The Two Towers

Samwise “Sam” Gamgee is a secondary character and companion to Frodo Baggins. Like Frodo, he is a hobbit from the Shire, but Sam grew up as a gardener and servant to the Baggins family. Sam loves Frodo deeply as a friend, but also sees himself as Frodo’s servant, bound by an oath to accompany him until the end of his quest.

Sam is not ignorant of the danger that he and Frodo face, but he considers his promise to stay with Frodo more important than anything else. When the hobbits approach the deadly land of Mordor and realize the near-impossibility of their mission, Sam decides to stay because “he had stuck to his master all the way; that was what he had chiefly come for, and he would still stick to him” (624). At the end of The Two Towers, Sam briefly leaves Frodo for the first time in the trilogy because he believes Frodo to be dead. Sam immediately regrets this decision, wishing that he had trusted his instinct to never leave Frodo’s side.

Some of Sam’s main characteristics are his bravery and loyalty. In The Two Towers, Sam often serves as comic relief, reacting to the grand and terrifying journey with folksy wisdom and nicknaming Gollum’s split personalities as “slinker” and “stinker.” Nevertheless, Sam demonstrates incredible courage when he fights Shelob alone to save Frodo. When Sam attempts to climb down a cliff without a rope in the darkness, the narration notes that “[i]t is doubtful if he ever did anything braver in cold blood, or more unwise” (592).

Sam’s simplicity sometimes makes him appear foolish, such as when he accidentally mentions the Ring to Faramir despite having been trying to conceal their secret quest. However, Faramir turns out to be a good ally, suggesting that Sam is insightful and has high emotional intelligence. While Sam does not know as much about Elves or the history of Middle-earth as Frodo does, he demonstrates great curiosity about the world: The narration points out that Sam is “forgetting his fear in his eagerness for news of strange places” (632). Sam’s ability to remain cheerful, trusting, and brave provides great value to Frodo during their journey together, and at the novel’s end he begins to achieve his own type of heroism.

Gollum is an anti-hero and foil to Frodo in The Two Towers. While Gollum begins the book as an antagonist, he is persuaded to help the hobbits and begins to exhibit some sympathetic qualities. Gollum is described as shrunken, thin, and spider-like in his movements, with luminous eyes in the darkness. He eats primarily raw fish and insects, refusing Elvish lembas bread or cooked rabbit. Sunlight and anything made by Elves seem to cause him pain. Particularly notable are his speech patterns. Tolkien has Gollum speak using the pronoun “we” rather than “I,” and he often addresses his words to “Precious,” meaning the Ring.

One of Gollum’s main characteristics is his duplicitous double-nature. The hobbits notice as they travel with Gollum that he seems to have two personalities that can carry on entire conversations with each other. One side of him is called Gollum—a more malevolent and violent personality that advocates for murder and subterfuge to get the Ring back. Gollum’s other personality, Sméagol, appears to be a remnant of the person he was before finding the Ring. Sméagol also desires to get the Ring back but seems to feel some love and loyalty for Frodo after he protects him. Faramir sums up Gollum’s deceitful and confusing motivations after he learns that Gollum plans to lead the hobbits up the stairs of Cirith Ungol, warning, “There are locked doors and closed windows in your mind, and dark rooms behind them” (674). This image emphasizes how Gollum lies and conceals his true motivations, but that this is inseparable from his fractured identity after spending so long under the Ring’s corrupting influence.

While Gollum appears to be an evil character, Tolkien repeatedly mentions that there is something pathetic about him that inspires mercy. While Frodo knows that it might be wiser to kill Gollum, he finds that he cannot, telling Sam, “[F]or now that I see him, I do pity him” (601). Like his uncle Bilbo, Frodo feels too much pity for Gollum and therefore spares his life, allowing Gollum to instead help him as a guide.

While Gollum is not redeemed in The Two Towers, Tolkien hints that spending time with Frodo and Sam has had a positive influence on him. When Gollum returns to see Frodo and Sam asleep in a tender and loving position, he approaches them and puts his hand out to touch them. The narration mentions:

[F]or a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing (699).

The brief moment of love that Gollum feels for the hobbits reveals him to be not so different from them, simply twisted and corrupted by the unnatural power of Sauron.