As the opposing forces of good and evil battle in The Two Towers, so too do the opposing forces of joy and despair. Saruman and Sauron seek to empower themselves and dominate Middle-earth not only through the force of their armies, but also through a campaign of fear and intimidation, leading many characters such as Faramir and Théoden to despair, believing that they will live to witness the fall of their kingdoms. Despite their situations’ danger and hopelessness, however, many characters (particularly the hobbits) find occasions for joy and spread their optimism to the despondent. Merry and Pippin, comforted by good food and wine in Isengard after the orcs mistreat them, offer Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli the same comforts to combat their fatigue and despair. When Frodo is bowed under the weight of the Ring and the oppressive gaze of Sauron, making him weary and hopeless, Sam keeps him safe and sane, cooking stew for him, reminding him of home, and making him laugh. The dueling forces of optimism and despair exist both interpersonally and individually, within a single character undergoing an internal battle with their own hopelessness. Through the characters’ endeavors to remain optimistic in the face of impossible odds, The Two Towers emphasizes the importance of joy in the fight against an enemy who weaponizes malice and despair.
The antagonists of The Two Towers use despair to oppress the men of Gondor and Rohan. The Eye of Sauron is a depressive force that permeates the air of the wastelands around Mordor and wears Frodo down. Sam’s indomitable optimism is the force that combats Frodo’s despair: he takes pleasure in the simple act of cooking and sharing food with Frodo, cheerfully recites childhood poems and songs, and recalls the goodness and beauty of Lothlórien and the Shire. While Sam’s joy can’t entirely overcome Frodo’s despair, it comforts him and allows him frequent reprieves from the weight of his burden. As Frodo himself admits, he “wouldn’t have got far without Sam” to support him. Wormtongue, while dulling Théoden’s senses, also makes him hopeless and convinces him that action against Isengard is futile. After Théoden is freed, he regains some of his optimism with Gandalf’s help, remarking that the world is “not so dark” as he believed while under Wormtongue’s influence. When Gandalf and the men of Rohan confront Saruman, Saruman uses his voice to cause despair, attempting to convince Théoden and his men that Rohan will fall and that Gandalf will betray them. Though Gandalf is too pragmatic to be truly optimistic about the war’s outcome, he is frequently hopeful, and his hope is a balm to many characters around him. In the midst of overwhelming despair, Gandalf can console his friends, assuring them that there is still a chance of victory—that “the great storm is coming, but the tide has turned.”
As well as facing despair embodied or wielded by an antagonist, characters must face their own internal despair and find ways to combat it. Many, such as Théoden and Frodo, take comfort and find optimism in their relationships with friends and allies. Others turn inwards for reprieve. Aragorn—who is simultaneously fearing for Gondor, mourning the loss of his friends, and frustrated by his own failings—leans on his sense of purpose, duty, and responsibility to see him through his bouts of despair. Faramir, certain that Gondor will fall because of its own slow decline, finds comfort in adhering to the ideals of the wise and righteous founders of Gondor. While the leaders of men focus on duty and lofty ideals, the hobbits, meanwhile, find respite from despair in their everyday customs and rituals of smoking and sharing meals—customs that may appear to be “low” and cheap pleasures but actually reveal a deep appreciation of life. The hobbits, who are small themselves, find value and joy in small things. It is Merry and Pippin’s delight in what might be described as “creature comforts” that especially insulates them from despair. Besides finding joy in food, rhymes, and his own jokes about Gollum, it is Sam’s practicality—his focus on providing the simple necessities of food and rest—and his devotion to Frodo that combat his despair so effectively that he hardly notices Mordor’s oppressive air.
Despair is not merely an emotion, but a crushing and paralyzing weight. As Saruman, Wormtongue, and Sauron weaponize despair, so too can the protagonists find weapons of their own—using what brings them purpose and joy as a shield to beat back their enemies. Combatting despair through friendship, conversation, or the resolve of a character’s own heart is essential both for survival and the fight against Sauron. While despair is not inherently evil or even inherently connected to the enemy—as all creatures of Middle-earth are susceptible to fear and sadness—to give in to that despair is to allow the enemy to win. Each time the hobbits find an opportunity for joy and Gandalf gives Théoden a reason to hope, it’s a small victory that contributes to the greater fight.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Joy and Optimism vs. Despair ThemeTracker
Joy and Optimism vs. Despair Quotes in The Two Towers
‘Let me think!’ said Aragorn. ‘And now may I make a right choice, and change the evil fate of this unhappy day!’ He stood silent for a moment. ‘I will follow the Orcs,’ he said at last. ‘I would have guided Frodo into Mordor and gone with him to the end; but if I seek him now in the wilderness, I must abandon the captives to torment and death. My heart speaks clearly at last: the fate of the Bearer is in my hands no longer. The Company has played its part. Yet we that remain cannot forsake our companions while we have strength left. Come! We will go now. Leave all that can be spared behind! We will press on by day and dark!’
The cakes were broken, but good, still in their leaf-wrappings. The hobbits each ate two or three pieces. The taste brought back to them the memory of fair faces, and laughter, and wholesome food in quiet days now far away. For a while they ate thoughtfully, sitting in the dark, heedless of the cries and sounds of the battle nearby.
‘You have not said what you know or guess, Aragorn, my friend,’ he said quietly. ‘Poor Boromir! I could not see what happened to him. It was a sore trial for such a man: a warrior, and a lord of men. Galadriel told me that he was in peril. But he escaped in the end. I am glad. It was not in vain that the young hobbits came with us, if only for Boromir’s sake.’
‘I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory. War is upon us and all our friends, a war in which only the use of the Ring could give us surety of victory. It fills me with great sorrow and great fear: for much shall be destroyed and all may be lost. I am Gandalf, Gandalf the White, but Black is mightier still.’
He rose and gazed out eastward, shading his eyes, as if he saw things far away that none of them could see. Then he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said in a soft voice, ‘it has gone beyond our reach. Of that at least let us be glad. We can no longer be tempted to use the Ring. We must go down to face a peril near despair, yet that deadly peril is removed.’
‘The end will not be long,’ said the king. ‘But I will not end here, taken like an old badger in a trap. Snowmane and Hasufel and the horses of my guard are in the inner court. When dawn comes, I will bid them sound the Helm’s horn, and I will ride forth. Will you ride with me then, son of Arathorn? Maybe we shall cleave a road, or make such an end as will be worth a song—if any be left to sing of us hereafter.’
‘I will ride with you,’ said Aragorn.
‘Songs we have that tell of these things, but we are forgetting them, teaching them only to children, as a careless custom. And now the songs have come down among us out of strange places, and walk visible under the Sun.’
‘You should be glad, Théoden King,’ said Gandalf. ‘For not only the little life of Men is now endangered, but the life also of those things which you have deemed the matter of legend. You are not without allies, even if you know them not.’
‘Yet I should also be sad,’ said Théoden. ‘For however the fortune of war shall go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever out of Middle-earth?’
‘It may,’ said Gandalf. ‘The evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been. But to such days we are doomed. Let us now go on with the journey we have begun!’
‘All right!’ he said, ‘Say no more! You have taken no harm. There is no lie in your eyes, as I had feared. But he did not speak long with you. A fool, but an honest fool, you remain, Peregrin Took. Wiser ones might have done worse in such a pass. But mark this! You have been saved, and all your friends too, mainly by good fortune, as it is called. You cannot count on it a second time. If he had questioned you, then and there, almost certainly you would have told all that you know, to the ruin of us all. But he was too eager. […] But come! I forgive you. Be comforted! Things have not turned out as evilly as they might.’
‘About the food,’ said Sam. ‘How long’s it going to take us to do this job?’
[…]
‘I don’t know how long we shall take to—to finish,’ said Frodo. ‘We were miserably delayed in the hills. But Samwise Gamgee, my dear hobbit—indeed, Sam my dearest hobbit, friend of friends—I do not think we need to give thought to what comes after that. To do the job as you put it—what hope is there that we ever shall? And if we do, who knows what will come of that? If the One goes into the Fire, and we are at hand? I ask you, Sam, are we ever likely to need bread again?’
‘It was an evil fate. But he had taken it on himself in his own sitting-room in the far-off spring of another year, so remote now that it was like a chapter in a story of the world’s youth, when the Trees of Silver and Gold were still in bloom. This was an evil choice. Which way should he choose? And if both led to terror and death, what good lay in choice?’
Gollum disappeared. He was away some time, and Frodo after a few mouthfuls of lembas settled deep into the brown fern and went to sleep. Sam looked at him. […] Frodo’s face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: ‘I love him.’
‘I’m afraid our journey’s drawing to an end.’
‘Maybe,’ said Sam; ‘but where there’s life there’s hope, as my Gaffer used to say; and need of vittles, as he mostways used to add. You have a bite, Mr. Frodo, and then a bit of sleep.’
‘All is lost. Even if my errand is performed, no one will ever know. There will be no one I can tell. It will be in vain.’ Overcome with weakness he wept. And still the host of Morgul crossed the bridge.
Then, at a great distance, as if it came out of memories of the Shire, some sunlit early morning, when the day called and the doors were opening, he heard Sam’s voice speaking. ‘Wake up, Mr. Frodo! Wake up!’
[…]
Frodo raised his head, and then stood up. Despair had not left him, but the weakness had passed. He even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and that whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Galadriel or Gandalf or anyone else ever knew about it was beside the purpose.
‘Why, Sam,’ he said, ‘to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you’ve left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. “I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn’t they put in more of his talk, dad? That’s what I like, it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam, would he, dad?”’
‘No, Mr. Frodo,’ said Sam, ‘you shouldn’t make fun. I was serious.’
‘So was I,’ said Frodo, ‘and so I am.’
Even as Sam himself crouched, looking at her, seeing his death in her eyes, a thought came to him, as if some remote voice had spoken, and he fumbled in his breast with his left hand, and found what he sought: cold and hard and solid it seemed to his touch in a phantom world of horror, the Phial of Galadriel.
[…]
As if his indomitable spirit had set its potency in motion, the glass blazed suddenly like a white torch in his hand.
‘What shall I do, what shall I do?’ he said. ‘Did I come all this way with him for nothing?’ And then he remembered his own voice speaking words that at the time he did not understand himself, at the beginning of their journey: I have something to do before the end. I must see it through, sir, if you understand.
He flung the Quest and all his decisions away, and fear and doubt with them. He knew now where his place was and had been: at his master’s side, though what he could do there was not clear. Back he ran down the steps, down the path towards Frodo.
[…]
‘I wonder if any song will ever mention it: How Samwise fell in the High Pass and made a wall of bodies round his master. No, no song. Of course not, for the Ring’ll be found, and there’ll be no more songs. I can’t help it. My place is by Mr. Frodo. They must understand that—Elrond and the Council, and the great Lords and Ladies with all their wisdom. Their plans have gone wrong. I can’t be their Ring-bearer. Not without Mr. Frodo.’
