[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

Originally Posted by Esty

Tolkien makes the transition very cleverly, letting us remember through Sam’s eyes where he is and what has happened. As he has done previously, he also connects the strands of his tale by telling us what is happening at the other location at the same time. Interestingly, the locations are similar, though not close – both groups are at an entrance to Mordor.

I love that part. It really gives you perspective. It's moving that after all adventures they're so close to each other without knowing it themselves.

When Sam put the One Ring on his finger he got this vision:

Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and the armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-Dûr.

First this seemed tempting to Sam but the Ring didn't manage to betray him.

The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.

The Ring failed to ensnare its new bearer! How is that possible?

The book says that Sam was able to resist the temptation mostly because of the love he felt for Frodo. But were the visions that the Ring showed really what Sam desired or something that Sauron would have wished in his position? In other words, just like Sauron didn't even think that someone would like to destroy the Ring, maybe he couldn't understand that somebody wouldn't want to be a great and admired commander. Also, it seems that love was an unfamiliar conception to Sauron. I think there was too much Sauron's own spirit in the Ring to fool Sam who is a total opposite of Sauron. Therefore the Ring couldn't show Sam's deepest dreams and thus failed.

Mordor's defense has now some serious problems. The Ring failed, the Orcs are mutinous and the Watchers are baffled by Galadriel's phial.

But what are the Watchers, anyway? Were they made by the Gondorians or the Enemy?

They seemed to be carved out of huge blocks of stone, immovable, and yet they were aware: some dreadful spirit of evil vigilance abode in them. They knew an enemy.

Sam was clearly an enemy to the Watchers so it would suggest that they were the work of Mordor. It's interesting how Tolkien gives so many objects a spirit, sense or some kind of an awareness. There are orc sensing swords, treacherous rings and statues with artificial intelligence... What was the spirit inside them and why couldn't it bear the light of the phial?