I have something to do before the end: The Journey of Samwise the Stouthearted by Antane

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“I have something to do before the end”: The Journey of Samwise the Stouthearted

            Sam is not the youngest of the four hobbits who leave on the Quest, but he is in some ways the most childlike, in that he is filled with wonder and joy at seeing Elves. As the Gaffer says, his youngest son is “[c]razy about stories of the old days [...], and he listens to all Mr. Bilbo’s tales” (LotR I:1, 24). Sam makes the point of saying to Gandalf that he believes in them too. When he is caught eavesdropping on the wizard’s talk with Frodo about the Ring, he begs not to be turned into “anything unnatural,” (I:2, 62) then weeps with joy when he learns that his punishment will actually involve seeing Elves. That long-held wish is granted far sooner than he expected, and he “walked along at Frodo’s side, as if in a dream, with an expression on his face half of fear and half of astonished joy” (I:3, 80).

            When Frodo asks him the next morning whether he still wants to continue and bluntly tells him it is likely that neither of them will return, Sam does not hesitate and says that he does indeed intend to, and if Frodo is not going to come back, then neither is he.

I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can’t turn back. It isn’t to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains, that I want - I don’t rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end, and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me. (I:4, 85)

            Frodo says he doesn’t entirely, but that he is content that “Gandalf chose [him] a good companion” (ibid). It is no coincidence that Sam was born the same year Frodo’s parents were drowned. The younger hobbit always looked out for his master and it’s why he joins Merry’s conspiracy. He always puts Frodo’s needs before his own, more and more heroically, as that conspiracy turns into the Quest to destroy the Ring. Sam didn’t have to serve his master in such a sacrificial way, but it is his free choice to do so. He could follow his beloved pony Bill away from Moria, turn back in Lothlórien after what he sees in the Mirror, kill himself after Frodo’s apparent death, give up after coming to an apparent dead end in the Tower of Cirith Ungol, or he could continue on. He chooses at all times to keep going. He is free and bound at the same time, but he chooses to be bound and therein lies his freedom. Trying to part Sam from Frodo would be like trying to part him from his own shadow or his own soul. Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote that Sam voluntarily endures torment and terror on the Quest “only for the sake of one he loves beyond everything else” (Bradley 90). That love approaches “religious devotion” (88) by the time he and Frodo are near the Fire. Throughout the Quest, Sam says in words and actions: “wherever you go, I will go” (Ruth 1:17).

            He is enabled in his vocation to take care of his master by visitations of grace throughout the tale. He is the one who hears the Black Rider’s horse coming along in the Shire. He is inspired to look back as he, Frodo and Pippin are deciding how to cross the stream which cuts across their path and also while crossing the Brandywine and so sees the Rider both times. He is the only one able to stay awake when Old Man Willow puts everyone else to sleep. He is the one who comes running back to the dell at Weathertop and warns of the approaching Nazgûl. Much later he is awakened, thinking he hears Frodo calling him, but his master is asleep, and instead he hears Sméagol and Gollum arguing about how to get the Ring. Though neither Frodo nor Sam know their Creator intellectually, their souls are deeply united to Him and responsive to the graces given them.

            Sam is deeply suspicious of those who have been or could be threats to his master - Farmer Maggot, Strider, Gollum, Faramir - and only trusts them once they have “shown their quality.”  To Sam’s mind, Gollum never does.

            “I am learning a lot about Sam Gamgee on this journey,” Frodo says (I:12, 203) after Sam has sung of the troll and earlier of Gil-galad. Throughout the Quest, it is through this hobbit and this friendship which Professor Ralph C. Wood calls “a thing of exquisite beauty, even holiness” (The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth 135) that Frodo’s education in love, loyalty, endurance, perseverance, faith, goodness and hope primarily comes.

            Sam’s natural hobbit cheerfulness allows him to make light of times of terrible crisis. When he announces his presence at the secret Council of Elrond, all he says of the horrible danger that the Quest will involve, is that it is “[a] nice pickle” (LotR II:2, 264).

            When Galadriel tests his heart, Sam is asked what he would do if he could go home and have a garden of his own, but his heart is firmly in his master’s keeping. The Lady of the Wood also grants his wish to see “Elf-magic,” (II:7, 352) but instead of being an enjoyable experience, what Sam sees in the Mirror breaks his heart. He wishes to go home after that, but he decides he will “go home by the long road with Mr. Frodo, or not at all” (II:7, 354). So much more than the Shire would have been harmed, if he had not been there all along to strengthen his dear master’s will and heart which was under such brutal assault. When he tells Galadriel, “I wish you’d take his Ring. You’d put things to rights,” (II:7, 357) he is echoing Boromir’s desire to use the Ring in battle. He is still innocent of personal knowledge of the Ring’s evil, despite all he’s heard from Gandalf and at the Council.

            While Frodo is off wrestling with the idea of how to proceed while the rest of the Company await him at Parth Galen, Sam states with certainty that his master already knows what he has to do, he’s just trying to gather enough courage to overcome his terror and actually do it. Probably even more than Merry and Pippin who argue that Frodo should not be allowed to go to Mordor, Sam would have wanted his treasure to be spared that terrible journey, but he does not advocate that at all. Love for those dearest to him makes Frodo decide to go off alone, so they won’t die with him; love for Frodo is what makes Sam stick to his side, even if it comes to dying.

            When Frodo tries to leave for Mordor alone, Sam refuses to be left behind. He is the only one who figures out where his master has gone after the Company is scattered. He’d rather die at Frodo’s side than live without him. After Frodo says he would have been safely on his way if Sam hadn’t come, the humble gardener is scandalized and horrified his beloved master would ever think such a thing even possible without his Sam looking after him. Frodo acknowledges that when he says, “It is plain that we were meant to go together” (II:10, 397).

            All these decades Ilúvatar had been knitting his and Sam’s souls together so that they would be inseparable for this one task. They’d much rather be back home in the sun-filled, idyllic Shire, but they walk, stagger and crawl to the heart of evil and darkness instead. On the way, Frodo learns more and more that “[a] faithful friend is a sure shelter; whoever finds one has found a rare treasure” (Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 6:14).

            Besides his faith in his master, Sam has great faith in the Lady of the Wood and all things Elven. His trust in the rope he brought from Lothlórien which allows them to escape the Emyn Muil is stronger than Frodo’s, as is his belief as to why that rope comes undone when they need it to. He is the one who remembers in the terrible darkness of Shelob’s Lair that Frodo is carrying the star-glass Galadriel gave. He invokes her in his wish to return to his master’s body and is inspired to use her phial to break the power of the Two Watchers.

            One person he never has faith in is Gollum. Sam goes on much of the journey without any compassion or understanding of why his master is so kind to the wretched creature, and often wishes Gollum were dead. When Sméagol speaks his promise to Frodo about being very good and not letting Sauron have the Ring, Sam has a vision of Frodo as “a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog” (LotR IV:1, 604). He also recognizes that his beloved master and the despised Gollum are “in some way akin” (ibid). It is not the last time Sam has such visions which, as Anna Slack notes, “accent his integration with the spiritual realm of Middle-earth” (Slack 138).

            After Frodo tells Sam in the Dead Marshes that they need not worry about food for the return journey because there wouldn’t be one, Sam weeps over Frodo’s held hand.  He weeps also in Shelob’s Lair and in the Tower. These times are well reflected in Washington Irving’s words: “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief [...] and unspeakable love.”  The same could be said of Sam’s other silent expressions: the kisses to Frodo’s brow and hand, the hand and body he holds while his master sleeps. Everyone else is concerned with saving Middle-earth as a whole, but Sam is solely concerned with the one person who is dearer to him than anyone, and because he is so focused, he helps save the whole world just because he so loved that one.

            When Sam watches Frodo sleep in Ithilien, another sign of grace is revealed in that he is one who has eyes to see Frodo’s inner light.  One of the most beautiful professions of love in the whole tale comes from this sight:

He was reminded suddenly of Frodo [...] asleep in the house of Elrond, [...] a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. [...] Sam [...] murmured: ‘I love him. He’s like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.’ (LotR IV:4, 638)

            Here again Sam is granted a vision in which he can see beyond exterior appearances into Frodo’s true self, for he sees the beautiful, older face that is marked by the “shaping years” (ibid), that, as Judith Klinger notes, “the Ring’s imposed youthfulness merely disguises” (Klinger 191). 

            It is also in this land that the gardener’s hope for their return journey blooms again after being temporarily dimmed by Frodo’s pessimistic forecast made in the Dead Marshes.

            The fact that hobbits have “an amazing power of recovery” (LotR III:XI, 580) as Gandalf observes is shown once more in Sam’s quick recovery from the fright of seeing the Black Riders now on flying steeds. He recites the Oliphaunt poem and expresses his excitement over the possibility of seeing one. He gets his wish after the smoke from his cookfire is discovered by Faramir and his men, one of the many seeming disasters throughout the tale that is actually a great good. The Rangers save their lives by guiding them through dangerous lands where they could very well have been captured by the evil forces massing to serve Mordor.

            Sam’s first view of a battle comes from the Ranger ambush of the Southrons, and he sees up close a body of an enemy soldier, but also a fellow human being. “He wondered what the man’s name was and where he was from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace [...]” (IV:4, 646).  It is also here that to “his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight,” (ibid) he sees an oliphaunt and then quickly settles back down for a nap.

            Sam’s enduring love for Elves is again noted when it is mentioned that it was “that Faramir seemed to refer to Elves with reverence, and this [...] had won Sam’s respect and quieted his suspicions” (IV:5, 664).  When Sam is upset that he let out the secret that Frodo has the Ring, Faramir comforts him by saying it was “fated to be so” (IV:5, 666), and it would, if the man could manage it, work to Frodo’s good. Sam recognizes that Faramir has a light to him as well, as hobbit and man recognize each other’s quality: both of the very highest.

            At Minas Morgul, when Frodo’s will is overcome by the evil there and he staggers toward the tower, Sam pulls him back. “[D]eliverance is always a sign of God at work, whatever or whoever [H]is agents might be,” Fleming Rutledge says (The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings [Battle] 228).

            Sam’s quote of his Gaffer’s, “where there’s life there’s hope” (LotR IV:7, 685) is very much what a gardener would believe, having long watched over and nurtured many a plant and flower at Bag End.

            Frodo laughs twice on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol after Sam tells him how he imagines their story will be told. Before the terror of Shelob’s Lair, Sam is able to give Frodo a moment of true joy. As Rutledge remarks, gladness in the tale is “a sign of salvation and hope” (Battle 161). Gandalf smiled when he heard that Sam was with Frodo. Sam had laughed in Ithilien “for heart’s ease” (LotR IV:4, 636). Frodo’s laughter on the Stairs was for the same reason, and that is why Sam was placed at Frodo’s side: for his heart’s ease. As Frodo himself admits, he “wouldn’t have got far without Sam” (IV:8, 697). It is only a short while Sam physically carries his treasure. It is the entire way he carries him mentally, emotionally and spiritually: the bearer of hope for the Ring-bearer.

            Sam’s talk about the stories he and Frodo loved as lads in which the folks in them “had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t” (IV:8, 696) is a powerful meditation on the inspiration of such tales. The younger hobbit is astonished when he realizes that he and Frodo are themselves part of the same story. When Sam wonders whether their own tale will have a good or bad ending, Frodo says it is better not to know. He is being consumed by despair and thinks he knows the ending, but Sam is blessed with a sunny heart to withstand any darkness.

            When Gollum slinks back after arranging the betrayal of the hobbits to Shelob, he finds Frodo and Sam asleep in each other’s arms and almost repents. He reaches out to caress Frodo’s knee, but at that very moment, the Ring-bearer cries out from a nightmare and wakes Sam. The goodness that was growing becomes a blighted stillbirth instead when it is strangled, though not willfully or knowingly, by Sam. Because he’s never borne Gollum any good will, he completely misunderstands the tender gesture, and wonders instead why the creature is “pawing at master” (IV:8, 699). He calls Gollum a villain and in the blaze of that anger, the tender shoots that Frodo had so carefully cultivated in the hope they would bloom, wither and die. This is not only a tragedy for Sméagol, but also for Sam. He sees only “Stinker,” not the tormented hobbit who was painfully crawling back toward the light, but as Professor Tolkien acknowledges, “Sam could hardly have acted differently” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien [Letters] 330). Sam hasn’t yet borne the Ring so hasn’t had that glimpse into Sméagol’s soul that Frodo has. Neither hobbit recognizes that this is the moment of Sméagol’s death, though Sam notices the return of Gollum by the wicked green light in his eyes, which he has noticed at other times. The betrayal goes forward.

            After Frodo defeats Shelob by advancing with Galadriel’s phial, Sam exclaims, “Stars and glory!  But the Elves would make a song of that, if ever they heard of it!  And may I live to tell them and hear them sing” (LotR IV:9, 705). He embodies once more the remarkable ability hobbits have to recover quickly and completely from terrifying experiences and to hope once more for life beyond the present horror.

            As Frodo runs toward the pass, so overjoyed to see freedom in sight that he is heedless of any danger, Sam very much feels the oppressive weight of the peril they are in: “[A] fear was growing on him, a menace which he could not see; and such a weight did it become that it was a burden to him to run, and his feet seemed leaden” (IV: 9, 708). Still he continues on.

            Frodo is soon struck down by Shelob and about to be carried off, when the great spider encounters “a fury [...] greater than any she had known in countless years” (IV:10, 711). “No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate” (ibid). Sam is inspired to call upon Elbereth, and so is able to defeat his monstrous enemy and later escape from the Tower of Cirth Ungol.

            It is after his great victory over Shelob that Sam is plunged into the worst agony of his life when he believes his beloved master dead. Despair, rage and grief fill him to overflowing, while a black night in which he sits long swallows his shattered heart. He holds Frodo’s hand as he holds court with himself as to how to continue, or if to continue at all now that the light which had sustained his life and hope has been quenched. His choices were easy when Frodo was alive because all he had to do was follow him and that overcame his own fears.  But now he is alone and has to make up his own mind. He’s afraid that he’ll make a mistake, but he has grown much since the Quest began, and is now a hobbit with “a deep capacity for discernment and reflection” (SparkNotes: The Lord of the Rings [SparkNotes] 245). He considers pursuing Gollum out of vengeance, and even thinks of suicide, but dismisses both. He doesn’t want to become the Ring-bearer because he doesn’t consider that to be his place. Then he hears an inner voice say, “But you haven’t put yourself forward; you’ve been put forward. As for not being the right and proper person, why, Mr. Frodo wasn’t, as you might say, nor Mr. Bilbo. They didn’t choose themselves” (LotR IV:10, 715).

            It is still “altogether against the grain of his nature” (IV:10, 716) to take on a leadership role and leave his master’s side, but as he realizes that he’s a vessel of Another, this sits better with him, because it will allow him to continue in his role as servant. It is touching that he asks Frodo if he understands what he must do. That he spoke to his master as though he were still alive is further evidence of Faramir’s remark that the hobbit’s heart was “shrewd as well as faithful, and saw clearer than [his] eyes” (LotR IV:5, 666).

            Another beautiful profession of love comes after Sam has kissed his master’s brow in farewell and taken the Ring:

Good-bye, master, my dear! [...] Forgive your Sam. He’ll come back to this spot when the job’s done - if he manages it. And then he’ll not leave you again. Rest you quiet till I come; and may no foul creature come anigh you! And if the Lady could hear me and give me one wish, I would wish to come back and find you again. (IV:10, 716)

            When speaking of that wish/plea/prayer to Galadriel, Judith Klinger says that Sam’s enduring hope comes here in the form of his “ability to reinterpret ultimate separation as a hope for reunion” (Klinger 207). Instead of being an “empty fall into nothingness” (LotR IV:10, 715) as Sam thought death when tempted to suicide, “death is now envisioned as a ‘quiet rest’ that Sam can eventually share with Frodo, and a reunion that affirms an irrevocable bond” (Klinger 188). Grace filled the younger hobbit in a different way than it did his master, manifested in his unquenchable hope and love, and also in his ability to “see ahead,” even past death to life again. This is the hope that Aragorn tries to convey in his last words to his beloved Arwen. That Sam can see with the same eyes of faith and not even know his Creator is an astonishing gift from Ilúvatar.

            He looks upon his beloved master by the light of the Phial, and is gifted with another vision in which he sees ahead, this time to the time after Frodo has left for the West. The Ring-bearer’s  face was “fair of hue again, pale but beautiful with an elvish beauty, as of one who has long passed the shadows” (LotR IV:10, 716). When Sam at last finds the strength and courage to leave the terrible lair, “where all his life had fallen in ruin,” (ibid) he “begins his rise to supremely heroic stature,” as Tolkien wrote to Milton Waldman. “He fights the Spider, rescues his master’s body, assumes the ghastly burden of the Ring, and is preparing to stagger on alone in an attempt to carry out the impossible errand” (The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion 746).

            When, however, Sam learns that the Orcs have discovered Frodo’s body, he throws aside his decision to continue the Quest, and starts to return to defend his master.  He receives a tremendous shock when he learns that Frodo is not dead after all, something he realizes his heart knew all along. He thinks he made a terrible mistake by leaving his master’s body, but he had been inspired to do exactly the right thing. It was vital to the success of the Quest and Frodo’s salvation that Sam be allowed to believe what his eyes saw and blind at first to what his heart knew.

            He had struggled with his decision to leave his master since he had made it, but now there is no longer any doubt in his mind what he must do: rescue Frodo or die attempting the seemingly impossible task, even though he is so frightened his terror paralyzes him at one point. He puts the Ring on and is heartened by the sound of Orcs fighting, and his hope in succeeding returns. “His love for Frodo rose above all other thoughts, and forgetting his peril he cried aloud: ‘I’m coming Mr. Frodo!’” (VI:1, 879).

            The magnitude of his task comes back to him when he looks up at the Tower of Cirith Ungol. He realizes that it would be nigh to impossible to pass the gate unseen, “[b]ut desperate as that road might be, his task was now far worse: not to avoid the gate and escape, but to enter it alone” (VI:1, 880).

            When Sam is confronted with the terrible power of the Ring, “gnawing at his reason and his will,” (ibid) and has his own fantasy vision of what he could do with it, he is able to resist, due to the fact that just as Galadriel “will [...] remain Galadriel,” (II:7, 357) Sam will remain Sam: with a heart full of love at his master’s side. The gardener is as much saved by his love for Frodo as Frodo himself is. That love, coupled with “plain hobbit-sense” (VI:1, 881) and humility, allows Sam to see through the delusions of the Ring. He knows his place in the world and he has no desire to be any place or anyone else. In this way he is spiritually akin to Faramir. Sam only wants to be a servant, the happy gardener of Bag End, in charge of himself and his master, not to have a garden the size of a realm and be in charge of many others. He wants to have someone over him, to cherish and nurture, not people under him. The Ring has nothing with which to tempt him.

            He shrinks from the “huge distorted shadow of himself, a vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor” (VI:1, 880) to “a very small and frightened hobbit” (VI:1, 881). When he is gathering his courage to go into the Tower, he calls himself “you miserable sluggard” (VI:1, 882) and jokes after the Two Watchers give their terrible cry, “Now I’ve rung the front-door bell!” (ibid). These are some of the most terrifying times of his life, but his complete devotion to his master, and his cheerful hobbit nature, give him the ability not to be overwhelmed by his fear.  Instead he shrugs his shoulders “as if to shake off the shadow and dismiss the phantoms” (VI:1, 881) and continues on. He shows in many convincing ways that “fear is driven out by perfect love” (1 Jn 4:18). Only with such inspiration is he able to constantly renew his courage to face “[t]he dead bodies; the emptiness; the dank black walls that in the torchlight seemed to drip with blood; the fear of sudden death lurking in doorway or shadow; and behind all his mind the waiting watchful malice at the gate” (LotR VI:1, 883).

            Another sign of the grace that protected and guided him is shown when Sam is prompted by “some deep premonition of danger” (VI:1, 879) to take off the Ring while he is conducting his search. When he is nearly compelled to put it back on, he is distracted by an Orc coming down the stairs and looking right at him. That could have ended in disaster, but Snaga did not see

a small frightened hobbit trying to hold a steady sword: it saw a great silent shape, cloaked in a grey shadow, looming against the wavering light behind; in one hand it held a sword, the very light of which was a bitter pain, the other was clutched at its breast, but held concealed some nameless menace of power and doom. (VI:1, 883)

            Sam is so amazed when Snaga runs away, he is emboldened to give chase, continuing his role of a great Elf-warrior. He has heard a terrible shriek and fears it was his master’s death cry, but still he goes on to seek him, not knowing whether there would only be a corpse to find.

            His bravery in the long search is rewarded when he is at his lowest point, feeling finally defeated by an apparent dead end and fearing his master forever lost. But there grace reaches out to touch him once more: “And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing” (VI:1, 887). At first his voice is “thin and quavering [...] the voice of a forlorn and weary hobbit,” (ibid) but then it grows stronger and Sam thinks he hears an answer. Snaga also hears it and inadvertently leads the hobbit to the treasure he seeks.

            “Under the most adverse and improbable circumstances, surrounded by the hideous evidence of senseless slaughter, Frodo and Sam share a moment’s happiness and release from the burdens of the Quest” (Klinger 193). When Frodo lies “back in Sam’s gentle arms, closing his eyes, like a child at rest when night-fears are driven away by some loved voice or hand,” (LotR VI:1, 889) “the Ring’s influence is - almost miraculously - suspended or eclipsed” (Klinger 193). This loving reunion has overcome despair, seemingly irrevocable loss and impossible odds, leaving Sam feeling “he could sit like that in endless happiness” (LotR VI:1, 889), but their task is still ahead. He rouses his master, best friend, brother and child, with a kiss to the brow and a cheerful voice.

            It is only shortly afterwards that the Ring’s influence returns with a vengeance when Frodo lashes out at his beloved guardian and accuses him of being a thief when he sees Sam with the Ring. Frodo begs forgiveness when the madness passes and Sam instantly gives it. How his love for his master can not only be sustained through such trials, but grow ever deeper is reflected well in the words of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen who said of Jesus loving even great sinners: “He saw that a jewel had fallen into the mud and though encrusted with foulness that it was still a jewel” (Fulton J. Sheen’s Guide to Contentment 155). “Love is not blind,” Rabbi Julius Gordon said. “It sees more, not less but because it sees more, it is willing to see less.” Sam remembers, adapting the words of Washington Irving, the “innocent eyes of [his] child so can never be brought to think him all unworthy. [His] love ever lives, ever forgives and while it lives, it stands with open arms and gives and gives, the strongest thing in the universe, never failing, enduring forever, always hoping [...].”  “The measure of love is to love without measure,” said St. Francis de Sales (also attributed to St. Augustine). Only such a love could have induced Gandalf to enter Moria, knowing his death was within, or enabled Frodo and Sam to struggle to the Fire.

            The reverence and faith in all things Elven that the younger hobbit holds is represented twice more when he gives Frodo his grey cloak to replace the orc-mail shirt that has become too heavy for his master to bear wearing. “[...] I daresay it’ll keep you from harm better than any other gear. It was made by the Lady” (LotR VI:2, 897) and also when he invokes Galadriel in his prayers for light and water (ibid). When later the two hobbits abandon much of their gear, Sam does not part with any of the Lady’s gifts or with Sting.

            It is in the Land of Shadow that Sam’s greatest spiritual growth takes place. He sees Gil-Estel, the Star of High Hope, which Elbereth had set in the sky so long before to give hope to those in Middle-earth in their struggle against Morgoth. As Jane Chance observes, this

sensitivity to spiritual reality is expressed by his understanding of the beauty beneath the appearance of waste, of light beyond darkness, of hope beyond despair.

This insight is triggered by the appearance of a star above, an instance of divine grace that illumines understanding and bolsters hope [...] (Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England 180)

            Sam receives the comforting knowledge that evil is “a small and passing thing” (LotR VI:2, 901), and there is something greater and above the darkness that he and Frodo are traveling through. He realizes that he’s not the only one watching over his beloved master and that somehow everything is going to turn out right in the end. He is able to sleep without worry, even though deep in enemy territory, and while Frodo does, something he never did intentionally before. He is also enabled by this sense of security and watchfulness to leave his sleeping master later in search of water. He notes that the Eucharistic lembas bread fortifies their wills, even if it doesn’t fill their bellies.

            Another particular embodiment of Sam’s hope is when the two hobbits see the torches of the Orc host coming right toward them. Frodo is convinced they are trapped. It “seems so,” Sam allows, (VI:2, 909) but he also leaves the door open to the possibility that it is not the unequivocal disaster his master believes it to be, and indeed, it is Sam who is proved true, though they do not know it, for by no other means than the forced march they suffer through could they have reached the Fire in time and save the army of the West at the Black Gate which is there fighting to save them.

            It is within the Black Land that Sam struggles most with maintaining his hope which withers and seems to die at times but is always born anew. Even when he wonders whether the job he has to do involves dying beside his master after their task is done, he is not frightened, but accepting of it. Immediately on the heels of that though is his undying wish to see his home, family and the Cottons again. He knows he may not, but instead of that filling him with despair, he feels “through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue” (VI:3, 913).

            He takes on more and more responsibility for the completion of the Quest as Frodo weakens under the terrible physical and spiritual torment of the Ring. It is up to him to “set his master’s will to work for another effort” (LotR VI:3, 915) since he knows “without his insistent courage Frodo cannot complete [the Quest]” (Bradley 88). To aid Frodo in his struggles, Sam gives up most of his own share of water, food and sleep.

Instead of such sacrifices weakening him, he is strengthened by them, for love is as much an act of the will as his refusal to despair. Only grace could have given him that gift. In fact, the only sacrifice he truly feels he is making is giving up his beloved pots and pans.

            Though Fr. Patrick Hannon is not speaking of Frodo and Sam, his words reveal much of their love for each other and the Ring-bearer’s love for all Middle-earth: “And I remember once again that love - fierce and mighty and unrelenting - has no rival. It gives us permission to face unimaginable suffering unafraid” (The Geography of God’s Mercy: Stories of Compassion and Forgiveness 47). Frodo got through his suffering because Sam was there; Sam got through his because Frodo was there. They weren’t unafraid but they were there for each other, and that is what saved them and their world.

            Sam argues with and soundly defeats the voice he hears that attempts to seduce him into giving up all together. His success there renews and refreshes him. Throughout the Quest, he has wrestled any notion of despair to the ground. “[E]very thought is [taken] prisoner, captured to be brought into obedience [...]” (2 Cor 10:6).  Every hopeful thought is captured as well, and used as a shield for himself and for his master who increasingly has no defenses left against the terrible onslaught of the Ring. Margaret Sinex observes that this “final fixed resistance to despair [...] is explicitly described as a conscious act of the will: ‘No more debates disturbed his mind. He knew all the arguments of despair and would not listen to them. His will was set, and only death would break it’” (LotR VI:3, 919) (Sinex 108). She contrasts this with the despair of Denethor who lost his battle because he only saw one future that he desired, and that was how life had always been for him and the generations before him. “Sam does not presume to set the terms of his future in Middle-earth and he succeeds where Denethor fails in withstanding the temptation of despair through a heroic act of will” (Sinex 109).

            The Road to the Fire is an increasing agony for Sam and Frodo, tormented as they are by thirst, hunger and exhaustion. “And yet their wills did not yield, and they struggled on” (LotR VI:3, 918). They are without water for the last two days of their journey and too parched to eat what little lembas they have left. They are sustained entirely by grace, will and love.

            Sam weeps in his heart because he can no longer cry aloud when he sees his master begin to crawl. He had already sworn he would carry Frodo and so he does, expecting his master and the Ring to be a terrible weight he wonders how he will ever be able to carry. But he finds his burden light. Frodo has been burned away as Gandalf the Grey had been and Gwaihir had remarked how light the resurrected wizard was. Sam is given the extra strength he needs to carry the Ring-bearer, until he is “crawling like a snail with a heavy burden on its back. When his will could drive him no further, and his limbs gave way, he stopped and laid his master gently down” (VI:3, 920). While they are resting, grace touches them again when they both hear and heed an urgent call in their hearts to continue on, and so reach the Road that will bring Sauron his doom.

            When Frodo feels compelled to put the Ring on, he whispers to Sam for help. His guardian gently takes his hands in his, places the palms together as though in prayer, and kisses them, breaking the compulsion that seemed irresistible a moment before. “Sam redeems Frodo in a spiritual sense” at that moment (SparkNotes 231). The gardener fears that they have been discovered and all will soon be over, but instead of letting that paralyze him, he immediately takes his master onto his back again and resumes his climb, ever closer to the heart of the Enemy.

            An even greater moment of providing for his master’s salvation is when Sam completes his journey from hating Gollum to having pity on him. As much as Sam’s love for Frodo was, as Peter Kreeft observed, “[t]he single force most responsible for winning the War of the Ring,” (Kreeft 48) even more so was his mercy to Gollum.  His myriad acts of love and sacrifice would have been meaningless if he had not made one last sacrifice, and that was to give up his desire to kill Gollum whose death he had actively wished for so long. Now that Sam has briefly been a Ring-bearer, he has some dim idea of the torment of that wretched creature. The pity of Bilbo did indeed rule the fate of many, but it was the pity of Sam that ruled the fate of all.  The humble gardener has no idea how important his restraint will prove to the success of the Quest or to his master’s soul.

            At the Mountain, Sam has another vision of Frodo, this time of his shining soul, shorn of the veils of flesh that surrounded it, and after that transfiguration, sees his beloved master as a spent figure, gasping for breath, consumed by both Light and Dark. Both visions are true. After the amazing sights of watching Gollum fight with an invisible foe, biting off Frodo’s finger and falling into the Fire with the Ring, Sam clutches his master’s bleeding hand to his breast and feels nothing but “joy, great joy” (LotR VI:3, 926). The entire terrible ordeal is worth it just to hear Frodo say he is glad his Sam is with him, and to see that beloved face, free of strain, madness and pain, at peace once more.

            Even as Mount Doom is exploding around them and death seems imminent, Sam does not give up hope: “[A]fter coming all that way I don’t want to give up yet. It’s not like me [...]” (VI:4, 929). He very ably teaches us how to endure suffering with the hope of light beyond the present darkness.  This hope he never truly loses, even at the Fire.  He accepts that there is a possibility, even a near certainty that he will not see that light with his physical eyes, but he has long gazed upon it with the eyes of his heart and that keeps him going. He leads his treasure away from the worst of the destruction, until they settle upon a small island, their last strength spent. But not Sam’s last hope; his heart still hopes because it still beats. Correctly is this “jewel among the hobbits” (Letters 88) named by Gandalf to be Harthad Uluithiad, Hope Unquenchable (Sauron Defeated: The History of Middle-earth, Vol IX [HoME Vol IX] 62). He caresses his master’s hand and speaks of how he wishes he could hear their tale told. This is “the pinnacle of the two hobbits’ friendship” (SparkNotes 246).

            Sam’s hope is rewarded when he wakes in Ithilien and sees his beloved master sleeping peacefully beside him. Aragorn then treats them to the singing of the lay of Frodo of the Nine Fingers and the Ring of Doom. At Bree, he is reunited with his pony, Bill. When they return home, Sam uses Galadriels’s gift of soil from her orchard to restore the Shire back to life. He has gone from the gardener of Bag End to being the gardener and renewer of the Shire as a whole. He “longs to stay with Frodo forever,” (Bradley 90) but he also wants to be with Rosie. Frodo is able to grant both wishes when he invites Sam to live with him after wedding Rosie. The younger hobbit has truly gone “there and back again.”  All his wishes and dreams have come true.

            As Frodo testifies to the Gaffer, Sam has given “perfect satisfaction” (LotR VI:8, 991) as the companion Gandalf said should be taken on the Quest. This is the very reason Sam was created. It had taken great strength and courage for him to always be there for his master, but in his humility, Sam would not have recognized he had done anything brave or heroic.

            The hobbits’ life together is shattered by heartbreak when Frodo reveals that he is leaving to seek healing for his wounds in the Undying Lands, though he gives Sam the hope that they may see each other again. It is this hope that gives them the strength to part. Frodo makes Sam his heir and predicts how full the life of his “dearest hobbit, friend of friends” (IV:2, 610) will be. Sam stands at the Grey Havens “far into the night, hearing only the sigh and murmur of the waves on the shores of Middle-earth, and the sound of them sank deep into his heart” (VI:9, 1007).

            He returns home to treasure the family and peace that his and Frodo’s sacrifices made possible. He is happily married for 62 years, has 13 children and is Mayor for 49 of those years. His transformation from gardener to “one of the most famous people in all the lands” (VI:8, 991), as Frodo had proudly declared to the Gaffer, is also acknowledged later by Aragorn who renames him Panthael (“full wise”) rather than Perhael (“half wise”) (HoME IX 126). He has truly become Samwise.

            In the abandoned Epilogue to the tale, Sam’s enduring hope for reunion with his dear master manifests itself once more in his words to his eldest daughter, Elanor, when he tells her of  the possibility of seeing his Frodo again: “Before he went Mr. Frodo said that my time maybe would come. I can wait. I think maybe we haven’t said farewell for good” (HoME 125).

            Sam’s time indeed does come after his beloved Rose dies in 1482. He leaves Bag End for the last time on Frodo and Bilbo’s birthday, gives Elanor the Red Book and the tradition is that he left for the West. It is hoped that he and Frodo “settled down and lived together happily ever after,” (LotR II:3, 266) and at the end of their mortal lives, Sam was able to have his “one wish” spoken so long before in the desolation of Shelob’s Lair come forever true.

 

 

Works Cited

Bradley, Marion Zimmer. “Men, Halfings, and Hero Worship.” Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism. Ed. Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.

Chance, Jane. Tolkien’s Art: A Mythology for England. Rev ed. Lexington, KY: The U P of Kentucky, 2001.

Kreeft, Peter. “Wartime Wisdom: Ten Uncommon Insights About Evil in The Lord of the Rings.” Ed. John G. West, Jr. Celebrating Middle-earth: The Lord of the Rings as a Defense of Western Civilization. Seattle: Inkling Books, 2002.

Gardner, Patrick and Drake Bennet, John Henriksen and Joel Dodson. SparkNotes: The Lord of the Rings. New York: Spark Publishing, 2002.

Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Hannon, Patrick. The Geography of God’s Mercy: Stories of Compassion and Forgiveness. Chicago: ACTA Publications, 2007.

Jones, Alexander, gen. ed. The Jerusalem Bible Reader’s Edition. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.

Klinger, Judith. “Hidden Paths of Time: March 13th and the Riddles of Shelob’s Lair.” Tolkien and Modernity 2. Ed. Thomas Honegger and Frank Weinreich. Zollikofen, Switzerland: Walking Tree Publishers, 2006.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004.

Sheen, Fulton J. Fulton J. Sheen’s Guide to Contentment. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1967.

Sinex, Margaret. “‘Tricksy Lights’: Literary and Folkloric Elements in Tolkien’s Passage of the Dead Marshes.” Tolkien Studies Volume II: An Annual Scholarly Review. Ed. Douglas Anderson, Michael D.C. Drout and Verlyn Flieger. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia U P, 2005.

Slack, Anna. “Slow-Kindled Courage: A Study of Heroes in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien.” Tolkien and Modernity 2. Ed. Thomas Honegger and Frank Weinreich.

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Tolkien, J.R.R. Sauron Defeated: The History of Middle-earth, Vol. IX. Ed.

            Christopher Tolkien. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.

-. The Fellowship of the Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

-. The Two Towers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

-. The Return of the King. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.

Wood, Ralph C. The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth. Louisville, KY: Knox, 2003.

This paper is an expansion of what was originally presented at the 2009 Tolkien Society Seminar “Journeys and Destinations.” It is partially taken from the forthcoming book, Moments of Grace: The Spirituality of The Lord of the Rings, to be published when the first Hobbit movie comes out.  For more details, please visit http://www.momentsofgracelotr.com.  And please pray for me and it!  Hantanyel!  God bless.



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