I love Sam but the Sam glazing by LOTR fans has to stop.
#and if you don't understand that frodo gollum and boromir are the most important characters in that story i feel like you're missing something
I sometimes find it genuinely alarming when people don't seem to understand what Frodo's role in the story is or why he's like that. I do understand that Frodo's struggle is mostly internal and he's not the POV character and Sam is way more visible and relatable, so I'm not shocked that Sam is generally liked better. but sometimes it goes way beyond 'I prefer the more active and personable character', it's more like Frodo walks into the story 'hello I am a person who is not physically strong taking on a burden much too difficult for any living person because I want to do the right thing but i'm struggling intensely because it's difficult' and people look at that concept- which is not really that complicated!- and go 'what the heck is this? ew'
It's also like... listen, guys. "If Sam had taken the Ring-" the quest would have failed because he would have killed Gollum. I feel like people don't understand that this is a severe flaw of Sam's. He's a nice boy with a good heart but he just does not have pity in his heart until it's too late. Sam's inability to understand why Gollum acts the way he does dooms Gollum's redemption to failure. Unlike Frodo, who perseveres in the (vain) hope that Gollum can be redeemed, Sam does not until near the end of the book - when Gollum attacks the pair on the mountainside, he spares Gollum because, having carried the Ring now, he "dimly" grasps at what it would really mean to be Gollum. It's too late, though, because his earlier mistrust of Gollum has already set him against the hobbits for good.
And I know, the scene where the Ring tempts Sam with being "Lord of the Garden" is funny and awesome, but people forget that A) Sam had been wearing the ring for all of a couple days (compared to Frodo's 17 years in the book), and the Ring was clearly desperate and at the end of its tempting rope. Tolkien himself said that "no-one", not even Sauron himself (if he were inclined to do so), could destroy the ring at Mount Doom. The temptation at the ultimate moment would be too great. In fact, in the initial draft, this is exactly what happens to Frodo - the Ring shows him a vision of him using it to protect and save the hobbits from Sauron, and that's what causes him to finally put it on. (Presumably, Tolkien cut this because it didn't make sense for Frodo to narrate this moment.) So Sam's vision doesn't seem so ridiculous or out there now.
And ultimately, the whole point is that Frodo fails. He gives up everything on this quest he knows he is never going to come back from. He keeps going when it's obvious to him that they're all going to die. He keeps going when it's obvious he's not up to the task and never was. The fact that he only stumbles at the very end should be seen as a testament to his mental fortitude, not a failing. Frodo is all of us. We all love to think we would be Sam, or maybe Bilbo, or maybe Faramir wisely saying "I would not take it if it lay by the roadside" (note how Faramir, the smart guy, refuses to even look at the thing - in fact, notice how all the people who best "resist" the Ring's temptation do it by simply removing themselves as far away as possible from it!). But in reality, we would be Frodo. We wouldn't be up to the task, because who would? Instead, what saves Frodo is not his heroic willpower, but his mercy. Because he took it in his heart to have pity on Gollum, a fellow hobbit corrupted and twisted by the Ring's power (just like Frodo), the creature is there at just the right moment to destroy the ring. That's the message of Lord of the Rings. You have to understand that, right?
I don't know why people insist on making everything about one character of their choice when the fact is that the story doesn't work without even one of the characters.
It's not a coincidence that Tolkien chose Sam and Gollum to accompany Frodo on his quest to destroy the Ring, and it's not just for the sake of the plot either. The tension between Sam and Gollum is a perfect externalization of the conflict that is brewing inside Frodo so that the readers can see it on the page. Sam, who remains steadfast and true to who he was when they left the shire, is who Frodo used to be. And Gollum, who has been corrupted by the Ring after centuries of having it, is who Frodo is becoming.
It's completely understandable that Sam is afraid and distrustful and even disgusted by Gollum. Even if he doesn't do anything to kill him and Frodo physically, Sam is still watching Gollum kill Frodo painstakingly every single day - by replacing him. That's who Frodo is becoming, slowly but surely. Forget the stakes of the quest at large, the worst part of this for Sam is that his friend is disappearing and he can't do anything about it. So he ends up taking it all out on Gollum, failing to realize that his behavior only pushes both Gollum and Frodo further along into the obsession with the Ring. He doesn't have any pity for Gollum when he's a reminder of how Frodo is slipping away from him.
Let's not forget that Frodo didn't start out feeling pity towards Gollum either. In the mines of Moria he wished that Bilbo would have killed Gollum when he had the chance decades ago even though he had already been carrying the Ring for a long time. He was probably afraid of turning into Gollum, too, of ending up such a wretched creature and dooming the world along with himself as well. It was Gandalf's wise words about the part that Gollum still had to play in the story that awakened his empathy, maybe gave him hope that even if he fails in his task, it would not have been all in vain, that fate already had a plan and he was in the right place to help that plan unfold. Which is exactly what ends up happening. Frodo fails but because he found his empathy and Sam, after experiencing the corruption of the Ring himself, also found his, Gollum is still there to bring about the Ring's end because of how enthralled with it he is.
That is the message of Tolkien's work - there is no one person who's magically immune to the faults of humanity, who just so happens to be at the right place in the right time to be chosen for the quest that requires their strength. We all have weaknesses and we're all corruptible, and there's still hope despite that. Because we also have strengths and through those we can create the right circumstances to defeat the evil that plagues all of us. Sam and Frodo didn't manage to save Gollum (hell, Sam barely managed to save Frodo, who was never the same afterwards so in a way the quest did take his life) but Gollum ended up saving them. The Ring orchestrated its own destruction in the end when its overwhelming power became its weakness, all because both Frodo and Sam recognized their weakness (their inability to empathize with Gollum because of what he represented for them) and they did better.
