🧙‍♂️📖 Lord of the Rings year-long reading (session #4)

Discussion only. Bring any edition - print, ebook, audiobook notes, whatever works.

Short summary
We finished The Fellowship of the Ring.
The Fellowship broke. Boromir fell. Frodo left. Sam followed. And now the story does something interesting: it refuses to stay with one hero.
This next stretch is the “meanwhile” section - Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Merry, and Pippin trying to survive the consequences of a mission that has already split apart.
And honestly, this is where some characters get way more interesting than they were before.
Aragorn stops being “mysterious Strider” and has to become a leader in daylight. Merry and Pippin stop being comic relief and get pulled into the machinery of war. The Ents wake up. Rohan enters the story. Saruman becomes less abstract and more disgusting. And the world starts feeling politically alive, not just mythic.
If Fellowship was about forming trust, this section is about what happens after the group breaks and everyone has to become more than they thought they were.

Reading for this session
We’re starting The Two Towers.
Read Book III:

• The Departure of Boromir
• The Riders of Rohan
• The Uruk-hai
• Treebeard
• The White Rider
• The King of the Golden Hall
• Helm’s Deep
• The Road to Isengard
• Flotsam and Jetsam
• The Voice of Saruman
• The Palantír

This is a clean cutoff because it finishes the Aragorn / Rohan / Ents / Isengard half before we switch back to Frodo and Sam.
A few questions already sitting in my head

• What does Boromir’s death do to the story? Is it redemption, tragedy, warning, or all three?
• Aragorn finally has to lead. Does he feel natural in that role, or is he still becoming the person everyone needs him to be?
• Merry and Pippin: when do they stop feeling like side characters? What changes them - danger, luck, friendship, or being underestimated?
• Treebeard and the Ents: are they comic relief, ancient grief, environmental rage, or Tolkien saying “the slowest people in the room may be the ones you should fear”?
• Rohan: what does this kingdom add to the world? Does it feel noble, fragile, tired, doomed, alive?
• Saruman’s voice: why is persuasion scarier here than brute force? What does Tolkien understand about people who make evil sound reasonable?
• Helm’s Deep: does the battle feel heroic, desperate, or just like people being cornered by history?

One question I really want us to wrestle with
When the Fellowship breaks, does the story become weaker because everyone is separated - or stronger because people finally reveal who they are without the group protecting them?
What the night will feel like
We’ll start with a quick round:
Who surprised you most in this section?
Then we’ll stay close to scenes and turning points - Boromir’s end, the chase, Fangorn, Théoden waking up, Helm’s Deep, Saruman talking, and that creepy little Palantír moment at the end.
No lore-flexing required.
No “who knows the appendices best.”
We’re reading the book as a living story about courage, manipulation, war, aging power, and what happens when ordinary people get pulled into events too large for them.

Going forward
If you like, bring one question you want to ask the room. I’ll bring questions, but I want to make space for questions from the Fellowship too.

When and where

🗓️ Date: Sat, June 20th
🕒 Time:e 12 PM
📍 Location: We are meeting on level 5 south side room in the library for Lord of the Rings today

Cap 13 + waitlist

I’m capping this at 13 again if I can. It was weirdly perfect.