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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Tolkien's style is fundamentally naturalistic. His work is famous for his rich descriptions of the natural world through which the characters pass on their long journeys. These descriptions use a great deal of similes and metaphors, but these always rely on comparisons that would be familiar to the characters themselves. In the frame narrative for The Lord of the Rings, the books were originally memoirs written by Bilbo Baggins and edited by Frodo and Samwise, so it makes sense that the Hobbits would use images familiar to them. These tend to be other natural features, or such pre-industrial man-made objects as those that might be found in the Shire.
Tolkien uses a great variety of English dialects to represent the different styles of speech among different creatures. The Hobbits speak in a rustic, jaunty lilt, while the Orcs speak in brute, short sentences and the Ents speak in long, digressive paragraphs. While most of the dialogue occurs in the fictional language of Westron, or "Common Speech" (which is always translated into English), Tolkien depicts how different characters speak the language by modulating their dialects in English.
An important feature of the novel's style is contrived structure. The Two Towers begins immediately after the climax of The Fellowship of the Ring, when the Fellowship is separated after Frodo and Samwise flee the ambushing company of Orcs. Yet The Two Towers does not return to the story of its protagonists Frodo and Sam for an entire book, as Book 3 instead follows the twin narratives of Merry and Pippin as well as Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. Book 3 features a self-contained plot, as Aragorn and company search for the captured Hobbits and eventually reunite at Isengard after achieving victory alongside the Ents and the Rohirrim. Only after this does Tolkien reveal what Frodo and Sam have been up to, continuing the central plotline of the series—the passage of the Ring to Mordor. Thanks to Tolkien delaying the story of the main protagonists and plot, the reader shares the experience of the rest of the Fellowship during Book 3. Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Merry, and Pippin do not know where Frodo, Samwise, and the Ring have gone, and throughout Book 3, neither does the reader.
