The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 809-816

On the day that Frodo and Sam begin the passage of the Dead Marshes guided by a creature that neither of them ever hoped to meet Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli meet Gandalf in the Forest of Fangorn while Merry and Pippin wait for Entmoot to end. Events have overtaken each member of the Fellowship that none of them ever planned for or anticipated and yet plans still have to be made. The three hunters will go with Gandalf to Edoras and then onto war with Saruman while Merry and Pippin will go with the Ents to the destruction of Isengard and Frodo and Sam ponder the journey to Mordor and Mount Doom that still lies ahead of them.

Sam, as always, is the one to think about practical issues. The most pressing one in his mind is the problem of food. All that is left to them is lembas and there is nothing for Gollum. Sam assumes that Frodo has not thought about this but Frodo offers to share a piece of lembas with Gollum, an offer that is greeted with disgust. Gollum will have nothing to do with Elves or anything associated with them.

Eventually Gollum solves his own problem. He is a forager, even a scavenger, and he is used to surviving on almost nothing. He will do as he has done for a very long time. He will live off the land even though there will be times when the land will have little to offer him, while longing, all the time, for fish. Apart from his all consuming desire for the Ring Gollum wants for almost nothing. When, at a later point, Sam overhears an inner debate between Gollum and Sméagol, Stinker and Slinker as he calls these two parts of this divided creature, he hears Gollum declare that if he could regain the Ring he would use it to “eat fish every day, three times a day, fresh from the sea”. That seems to be the limit of his ambition.

At this moment in their lives Frodo and Sam seem to want for little more. Life has been stripped down to its barest necessities. It is to keep on going from one day to the next, somehow to get to Mount Doom and, then?

Sam is pondering the question of finding enough food to finish the job. He also hopes that somehow there will be a future that lies beyond that. Sam’s heart lies in the Shire and he wants a “there and back again” story. Frodo does not share his hopes.

“If the One goes into the Fire, and we are at hand? I ask you, Sam, are we ever likely to need bread again? 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.”

This will always be a dividing point between Frodo and Sam. Sam will always hope and he will always worry. Rosie Cotton lies behind in the Shire and Sam means to marry her if she will have him. And he will worry about what he saw in Galadriel’s Mirror, about his father’s welfare and the digging up of Bagshot Row. Frodo, on the other hand has become a little more like Gollum but wants even less than he. He does not desire the Ring or anything that the Ring could give him. He only feels its burden and longs to be free of it, while the Ring slowly but inexorably takes possession of his mind until the time will come when the Ring will be all that he can see or perceive. If he can find food then it will be to get him to Orodruin. He will take little pleasure in it.

Sam is deeply moved by what he sees as Frodo’s nobility of character, his self-sacrifice for the great cause but I am glad that Sam has smaller ambitions. As he lay dying after the Battle of the Five Armies Thorin Oakenshield said to Bilbo, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold it would be a merrier world”. Sam has the same heart as Bilbo. He too values food and cheer and song and a happy domestic life and he wants this for all his fellows and especially for Frodo. He will keep on trying to find a way home after doing the job.