Sam the Ghastly Arriviste

[Kuruharan]

Look at Frodo's chivalrous, melancholy, Quixotic, spiritually enhanced nobility

Since when is Quixotery considered to be a virtue?

[Boromir88]

Even Tolkien felt like Sam was the "chief" hero of the story. Tolkien seems to me actually to be a bigger Sam fan then his precious elves fandom:

I think the simple 'rustic' love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero's) character...~Letter 131

Certainly Sam is the most closely drawn character (in The Lord of the Rings), the successor to Bilbo of the first book, the genuine hobbit. Frodo is not so interesting, because he has to be highminded, and has (as it were) a vocation.~A letter to Christopher dated Christmas Eve 1944.

You got to make yourself a mighty stance as Tolkien will be sitting up from his grave right now crossing his arms there Anguirel.

Ok, so more seriously now, I do agree with you I do think Frodo typically gets shafted by a lot of people because he didn't drop in the Ring. And even Tolkien says several times this would be impossible.

So don't be so hard on poor Sam.

[The 1,000 Reader]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

You got to make yourself a mighty stance as Tolkien will be sitting up from his grave right now crossing his arms there Anguirel.

Anguirel best be crossing himself. If he maddened the Prof. enough to come back from the dead, Tolkien's probably hoping to make Anguirel his first zombified meal.

[Texadan]

I don't know. Anguirel may have a point. After all, why did Sam attend a secret meeting of VIPs in Rivendell to which he wasn't invited? Elrond assumes he knows the reason but it could just as easily have been that Sam wanted to see how important meetings were conducted in preparation for his political ambitions once he was back in the Shire. And think of the name-dropping he could do, "You're out of order Tom Proudfoot. Elrond taught me how to hold a meeting and we won't be having any of your guff."

[Lalwendë]

I must reply to Anguirel's Boris Johnson column.

Samwise could be seen as emblematic of the poor and oppressed in Middle-earth. He would have been totally illiterate were it not for Bilbo's kindness in teaching him. There are no schools in The Shire, and we must assume that working class Hobbits must get what education that they can, if they can even get that. Why are there no schools? We must presume that education was viewed as a dangerous thing for a humble working class Hobbit, that might upset the apple cart. As it is, Sam only receives a cottage education, and Bilbo, though kind enough to teach him to read, fills his head with all srts of impractical nonsense.

We have our 'news'papers today filled with all sorts of pap about celebrities and non-celebrities (Big Brother contestants, 'stars' of Hollyoaks etc); it could be seen that the media are keeping our heads filled with all this drivel to divert our attention from what is wrong with society. Likewise, Elves were the celebs of Middle-earth, what with their rare appearances, their emaciated bodies and their bling. I can see that Bilbo was just doing the job that the media do today, by diverting Sam from using his new skill in reading to realise that society was keeping him oppressed, by filling his head with nonsense.

Even poor Sam's name is an oppressive millstone imposed by the caste system of the Shire. He is labelled a halfwit for the rest of his life. Far from his eventual change of surname being pretentious, it is actually an act of affirmation when he changes the family name to Gardner. The job implied by the name has been looked down upon by the aristocracy and middle classes of The Shire, but now the Hobbit who has been Mayor reclaims the word and makes it a noble name of repute. This is much like oppressed groups of the late 20th century reclaiming the words that had been used to deride them, and using them with pride.

But how does Sam even end up going on this mission? I would like to know whether Gandalf was exploiting him and using his natural curiosity as an excuse to rope him in as a glorified baggage carrier for Frodo. Did the wizard think it might be useful to have someone along to fetch and carry for the young master? Maybe he thought he could exploit that sense of respect which had been beaten into the Hobbit working classes, that Sam might use that respect to 'take a bullet' for the young Master?

Or was Gandalf the catalyst for change in The Shire? Did he enable Sam to rise from his station and to learn about the world, lessons that Sam would put into practice upon his return and his part in the creation of The New Shire?

I will leave you to think about where I am being tongue in cheek...

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I think you're falling for a typically devious piece of Gamgee propaganda, Lalwendë.

Clearly the established squirearchy of the Shire was a barrier to the attainment of Sam's overriding ambition to become nothing less than president for life, with unlimited authority, a vast publicly funded expense account and several lucrative lecture tours. Subtly he works to insinuate himself into the good graces of the more disreputable elements of the gentry, scraping a classical education where he can along the way so that he can observe closely how they behave and ape them where necessary. But he carefully cultivates his working-class salt-of-the-earth act as well so that he can switch between them depending on his audience.

After winning fame in a rather obvious way largely off the back of Frodo's great sacrifice and using his part in the war to scrape up popular votes, he can take advantage of the exhaustion and extinction of the House of Baggins, and the escapist descent into self-serving decadence of the traumatised Took and Brandybuck clans to establish himself as 'the people's hero'. This enables him to further his interests among the Shire's business community whilst still appearing to be an honest son of the soil. By parroting the empty rhetoric of social justice to remove the traditional checks on his mayoral power and simultaneously ingratiating himself with entrepreneurs like Gimli and celebrities like Aragorn, he can quietly turn the Shire into his own private fiefdom, appointing his cronies to positions of authority, selling titles he has bankrupted to anyone with enough mithril and abusing his position to acquire property he can barely afford. He exploits his not inconsiderable gift for ingenuousness to increase social division and reduce upward mobility whilst being hailed as a champion of social reform. In short, following an ugly career of upper-middle-class opportunism and exploitation and calling it meritocratic.

Eventually, having bled the Shire dry, banned pipeweed and put proper 1420 out of the reach of all but the super-rich, he can retire to his sun-kissed Valinorean tax-haven to avoid his own draconian financial policies, while playing on his connexion with the genuine hero Frodo to infiltrate polite Valinorean society and spread his faux-democratic poison there as well. Never underestimate how far you can go by playing on inverted snobbery.

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Squatter

Eventually, having bled the Shire dry, banned pipeweed and put proper 1420 out of the reach of all but the super-rich, he can retire to his sun-kissed Valinorean tax-haven to avoid his own draconian financial policies, while playing on his connexion with the genuine hero Frodo to infiltrate polite Valinorean society and spread his faux-democratic poison there as well.

Don't forget that, having committed the Shire to supporting Arnor in a controversial and unpopular war on Bree, Sam attempted, prior to his lucrative retirement, to ingratiate himself with his subjects and carve his name out in Middle-earth history by initiating a "legacy tour", in which he attempted (unsuccessfully) to broker peace between Gondor and Khand, but which mainly consisted of appearing at parties, fairs and other light-hearted public gatherings to play the mandolin and tell a few jokes, in a painfully transparent attempt to bolster his reputation as a "Hobbit of the people".