axordil wrote:
One thing about Sam that fascinates me, and which, I think, bears on the discussion, is that of the major characters in LOTR, the hand of destiny seems to press the lightest on him. The Ring was "meant" to go to Bilbo, and to Frodo, but one suspects, not to Sam. We also get a better look inside his decision-making process, especially as regards what to do with the Ring. The feeling one comes away with is that his free will may be a trifle freer than his master's.

This comment of yours, Ax, leads directly to a post I've had sitting around for a few days (actually, I've been waiting for
Ath to post her take on all things Sam

........... .... but, impatient as ever, I can't pass up this opportunity because what you say touches upon the main thrust of my thinking.

)
Indulge me now, it's fairly long and my conclusion is, well, lets just.. ...
<cue John Cleese sitting at a desk in the middle of suburban English nowhere>
********
And now for something completely different.*********
I think this might be my final 'hefty' post about Sam for a while. At least in this thread until and unless perspectives other than mine are presented.
Book VI is relatively short. The section concerning Frodo and Sam is only 61 pages long. Three chapters, The Tower of Cirith Ungol, The Land of Shadow, Mount Doom. The fate of the world is decided inside these three short chapters.
This writing is, I believe, among the most emotionally powerful ever written by Tolkien; (and that's saying a lot) He makes me feel Frodo's pain as a, living livid thing, I wince with Sam gritting his teeth against the dust, with the sense that his determination is palpably hard and formidably insistent. It is desolate, the two small hobbits are splayed out as small ragged specks dwarfed by the enormity of a dead and dying wasteland ruled over by a despotic force whose only desire is annihilation and destruction. Mordor is nihilism incarnate.
(I stop to wonder what if. What if the hobbits fail and the Ring goes back to Sauron? He has already made a desert of Mordor. What if he makes a desert of Middle-earth and it can no longer sustain life, what then? What will he rule when there is nothing left to conquer? How can death be ordered then? How ruled? If all spark of good is extinguished, can evil flourish? If the very meaning for Sauron's existence is gone, what would he do? Would he squat atop of Barad dur and gloat forever? )
Sigh. Such questions as these I have time to ponder. But, she pulls herself back into the vision of the struggle against time, against the power and burden of the Ring, back into sight of Frodo and Sam crawling across rocks and dust, beaten down with the immensity of their task, and once more she is (I am) amazed that the hobbit spirit can withstand so much pain and so much darkness.
Well, so it is. I think I have been shaken out of my old familiar rut in the way I approach LotR, which is to say that I think I have found something else that is new (for me anyway) among the vista of Sam's last journey.
First, it was a hint and then it became a suggestion and finally it was a certainty.
The hand of Eru, or some power, is both present and operative throughout the entire latter half of the quest, from the rescue all the way until the final paragraph: that astonishing, inspired, poignant
“here at the end of all things, Sam.”
Let's see if I can show you what I mean:
Remember when in
The Choices of Master Samwise, Sam castigates himself?
“The trouble with you is you never really had any hope.”
Except we know Sam better. We have learned since first we met in the Shire that he has this amazing capacity to exchange the essential passivity of hopelessness for the opposite mode of action. Sam never allows a negative (emotion) to completely overwhelm him. Before he will sink into a quagmire of murky despair, he will force himself to make a decision which will demand movement, whether it be an action of spirit or a physical action. The breadth and the depth of his devotion to Frodo, itself a growing, changing thing, sets into motion a causal chain of events which lead to rescue. See, for Sam, ultimately there is always hope. He will always deny himself permission to really fall into the bottomless dark.
Over and over Sam proves himself worthy of outside (divine) intervention: a gentle nudge toward the right choice, the right direction:
'He felt that if once he went beyond the crown of the pass and took one step veritably down into the land Of Mordor, that step would be irrevocable. He could never come back. Without any clear purpose he drew out the Ring and put it on again.'
You could easily argue, and it would be a facile argument, that his putting on the Ring at this particular time under these particular circumstances has no other meaning than what it says: Sam puts on the Ring. But this is how I think of it: Because he is nudged into using the Ring, although the risk of discovery (so near to the Eye, so close to the Ringwraiths) is perilous, his sense of hearing is greatly enhanced; he can hear Shagrat and Gorbag quarreling in the Tower and much to his dismay, he understands that Frodo is not dead and may yet be suffering.
'His love for Frodo rose above all other thoughts, and forgetting his peril he cried aloud. “I'm coming, Mr. Frodo!” He ran forward to the climbing path, and over it. At once the road turned left and plunged steeply down. Sam had crossed into Mordor.
'He took off the Ring, moved it may be by some deep premonition of danger, though to himself he thought only that he wished to see more clearly.'
In this action also, I suggest that some other power nudges Sam into removing the Ring. For obvious reasons he must be protected from death or capture and be afforded the best opportunity to rescue his master and continue on with the quest. For equally obvious reasons there cannot be any direct intervention otherwise we'd be back to a fixed universe where the Eagles would simply fly into Mordor and drop the Ring into the cracks of Doom. I say that this is impossible within the confines of Tolkien's sub-creation and I'm curious in trying to work out how Eru's guiding hand, far more prevalent than I had remembered, is permitted inside the framework of the circled world.
Of course, I knew of, and accepted that,
“Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.”
That the force(s) which oppose Sauron see fit to bend the rules (absolute free will) a wee bit in order to not entirely leave the fortunes of the Ring to random chance, is, for me, an entirely acceptable deviation. I also lean toward the belief that the composition of the Fellowship is more ordered than it is random. Imagine what might have transpired, how changed the dynamic, if Faramir had been sent to Rivendell as he should in place of Boromir?! <but that's just an intriguing speculation and the subject for fan-fic, I suppose>
Contrast, if you will, the simplicity of these almost-not-there suggestions with the concrete certainty of the Eagles of Manwë flying in at the most propitious of moments, cementing the turning of the tide squarely in the right direction …............
Plot Device! it screams, it's like being hit over the head with a bag full of rocks and doesn't even bear the most cursory consideration. There is absolutely no subtly to it, no pretense, no excuse, and besides, I think it's lazy writing.
Okay. Back to my premise: So, he takes the Ring off his finger, to himself he remains unaware of any 'push', thinking only to clear his muddied vision since the Ring moves its wearers into the shadow world. He intuitively knows that the Ring is strengthened by proximity to Orodruin and he knows with a great and marvelous clarity that there are two choices: Put it on and claim it or forebear and suffer an exquisite torture which will gnaw despair into his very bones. The Ring faces an opponent in Sam Gamgee unlike any other. The very smallness and the very ordinariness of Sam coupled with, intensified by, a certain purity. Purity of devoted love makes him unique and able to withstand the seduction offered. I find it astonishing how simple (given the circumstances) is the clarity to which Sam can, and does, reduce the Ring's complexity. In his gut there is the indisputable understanding that to use the Ring is to crumple and distort; that he is not strong enough. He knows these things with conviction and not only does he know them, he can use that knowledge to help him resist the siren song until temptation becomes a moot point. It will be there like an ache that never diminishes, never go away, and might, no, will increase until the body screams out loud, yet Sam is still not fooled because from the depths of his ordinary soul, he knows ..... to succumb is to be annihilated. One also suspects that Sam knows that should he submit to the Ring, all hope of saving Frodo must be put aside forever. That too, must give him a kind of hope.
I wonder if in his darkest hour Sam is shored up by the divine?
'Then greatly daring, because he could think of nothing else to do, answering a sudden thought that came to him, he slowly drew out the phial of Galadriel and held it up.'
Well, how else is he to get past the Watchers?
This repeating pattern of
'sudden thought' which invariably seems to occur when Sam is faced with difficult, or close to impossible, situations ............ can all of the right choices he makes be chalked up to mere coincidence?
Or is there, as I have come to believe, enough evidence of assistance from outside to say that Eru, or some other spiritual power like the Valar maybe, gently suggest to Sam which choice he should make? You see, it's not so much that such direct thoughts resolve immediate problems but that there are so many of them. It is this fact then, this combination of a number of thorny issues resolved by making one decision over the other that convinces me that Sam is watched and guided on his path through Mordor.
Here, another, surely one of the most poignant but also one of the most obvious. I need to quote this passage almost in full because I love it so much:
'At least, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a step below the level of the passage-floor and bowed his head into his hands. It was quiet, horribly quiet. The torch, that was already burning low when he arrived, sputtered and went out and he felt darkness cover him like a tide. 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.
<snip>
And then suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came
unbidden to fit the simple tune.'
“Beyond all towers, strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep.
Above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars forever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done
nor bid the Stars farewell.”
So. Is it my contention is that both singing and song were quietly and carefully placed into Sam's mind for the exact purpose of finding Frodo? It is. I do believe that although he may not know, nor may see, there is an other here watching, nurturing and sometimes maybe, planting specific thoughts which will permit Sam to negotiate the bewildering labyrinth of possible directions. Not with ease, no, all choices intimately court danger and any one path chosen over any other introduces more new elements of distress or difficult questions. If we were able to ask Sam directly why he chose this way and not that way, what would he say? Would he think that some of his actions just co-incidentally turned out to be the right ones? Or would he, somewhere deep inside, recognize he has been gifted by what we might call guidance of an angel? I can't say if the spirit guiding Sam is Eru himself, or one of the Valar, or even if it's possibly Gandalf as Olórin ( that seems unlikely if only because the Istari are forbidden from using their innate power within the confines of Middle-earth ….. although there comes to mind Amon Hen, Frodo directed to take off the Ring he wore to escape Boromir
“Take it off! Take it off! Fool, take it off! Take off the Ring!” There is that, but yet Gandalf says once or twice that they (Frodo and Sam) have passed beyond his sight so unless he is mistaken and or unless he has telepathic powers not muted by the original directive, Gandalf must be ruled out as Sam's angel.
On the slopes of Mount Doom:
I don't know how he does it and I don't know if he has any help in doing it, but this is the place and the time where finally Sam faces death and does not flinch. He looks inside despair and what he finds there gives him renewed strength and a new resolve to see the quest through to the end no matter the cost to himself. He never, ever contemplates dissolution. I don't think he can. All remaining shreds of anything approaching self-pity, or sorrowful regret are flung away as Sam truly is transformed, wearing a hero's mantle and becoming a true partner to Frodo.
'But the bitter truth came home to him at last: at best their provisions would take them to their goal; and when the task was done, there they would come to an end, alone, houseless, foodless in the midst of a terrible desert. There could be no return.
“So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started,” thought Sam: “to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is the job, then I must do it.”
And so, on the slopes of the mountain, the two hobbits are virtually depleted and Frodo is wracked with unimaginable spiritual deprivation; and their poor bodies in torment.
'Yet somehow their wills did not yield and they struggled on.'
unable to force his body to crawl on hands and knees, with spirit broken as it is steadily supplanted by the will of the One Ring, even then in the most terrible night,
'Whether Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear,
and homeless wandering, or because some gift of final strength was given to him, Sam lifted Frodo with no more difficulty than if he were carrying a hobbit-child-pig-a-back in some romp on the lawns
of the hayfields in the Shire. He took a deep breath and started off.'
At the last, tortured by the sight of their fiery end, when the flesh has betrayed and deserted them even though the spirit remains willing; they are prostrate and agonized .......
'Slowly the light grew. Suddenly a sense of urgency which he did not understand came to Sam. It was almost as if he had been called: “Now, now, or it will be too late!” He braced himself and got up.
Frodo also seemed to have felt the call. He struggled to his knees.'
Who calls them? But called they must be because they are so close to that edge, the void which lives on the other side of hope. Where they are now, hellish place, full of actual dread, pales in comparison to the unspeakable agony the Ring exacts upon their souls. What living thing can withstand the continuous insult and the fearful assault lashed into the very marrow of their bones? By all the laws in all the living lands hobbit souls should have been flayed from their minds; they should not survive. That they have survived in part is their doughty nature and greatness of heart, for they are, as Gandalf observed
“amazing creatures” and they also, so I believe, have had help and no small degree of guidance from powers beyond the circles of the world.
It is true that Sam (and Frodo, though I am mostly concerned with Sam) does all of the hard work along the way. He performs the deeds which will move the quest onward and he must endure the pain that some of those choices contain; ah, but the choices made, the ones that turn out well, those choices are presented to him as though arising from within his own heart and his own mind. They do not. At least they are not solely his; his guidance is like little soft ripples circling around the centre of any one dilemma. The quest must not fail and so it falls that all help that is permitted to be given in Middle-earth is given.
What is most assuredly entirely within the province of hobbits is their remarkable ability to remain
True throughout every step of that torturous journey. But here they are, on the steps of Sammath Naur, and here finally Frodo's soul is in peril. Here then, there must be a final intervention as hope comes full circle while Gollum plays his part so that the world is saved.
While I was reading the last three Mordor chapters and it began to dawn on me how frequently the slight, oh so very slight, nudges that would result in one direction or one action over another were occurring and how easy they were to overlook. After all, I've read LotR umpteen times and I had never paid more than cursory attention to Sam's unbidden thoughts before now. I begin to wonder how Tolkien might resolve (to himself, not to his public) the moral quandary of a world where Free Will is an inviolable tenet countermanded by a benign interference ( for, make no mistake, it IS interference be it ever so well intentioned!) that helps guide people and events toward the best and most desirable of outcomes? I, personally, have no qualms regarding angelic assistance. The way I look at it, situations in which all members of the Fellowship found themselves from time to time presented them all with immense difficulties and it was imperative that wrong choices be avoided and right choices made, else disaster of eternal magnitude might ensue. Not only might there be individual deaths but also, eventually, the Ring would find its way back to the hand of Sauron to the ruin of all of Arda. So that any little suggestion of help in making difficult decisions is not only desirable, it is to be looked for.
It poses an interesting problem, I think, although of course, you must accept my premise as valid. If not then there is no argument to be had.
I would also differentiate between the subtlety of suggestions made to Sam like putting on the Ring so his hearing may be enhanced allowing him to hear confirmation from orcs what his heart knew .... Frodo was not dead ..... or from singing in the Tower or be gifted with that last jot of strength so he may carry Frodo ….. to the blatant appearance of avenging Eagles at the Black Gate ( I do have a soft spot for the rescue of Sam and Frodo, though, a very soft spot) Still, I'm inclined to think that the deux ex machina of the Eagles is sheer laziness on Tolkien's part. He could have found another way out of those particular catastrophes had he wished, I am sure.
Again. The thoughts that lead to certain actions that are placed in Sam's head by an outside force do not pose a moral dilemma for me. Mostly because I'm of a deterministic bent and because I think that Fate and Free Will create an admirable mixture in Tolkien's universe. But I can see where it might prove a knotty problem for those readers who subscribe wholly to a God-given free will. And since that is what Tolkien said he believed in, too, for our own world as well as the world he (sub) created. I'm interested in what you (collectively speaking) think about all of this. (aside from a thought which has no doubt occurred to some, I have far too much free time these days. Well, yes, but it is fun and I do so enjoy it! )
And now, if you will excuse me, I need to return to The Field of Cormallon.
Edit: cross-posted with
tinwë and a bunch of others.
