In The Two Towers, Sauron’s ongoing struggle for dominion over Middle-earth results in the beginning of an outright war for power between the armies of Mordor and the men of the West, aided by elves, dwarves, and hobbits. However, the war is not only about who has power, but also the idea of power: how it should be used and what purpose it serves. Sauron perceives power as a dominating force, used to enslave and control, while those who oppose him see it as a tool meant to serve and protect. The One Ring (sometimes called the Ring of Power) continually seduces characters with Sauron’s promise of power—it can be used to empower its wielder and dominate their enemies. And while these two concepts of power clash on the battlefields of Rohan in outright conflict, they also exist in conflict within individuals: Boromir, Saruman, and Gollum are each corrupted by this promise of absolute control, though they each have different intentions for how they’ll use that control. These characters’ transformations suggest that the desire to dominate others will invariably turn destructive, regardless of a person’s motivations. Furthermore, through Sauron’s ignorance of the Fellowship, a group that plans to destroy the Ring, The Two Towers shows that while the idea of absolute power and domination is seductive, using power for selfish aims is a weakness rather than a strength.
For both Sauron and Saruman, power is something for a single despot to hoard and use. Sauron prepares his armies for war in The Two Towers primarily out of suspicion that Gondor, wielding the power of the Ring, will soon attack Mordor. He seeks to destroy the realms of men that oppose him—but, more importantly, to recover the Ring. This will provide him with nearly unstoppable power, enabling him to enslave the other rings of power and completely dominate Middle-earth. As the sole ruler of Middle-earth, Sauron will exploit and control everyone under his power. Saruman, who wants the Ring for himself, seeks to do the same. His goals are visible in his treatment of Isengard; he destroys the land and the growing things on it to empower himself. He sends his orcs out to find the Ring-bearer, hiding his intentions from Sauron and attempting to steal power from him. If power is transferred, it is transferred by means of trickery or violence. It is never shared or used unselfishly.
Among the forces opposing Sauron—the men of the West, the elves, and their allies—power is held for the benefit of others. Their goal is not specifically to possess power, but rather to ensure that Sauron doesn’t take the ultimate power that he desires. Rather than allow the ultimate power of the Ring to exist, the Fellowship seeks to destroy it to ensure that no one (Sauron, Saruman, or one of their own kingdoms) has the ability to conquer the world. Instead, they seek to share what power remains after the destruction of the Ring among Middle-earth’s different races. Though Rohan and Gondor are monarchies in which individuals hold power over the rest of the population, the future leaders of these kingdoms are just and generous, trusted to wield power for the good of the many. Aragorn, the destined king of Gondor, has no desire to subjugate his people, but to serve and empower them. This idea of shared power for the protection of the world is fundamentally incompatible with Sauron’s desire to hoard and dominate—there is no way for the two to coexist on Middle-earth.
The seductiveness of the Ring and the power it holds lies not only in the personal aggrandizement it offers its wielder, but also in the idea that ultimate dominating power could be used to improve the world. Boromir falls victim to this falsehood, as Isildur did in the Second Age. Boromir’s intentions are good: he has been convinced (by his own wishes or the Ring’s influence) that he should use the Ring in battle against Sauron to protect Gondor and the rest of Middle-earth. However, this idea—that absolute power can be wielded for the benefit of others—is a false dream, one that leads Boromir to betray Frodo and the Fellowship’s ideals in trying to seize ultimate power for himself. In practice, using power to dominate and control others (even, ostensibly, for the sake of the common good) never makes things better—it only corrupts.
While Sauron’s idea of individual and ultimate power makes him strong, it is also a weakness. His arrogance and closed-mindedness prevent him from seeing beyond his own desires, meaning he can’t believe that any conception of power beyond his own exists. Because he wants the Ring, he assumes that the men of the West want it as well, and that they plan to use it as he would use it. With no concept of a selfless use of power, Sauron can’t imagine that anyone would seek to destroy the Ring and throw away the power it holds. In the end, his selfishness and shortsightedness leave him vulnerable to the Fellowship’s plan to destroy the Ring.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Power Quotes in The Two Towers
Boromir opened his eyes and strove to speak. At last slow words came. ‘I tried to take the Ring from Frodo,’ he said. ‘I am sorry. I have paid.’ His glance strayed to his fallen enemies; twenty at least lay there. ‘They have gone: the Halflings: the Orcs have taken them. I think they are not dead. Orcs bound them.’ He paused and his eyes closed wearily. After a moment he spoke again.
‘Farewell, Aragorn! Go to Minas Tirith and save my people! I have failed.’
‘Now,’ thought Pippin, ‘if only it takes that ugly fellow a little while to get his troops under control, I’ve got a chance.’ A gleam of hope had come to him.
‘He was polite in those days, always asking my leave (at least when he met me); and always eager to listen. I told him many things that he would never have found out by himself; but he never repaid me in like kind. I cannot remember that he ever told me anything. And he got more and more like that; his face, as I remember it—I have not seen it for many a day—became like windows in a stone wall: windows with shutters inside.
‘I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.’
‘Of course, it is likely enough, my friends,’ he said slowly, ‘likely enough that we are going to our doom: the last march of the Ents. But if we stayed at home and did nothing, doom would find us anyway, sooner or later. […] Now at least the last march of the Ents may be worth a song. Aye,’ he sighed, ‘we may help the other peoples before we pass away.’
‘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.’
‘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!’
‘Yes, when you also have the Keys of Barad-dûr itself, I suppose; and the crowns of seven kings, and the rods of the Five Wizards, and have purchased yourself a pair of boots many sizes larger than those you wear now. A modest plan. Hardly one in which my help is needed! I have other things to do. Do not be a fool. If you wish to treat with me, while you have a chance, go away, and come back when you are sober!’
‘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.’
I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.
Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.
‘Very well,’ he answered aloud, lowering his sword. ‘But still I am afraid. And yet, as you see, I will not touch the creature. For now that I see him, I do pity him.”
‘No, no! Not that way!’ wailed Sméagol.
‘Yes! We wants it! We wants it!’
Each time that the second thought spoke, Gollum’s long hand crept out slowly, pawing towards Frodo, and then was drawn back with a jerk as Sméagol spoke again. Finally both arms, with long fingers flexed and twitching, clawed towards his neck.
‘Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo. […] War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.’
‘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.
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.
