Frodo Baggins and his loyal friend, Samwise Gamgee, are unintentional role models for how we ought to consider our place in the world.
There's an important speech by the Gaffer's boy, which I think is illustrative in a lot of ways. (This is looking at the film's speech, in part because it is more compact, and because it works well here. Sam's book speech (pgs 712-713) work in many similar ways. Additionally, the reading of the film as text is the intention with this interpretation.)
Pushing beyond the wider reading that Samwise is rendering here, there's an implicit argument in his first sentence: "...the ones that really mattered." Sam's value judgment is not one that can be summarily dismissed as subjective: In all aspects of humankind--from African tribes to Chinese dynasties to reality-shifting scientific discoveries--we see narrative providing context, content, control, and clarity for what is transpiring. While individual discrepancies and preferences can modify canon in minute ways, it's clear that there are certain stories that simply matter. Religious foundations provide a large purpose for that, but there are no worldwide religions that take inspiration from Metamorphoses or The Iliad, and yet those are some of the stories that matter. It isn't simply ancient classics or the classics, either, that provide stories that matter: the Harry Potter series matters; the Lord of the Rings series matters; the Breaking Bad series matters. Those things which have staying power are the ones that we look to for guidance, warning, and comprehension of a world that often doesn't make sense.
Samwise, however, is dialing in on a specific type of story that matters--one in which the happiness at the end seems impossible because of the darkness in the journey. In that sense, The Lord of the Rings doesn't satisfy that story--at least, if the scourging of the Shire and the death it brought to that idyll diminishes the kind of happy ending that the story has. Still, Sam's point is a valid one. The difficulty of living can sometimes seem hopeless and dark. "How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?" It is in that sense we are pulled into the greater story of mankind, and Sam's comments multiply in their meanings.
While we struggle with that definition, we meanwhile see the horrible (and honorable) results of individuals. The women and men who change the world through their individual interactions spring easily to mind. But not everyone is Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Theresa--not everyone is a Donald Trump or a Pol Pot. We have extremes and a lot in between. Each one is too small to really get a grip on the entirety. It's Forrest Gump writ large: "I'm not a smart man..."
And it's the end of that quote that matters here, that backs up Samwise's point: "...I know what love is." What both Sam and Forrest are saying is that there's too much for anyone to really come to grips with, so we find that which we can understand and we use that to move forward. In Sam's case, the personal, individual approach is that there is "something to hold onto." I'm willing to bet that he actually didn't know the answer to Frodo's question when he was saying his part--that it came to him because his master needed his help, and Samwise always finds a way to help Master Frodo. And that, too, is what makes us, individually, connected to what Samwise is saying. The personal "something to hold onto" expands into his answer, showing how he succinctly, in his small way, encourages meaning through social awareness.
There's an important speech by the Gaffer's boy, which I think is illustrative in a lot of ways. (This is looking at the film's speech, in part because it is more compact, and because it works well here. Sam's book speech (pgs 712-713) work in many similar ways. Additionally, the reading of the film as text is the intention with this interpretation.)
Sam: It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.What Sam is digging at here is significant in a lot of ways: narratologically, personally, and socially.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.
Narrative as Value
Within Sam's larger context, he's a character in a story. This story, of course, is considered by its creator as "a history" (which he prefers over allegory, as stated in his "Foreword to the Second Edition"), a repository of what Earth was, long ago. Rather than it taking place on another planet (as most fantasies do, with the notable exception of the Shannara series), The Lord of the Rings and all its attendant lore is a type of constructed mythology, with a single source (Tolkien) that never served primeval purposes of myth--in that sense, it paved the way for the irreligious purposes of all pop-cultural mythos, including the superhero genre and almost all science fiction/fantasy lore. In the grandest scheme of Sam's speech, then, this is a meta-statement, one that he utters without guile or irony (in part because those characteristics are as foreign to Sam as the lands he has to trudge through). He is speaking as a character in a story, acting as a person in his life, without conception of his behavior as being scripted.Pushing beyond the wider reading that Samwise is rendering here, there's an implicit argument in his first sentence: "...the ones that really mattered." Sam's value judgment is not one that can be summarily dismissed as subjective: In all aspects of humankind--from African tribes to Chinese dynasties to reality-shifting scientific discoveries--we see narrative providing context, content, control, and clarity for what is transpiring. While individual discrepancies and preferences can modify canon in minute ways, it's clear that there are certain stories that simply matter. Religious foundations provide a large purpose for that, but there are no worldwide religions that take inspiration from Metamorphoses or The Iliad, and yet those are some of the stories that matter. It isn't simply ancient classics or the classics, either, that provide stories that matter: the Harry Potter series matters; the Lord of the Rings series matters; the Breaking Bad series matters. Those things which have staying power are the ones that we look to for guidance, warning, and comprehension of a world that often doesn't make sense.
Samwise, however, is dialing in on a specific type of story that matters--one in which the happiness at the end seems impossible because of the darkness in the journey. In that sense, The Lord of the Rings doesn't satisfy that story--at least, if the scourging of the Shire and the death it brought to that idyll diminishes the kind of happy ending that the story has. Still, Sam's point is a valid one. The difficulty of living can sometimes seem hopeless and dark. "How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?" It is in that sense we are pulled into the greater story of mankind, and Sam's comments multiply in their meanings.
Personal Growth and Sacrifice
Before Frodo asks his pleading question ("What are we holding onto, Sam?"), the shy gardener from the Shire mentions a recurring theme of the Hobbits: His size. He's too small "to understand why" the world is hard. And in many ways, it isn't his Hobbit physiology that makes him incapable of understanding the evil in the world. It's a human failing--the smallness of a single soul, an individual person making choices and deciding what works for her, all done in a vacuum of hoped for context and meaning. Everyone, from world leaders to thoughtful grandparents, struggles to hold onto hope amid the darkness that chews at the goodness in the world.While we struggle with that definition, we meanwhile see the horrible (and honorable) results of individuals. The women and men who change the world through their individual interactions spring easily to mind. But not everyone is Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Theresa--not everyone is a Donald Trump or a Pol Pot. We have extremes and a lot in between. Each one is too small to really get a grip on the entirety. It's Forrest Gump writ large: "I'm not a smart man..."
And it's the end of that quote that matters here, that backs up Samwise's point: "...I know what love is." What both Sam and Forrest are saying is that there's too much for anyone to really come to grips with, so we find that which we can understand and we use that to move forward. In Sam's case, the personal, individual approach is that there is "something to hold onto." I'm willing to bet that he actually didn't know the answer to Frodo's question when he was saying his part--that it came to him because his master needed his help, and Samwise always finds a way to help Master Frodo. And that, too, is what makes us, individually, connected to what Samwise is saying. The personal "something to hold onto" expands into his answer, showing how he succinctly, in his small way, encourages meaning through social awareness.
Who Makes Up The World?
Frodo is tasked with an unbelievable burden, but The Lord of the Rings is, so far as I care to see, a story about Samwise Gamgee. I think it is significant that he is the last character to speak in the series (both the film and the book end with him saying, "Well. I'm back.") and that he is the engine that propels Frodo toward his success. So when Sam gives an answer to Frodo, it carries weight.
Frodo asks why they're holding on so hard, and Sam answers that "...there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for." Though this seems personal, it's the answer that explodes meaning and implication. Because of Sam's "smallness" and general ignorance of the world, he has to speak in general terms--"there's some good"--while he tries to inspire his master to take heart. But for those of us who have a wider view--one still clouded with the miasma of cruelty and a broader concept of history and its uneven fortunes--we can fill in the general with specifics. There is much in the world that is good. And no matter how small it is, like a plant in a desert, it can grow despite all odds.
The social awareness that this concept inspires is one of view expansion. If one's individual life is hard and dark, does Samwise become a liar? No, I think not. The responsibility of each person is to grow and think and live in such a way as to improve the world. Sam didn't say, "There's some good in the Shire..." He wasn't thinking of his own personal investment. He saw the world as valuable, as places beyond his ken being worthwhile.
By applying Sam's honest analysis, the social obligation and social conscience of every person becomes interconnected. Yes, there's greed and despair in the world. Sometimes, people actively fight to preserve those negative consequences, opposing themselves to goodness for reasons that surely resonate with them. Those are the dark things that must be "fought"*. Samwise's short speech is, in many ways, a critique of isolationism, a rejection of "greed as virtue" ideologies, and a refutation against those who endorse hatred, fear, and xenophobia. Samwise is fighting for Wormtongue's future as much as Rose's, for the absent dwarves as much as the aloof elves.
We could all stand to learn something from the gardener at Bag End.
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* This is meant metaphorically. Battlegrounds on which these ideas are decided are politically, ethically, and intellectually imbued. Violence is one of the things in the world that must be defeated, but cannot be done through its own means--that's the crux of the argument of The Lord of the Rings and why Boromir's analysis about the Ring was wrong.
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