The Best and Worst Thing of The Two Towers
The best and the worst thing about The Two Towers is the descriptive writing. The descriptive writing is beyond astonishing, "There they saw a little glittering fountain. They walked along the brim of the great bowl at the feet of the evergreens-it was pleasant to feel the cool grass about their toes again. They drank a little, a clean, cold, sharp draught, and sat down on the mossy stone, watching the patches of the sun on the grass and the shadows of the sailing clouds passing over the floor of a dingle." (108) This is great imagery and I just opened a random page and found it, I'm actually on 224. This imagery easily takes up 80% of the book which is a literary reader's dream but not necessarily mine. I enjoy action and plots which The Lord of the Rings series has a lot of potential for. This book does have action and scenes with great description and tension but I want more of it. Most of the time Tolkien is just describing the breath-taking world around them as they walk along their journey which is fine but I want more conflict and action included. I know this would make the book already larger than the immense size it already is but I would not care.
Tolkien created a world that is similar to Earth in a medieval and magical kind of way. Tolkien really captures the world around the characters but as I said a little too well. A book is not only written by the author but also as the reader. As they say, "Nobody reads the same book." It's a partnership among the author and reader, Tolkien eliminates a lot of that with all the description, I am not reading a book but rather being told a story. I would prefer to read a book than be told a story. The imagination is mostly destroyed in the book. I am definitely not trying to say to get rid of the description, maybe just limit it in some places and concentrate it in some other spots. With all the negative connotations out of the way now I can talk about the good things the description does in the book. The description of the characters is just amazing, "These deep eyes were now surveying them, slow and solemn, but very penetrating. They were brown, shot with green light." This is a great quote of the character Treebeard who is an Ent or a tree herder. Tolkien made the director's job very easy with all of his description and characters, the director had very little work to do.
In conclusion I want to say that The Two Towers is a great book for literary readers and people who enjoy epic fantasy genre, just becareful with all of the description.
