[Formendacil]

There's getting to be a lot of mention about the star passage, and it's effect on Sam, so I'll add my thoughts to the mix:

One thing that is noted a lot about this episode is that it is SAM who receives it, and not Frodo. Somehow, to me that has always felt fitting, since it is Sam who has been concerned about their fate, not Frodo.

I always tend to think back to this passage in "The Passage of the Dead Marshes":

'About food,' said Sam. 'How long's it going to take us to do this job? And when it's done, what are we going to do then? This waybread keeps you on your legs in a wonderful way, though it doesn't satisfy the innards proper, as you might say: not to my feeling anyhow, meaning no disrespect to them as made it. But you have to eat some of it every day, and it doesn't grow. I reckon we've got enough to last, say, three weeks or so, and that with a tight belt and a light tooth, mind you. We've been a bit free with it so far.'

'I don't know how long we shall take to - to finish,' said Frodo. 'We were miserably delayed in the hills. But Samwise Gamgee, my dear hobbit - indeed Sam my dearest hobbit, friend of friends - I don not think we need give thought to what comes after that. To do the job as you put it - what hope is there that we ever shall? And if we do, who knows what will come of that? If the One goes into the Fire, and we are at hand? I ask you, Sam, are we ever likely to need bread again? I think not. If we can nurse our limbs to bring us to Mount Doom, that is all we can do. More than I can, I begin to feel.'

And then again, in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit":

Sam had been giving earnest thought to food as they marched. Now that the despair of the impassable Gate was behind him, he did not feel so inclined as his master to take no thought for their livelihood beyond the end of their errand; and anyway it seemed wiser to him to save the waybread of the Elves for worse times ahead. Six days or more had passed since he reckoned that they had only a meagre supply for three weeks.

'If we reach the Fire in that time, we'll be lucky at this rate!" he thought. 'And we might be wanting to get back. We might!'

At this point in the story, Sam is now able to release his worries about returning home, about resuming his life. It is as if, to me, he has realized fully that the destruction of the Ring is the most important thing that matters, and that if he can see that happen, nothing else matters. But it's a more hopeful feeling that when Frodo expresses a similar belief, way back in the Emyn Muil. For Frodo, it was a tired feeling, a feeling that if he could see that happen, he would have done more than he believed possible, that he would then be DONE. For Sam, it feels more like he is being lifted of the burden of trying to get home, that he has been given a much simpler task, and that anything that might come after that would be a gift, and would not be his concern anyway.