and his separation from Pippin, Merry still finds the energy to comfort himself with a little joke about Pippin getting his wish.
Themes
Pippin, warm on Shadowfax and safe with Gandalf, begins to feel better. He marvels at Shadowfax’s speed, and Gandalf explains that the palantír were made by Fëanor, an ancient elf, and eventually possessed by Gondor and used to unite the country. Most of them are lost now. Gandalf guesses that the palantír was a contributing factor in Saruman’s corruption, since even he himself feels the draw to look into it.
The palantíri, like so many other things in Middle-earth, have fallen from a just and noble use (protecting and uniting Gondor) to a nefarious purpose. So too has Saruman, in turn, been corrupted through the palantír. Gandalf’s readiness to forgive Pippin for the theft now becomes clearer; if Saruman was corrupted by the palantír, and Gandalf also feels a compulsion towards it, it would be unreasonable of him to expect a young hobbit to resist.
Themes
Gandalf chides Pippin for stealing the palantír but admits that Pippin’s presence has probably confused Sauron into thinking that Saruman is withholding a captive hobbit. Gandalf isn’t certain if, in the long run, it will help them or reveal the involvement of Gandalf and Aragorn to Sauron. As a result, they have to flee. Gandalf is taking them far away, to Minas Tirith, and advises Pippin to stop asking questions and sleep while he can. As Shadowfax runs, Pippin, falling asleep, feels as though he and Gandalf are sitting still while the land rolls away beneath them.
For now, Sauron’s hastiness in letting Pippin go has only caused him confusion. His arrogance and belief in his own power have twice been proven weaknesses, not strengths as they first appear. He still has no idea the Fellowship seeks to destroy the Ring and now lost his only clue to finding it. While Sauron’s incredible power makes him a dangerous enemy, it also causes him to make critical mistakes. Whether Pippin’s theft of the palantír will ultimately help or hurt them is not yet clear. Still, Pippin seems largely unharmed by his ordeal, and greatly comforted by Gandalf’s closeness. His friends are split apart again, as they were at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, but, like then, they each have a commitment to duty and their own part to play in the defense of Middle-earth.
Themes
