The Two Towers

Tolkien consistently uses the motif of light to represent good and darkness to represent evil, creating images of light appearing in the darkness to symbolize the power of hope. Light and dark imagery appear throughout The Two Towers, such as when Théoden’s restoration is accompanied by a ray of sunlight coming through the clouds and shining into his hall. Frodo and Sam’s journey into Mordor also particularly emphasizes light and darkness to convey the increasingly evil landscape they face and the small moments of hope that allow them to continue.

For example, when a Nazgûl flies over Frodo and Sam, the world around them is plunged into unnatural darkness. Sam’s Elvish rope manages to save Frodo from being trapped on a dangerous ledge, and Frodo’s description of that moment emphasizes how the light color of the rope conveys its goodness: “I could see nothing, nothing at all, until the grey rope came down. It seemed to shimmer somehow” (595).

Likewise, Galadriel’s phial provides Frodo with literal light in the darkest place he has ever been—Shelob’s lair. The light is not only literal but also represents hope:

[A]s he stood, darkness about him and a blackness of despair and anger in his heart, it seemed to him that he saw a light: a light in his mind, almost unbearably bright at first, as a sun-ray to the eyes of one long hidden in a windowless pit (703-04, emphasis added).

By indicating that the darkness is both around Frodo and “in his heart,” Tolkien conveys how evil both pervades the environment of Mordor and negatively influences the morale of Frodo and Sam as they try to travel through it.

There is one exception to the use of light to indicate good and dark to indicate evil found in Tolkien’s description of Minas Morgul, the fortress of the Nazgûl. Rather than being a place of total darkness, the fortification shines white: “Paler indeed than the moon ailing in some slow eclipse was the light of it now, wavering and blowing like a noisome exhalation of decay, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing” (688). This description emphasizes how the light of Minas Morgul is a false and horrible light rather than a comforting or hopeful light. In particular, Tolkien affiliates the pale color with corpses and decay. Minas Morgul was once a tower built by Gondor representing the moon, and therefore its pale glow represents how even what is good and bright can be corrupted and twisted to serve an evil purpose.