Sam Gamgee

Frodo Carries Sam to Mordor

/ stephencwinter / 18 Comments

All who know the story of The Lord of the Rings know that without Sam Gamgee Frodo Baggins could never have reached Mordor so that, in other words, Sam carried Frodo to Mordor. But this week we are going to think about the way that Frodo carried Sam to Mordor and we will show how Sam could never have made the journey he did without Frodo or become the person that he did without him. It was Sam’s relationship with Frodo that enabled him to grow into someone who could inhabit this story that is far too big for him even though he is never really aware that this is what is happening to him.

In the very first scene of The Lord of the Rings we meet Sam’s father, Gaffer Gamgee, sitting in The Ivy Bush on the Bywater Road talking over the news with the assembled gathering there as the Shire prepares for Bilbo Baggins’s great party. As they talk the Gaffer ruminates aloud over his anxiety that Sam is being taught how to read and write by Bilbo and that he loves to listen to Bilbo’s stories.

“Elves and Dragons! I says to him. Cabbages and potatoes are better for me and you, I says to him. Don’t go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you’ll land in trouble too big for you, I says to him.”

Of course the Gaffer’s words are prophetic because the stories of Elves and Dragons in which Bilbo had been a participant draw Sam right into the heart of the Quest of the Ring and a trouble that is indeed far too big for him. When some years later Sam overhears the discussion between Gandalf and Frodo  on the true nature of Bilbo’s ring and how Frodo would have to leave the Shire it is his love for tales of “dragons and a fiery mountain, and- Elves, sir” that draws him to the window then through the window as Gandalf drags him through it. It is his longing to see Elves that leads Gandalf to say to him, “I have thought of something… to shut your mouth, and punish you properly for listening. You shall go away with Mr. Frodo!”

Sam’s love for the tales he has heard will take him straight to Mordor but there is another love that will take him there too and that is his love for Frodo. It is when Sam hears that Frodo is leaving the Shire that he chokes and so gives away his hiding place outside the window. It is his love that first awakens his imagination in a way beyond anything that the Gaffer could ever conceive and would fear to do so and it is through the awakening of his imagination that Sam longs to see and to know for himself.

This is what I meant when I said that Frodo carries Sam to Mordor. This is what happens when one person awakens the imagination of another. The Gaffer, fearful of the unknown, deliberately tries to keep his son within the known world of cabbages and potatoes. Bilbo, and then Frodo after him, takes Sam into an unknown, fearful and wonderful world. I look back now with the deepest gratitude to the teachers who read wonderful stories to me, who introduced me to beautiful music and who taught me wonder. But even as my heart was opening to beauty I was already aware that most of my playmates were making different choices. And who can say which was the right one? Sam’s drinking partners in the pub laugh at his dreaminess and so it is that they never go to Rivendell; but then neither are they attacked by Ringwraiths or, wracked with hunger and thirst, stagger through the hell of Mordor to the fiery mountain. It is both a wonderful and a fearful thing to have our imaginations awakened. And it is both a wonderful and a fearful thing to truly love another. Sam is carried to Mordor by Frodo. His life would have been safer but also poorer if he had stayed at home. If we choose safety then we must also choose poverty. But if we choose wonder then we must also choose fearfulness.

Sam Carries Frodo to Mordor

/ stephencwinter / 11 Comments

Frodo and Sam are carried to Mordor. The task of getting there is too great for either of them to achieve alone. It is even too great for them to achieve together. They need to be carried there and in the postings on this blog over the next few weeks we will see who carries them and how. As we begin this journey Frodo and Sam are hopelessly alone in the Emyn Muil. They cannot even descend from its heights into the marshlands below that lie between them and the northern walls of Mordor. And yet they are not alone. They are in communion with so many others living and departed and without that communion they would not be able take a step further upon their journey.  The elven rope by which they descend to the lowlands and which returns to them when Sam calls it is the fruit of long years of craftsmanship placed at their service at a moment of need. The gift of lembas that will sustain them on many weary marches is given because the lady of the wood did not hide from the travellers but opened her home and heart to them.

Frodo and Sam could not take a step towards Mordor and the accomplishment of their task without this communion and in the weeks ahead we will be reminded of many that they cannot see as they stumble the weary miles that lie now before them. But we begin with their friendship. Next week we will think about how Frodo carries Sam to Mordor but this week we will begin by thinking of how Sam carries Frodo.

Many argue that Sam is the true hero of the Quest of the Ring and that Frodo could never have reached Mount Doom without him. Frodo himself agrees with this assessment. Later in the journey he will say this to Sam: “Frodo wouldn’t have got far without Sam.” And he is right. Sam’s father, the Gaffer, worried greatly about where learning to read and write would take his son but of one thing he would have approved and that is that Sam stays faithfully by his master through thick and thin. Gaffer Gamgee believes that the relationship between master and servant is part of the natural order of things. He may not always approve of the actions of the masters and he will say so if he is not happy but he will remain loyal even when he does not agree and he expects his son to do likewise. However, Sam’s loyalty is not because of his father’s precepts although he holds them to be true himself, but because he admires, even loves Frodo. Sam believes that Frodo is “the wisest person in the world (with the possible exception of Old Mr Bilbo and of Gandalf” but his admiration does not carry with it any desire to be like Frodo; even less to be Frodo. There is nothing competitive in their relationship. What gives meaning to Sam’s life is that he lays it down in free service to the hobbit he admires and loves. Such service is hard to conceive in contemporary culture in which even our friendships are often competitive in nature and in which service is often considered to be servile unless shaped by contract and a job description. Tolkien is describing what for many is an “old-fashioned” relationship but he does so in a way that both transcends and transfigures it so that it is neither old-fashioned nor contemporary but greater than both because there is nothing servile about Sam’s service to Frodo.

Perhaps in the drawing of the relationship of Sam to Frodo Tolkien comes as close as any writer to the spirit of the words of Jesus in the gospel of St John in which he says:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”

A Story Too Big for Us

/ stephencwinter / Leave a comment

It is time to leave Gandalf and Pippin as they make their desperate dash to Minas Tirith upon the mighty Shadowfax to find Frodo and Sam wandering in hopeless circles upon the barren heights of the Emyn Muil as they seek a way down from sheer cliffs that thwart them at every turn. If the pace of Book 3 of The Lord of the Rings was often frantic now it is painfully, agonisingly slow. Over the last year in this blog we have travelled with orcs as they bore Merry and Pippin relentlessly towards Isengard and we travelled with Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli in their brave but hopeless pursuit of the orcs. With the three friends we met Gandalf in the Forest of Fangorn and joined them in their dash across the grasslands of Rohan towards Edoras. With little time to rest we then rode with them to Helms Deep where they fought a mighty battle against the armies of Saruman and then joined them again as they rode onwards to Isengard. There they met the young hobbits whom they had long sought and who had escaped from the orcs to meet Treebeard who carried them in the last great march of the Ents to the walls of Isengard. And at the last as we have already said we rode with Gandalf and Pippin on their way to the great battle of the age. Aragorn and his friends and Théoden and the Riders of Rohan will soon follow on as swiftly as they can.

Every deed that can be accomplished by them will be vital but all will be in vain if the Ring cannot be cast into the flames of Mount Doom, Orodruin in the land of Mordor; and the Ring has been entrusted to Frodo Baggins and his servant, Sam Gamgee and they cannot even begin their journey there, the “one place in all the lands we’ve ever heard of that we don’t want to see any closer; and that’s the one place we’re trying to get to! And that’s just where we can’t get, nohow.”

Anyone who has tried to do something that really matters will have known times when they feel stuck, when it seems that all they can do is to travel round in circles and back to the beginning again. In such times they will feel abandoned, useless and desperately vulnerable. In the words of an ancient Celtic prayer they will say, “The sea is so very great and my boat is so very small.”

Frodo and Sam are in a story that is far too big for them. Frodo said Yes to the story in Bag End one night when he spoke long with Gandalf and first learnt about the Ring that he had kept for seventeen years. Later he said Yes once again at The Council of Elrond though he did not know the way. Finally he said Yes when Boromir tried to seize the Ring and Frodo knew that he could journey with the rest of the Fellowship no longer but must take the Ring alone to Mordor. Sam made a simpler choice but one that was equally costly, to go with Frodo wherever he might and to offer him whatever support he could.

The truly great stories are the ones that we somehow seem to “land in” as Sam will put it later in the story. The temptation when we realise that this is happening to us is to reject the story, to hide away in some dark corner of our soul with the doors and shutters firmly closed. Or we might try to retell it in some way that will make it more palatable for us. Or we might say Yes to the story in full recognition that it is far too big for us and that in some way we must be carried or else destroyed. We might say that Gollum hides, Saruman and briefly, Boromir, try to retell the story and Frodo and Sam say Yes to it. How Frodo and Sam will be carried as they must be we will see in future weeks.