The Two Towers is divided into two parts, like The Fellowship of the Ring.
However, these parts are starkly different (as opposed to TFOTR) on account of the main characters being in different locations.
There's a lot going on with every storyline, and the book is enormous, so covering everybody's adventures would be tedious.
Instead, I want to discuss and comment on some personal highlights from both parts of the book.
Part 1 of TTT consists of the adventures of Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, and Merry and Pippin.
In this half of the book, what remained with me the most were the ancient Ents. Merry and Pippin encounter these unique creatures in Fangorn Forest after their escape from the Uruk Hai.
Ents are enormous, humanoid tree people. They are slow, yet deliberate and act as shephards of the forest.
Their existence is known to very few (save the wizards and elves), for while their domain (the forest) continues to shrink,
few travel far enough into its midsts to find an ent.
I believe even fewer would return to tell the tale. Every ent is very old, and is male, as the female ents (the entwives) left the ents thousands of years ago to tend to smaller plants and gardens.
It is likely, though not certain, that the entwives perished along with their gardens during the War of the Last Alliance in the Second Age.
Because of this, there has not been a new ent (an enting) for a very long time, and it is likely that the ents, though extremely long-lived, will eventually become extint.
As the ents march against Isengard, Treebeard, the eldest of the remaining ents, speaks to Merry and Pippin.
It is my favorite quote in the The Two Towers:
'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. That thought has long been growing in our hearts; and that is why we are marching now.
It was not a hasty resolve. 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.
Still, I should have liked to see the songs come true about the Entwives.
I should dearly have liked to see Fimbrethil again. But there, my friends, songs like trees bear fruit only in their own time and their own way: and sometimes they are withered untimely.'
In the Fellowship of the Ring, we see signs of the diminishing of the elves from Middle-Earth.
Here, we see another case of a magical race disappearing from this once-diverse world.
Though unlike the elves, the fate of the ents is unambiguously bleak.
I hope one day they find their entwives.
The second half of the book consists of Frodo and Sam slogging through the wilderness towards Mordor with Gollum as their guide.
It is often considered the worst of the 6 parts of the series, but I disagree.
It's fair to call the majority of this journey tedious, as a large fraction of it just traveling.
But I think Tolkien does an excellent job of making this not merely bearable, but enjoyable.
We are painted a vivid picture of their glacial pace through the rocky terrain of Emyn Muil, so much so that out of the entire series one of my clearest memories is of Frodo and Sam manuevering down steep cliffs and making use of the Lothlorien rope.
I loved the section with Faramir, and his ability to withstand the temptation of the ring.
This is a stark contrast with his brother Boromir, who was unable to resist its call, which indirectly cost him his life.
My favorite part, however, was the last chapter: "The Choices of Master Samwise".
Gollum is gone, his trap set: Frodo and Sam wander into the lair of Shelob, the monstrous spider who has a wordless pact with Sauron to guard this entrance into Mordor.
Frodo and Sam get separated in the sticky lair, and Sam finds his master bound in webs and paralyzed with Shelob's poison.
Sam's next choices are, to me, the most courageous actions of the entire trilogy.
In a fit of rage, Sam takes the Elvish blade, Sting, and the phial of Galadriel and takes on the monstrous Shelob.
As an aside, it's kind of funny how Tolkien describes this scene: "like an animal defending its mate": easy pickings for those who see the relationship between Frodo and Sam as subtley homosexual.
Anyways, it cannot be understated how terrifying she is: a bloated and ancient creature filled with poison and malice, feared and respected by the orcs of Mordor, which are not weak creatures who shy from violence.
And Sam goes in guns blazing in, stabs her in the eyes, at least partially blinding her, and impaling her when she tries to crush him.
When Gorbag learns of Shelob's wound, he tells Shagrat:
"By all the signs, Captain Shagrat, I'd say there's a large warrior loose, Elf most likely, with an elf-sword anyway, and an axe as well maybe; and he's loose in your bounds, too, and you've never spotted him. Very funny indeed!"
A large warrior indeed.
The spirit of Sam does not end there, however. After the rumble with Shelob, Sam examines Frodo and assumes he is dead.
His master, his best friend is dead and he is alone in the entrance of Mordor, surrounded by tens of thousands of enemies, completely, utterly alone.
Sam realizes that he is the last of the original nine tasked with destroying the ring. Frodo, Gandalf, dead.
The rest, if they were even alive, were hundreds of miles away.
Sam never even considered the reality that one day he may be forced to remove the ring from Frodo's corpse and become the new ringbearer.
But this reality is now upon him. He doesn't know what to do. He's alone, he doesn't even have a map.
Any normal elf, man, dwarf, or perhaps even hobbit would have collapsed there, given up, and let themself die.
But he refused.
Sam collects Sting, the Ring, and the Phial of Galadriel, weeping, and kisses Frodo on the forehead, promising he will return when the job is finished.
The new ringbearer collects himself and prepares to finish the job.
Frodo may have had the ring and bore a burden "alone", but Sam was with him the entire time, despite Frodo's exhaustion that only he could feel.
But he was never without Sam.
Sam, and Sam alone, demonstrated a resolve to destroy the ring despite the despair in being utterly alone.
No other character has had their mettle so severely tested, not by a mile. And that is why Samwise Gamgee is the best.