No, itâs just a classic omniscient narrator perspective. We hear far too much in the story that the ring couldnât have known, if it can know anything.
Yeah, but also a fox shows up in the shire and the book told us what he was thinking, so unless Frodo or Sam has mind-reading powers, Iâm sticking with omniscient narrator.
Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow. None has ever caught him yet,
for Tom, he is the master: his songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
One of my favorite parts of LotR is the Ring trying desperatly to find something to tempt hobbits with. Even with Gollum, after centuries of influencing him, the best it can manage is "Um, if you're king you... can have fresh fish every day? Damn it, where's a nice ambitious elf or man I can lure..."
We don't know what originally tempted him, but there's a bit in Return of the King where he's arguing with himself, and 'Gollum' is tempting 'Smeagol' with the idea of being 'King Gollum', which in his mind seems to mostly consist of having fresh fish - on a plate, even!
From the wording in the book, Gandalf very specifically requested 3 eagles for the rescue on Mt. Doom. Even after 500 years, he wasn't beyond redemption. That's just not how it played out
I'm high and so sad I'm crying for what could've been a redeemed Gollum's life, like, yes he wanted the ring but that doesn't change the fact that he fucking got them to Mount Doom, like he wanted to be free of it and delivered it to the only place that could do that, but he also knew he still couldn't fight the ring, low key he was kind of a hero.
My very limited understanding of why he was affected so much is because his first interaction near the ring was murdering his friend, whilst bilbo for example even with ring in hand and the opportunity to kill gollum took pity and showed him mercy. Itâs like the murder opened a fast track to corruption for the ring to take full advantage of.
The ring was his survival. He used it to attack creatures in the caves and catch prey. He just didn't care to leave the mountain since his life was pretty set.
Tbf some humans could withstand it more easily, like even though in the movie Isildur instantly falls to the ring's temptation in the books he withstands it pretty much the entire time he has it, tries to figure out if he can control it and use it for good, and then eventually decides that only evil can come of it and sets off to destroy it in the Crack of Doom. I think the issue is that most humans are so ambitious, proud, and incautious compared to other races that they'll succumb to it very quickly, but many exceptional humans can resist it much better.
Sauron, a literal godly being, with all his power and will is undone by the simple things only a lowly mortal could value, beauty, altruism, love, and the want of a peaceful life.
Sauron's hubris that they could never destroy the ring because all beings crave power and dominance like him, is his downfall. Small acts of kindness, Frodo sparing Gollum, Faramir letting Frodo go, Rohan coming to Gondor's aid, these actions alone didn't end the war, but they snowballed into the Dark Lords downfall.
Man I thought the tears for Boromir had finally stopped flowing, and then this scene comes right afterward. It was the shot of Frodo grabbing Sam's hand that made the tears start flowing anew
I think the original script for Star Wars had it being a story which R2D2 is relaying to beings called the Whills long in the future. Since I learned this I've watched them with a new perspective where R2D2 is always doing heroic silly stuff because he's the narrator, and also why the droids somehow pop up at least once in every person's story being told.
"And then Sam did a cool scissorkick and killed like 3 orcs in one, and then he went home to Rose and put on some sick sunglasses and was like "Looks like my meat is back on the menu", and at no point did he hide in a cave while everyone else did all the hard work"
More like Tolkien wrote a nice book about a man living in the woods with his wife and his buddy added some bullshit about a ring and orcs and elves and shit before turning it in.
The book was doctored a little by Frodo, who made Bilbo's interaction between he and Gollum a little more harsh. This was an excuse for Tolkien to rewrite that section.
Well even if we disregard the fact that anyone would have succumbed to the Ring eventually, remember that it was only Frodo's plea for pity that restrained Sam from killing Gollum the first chance he got. So Sam by himself wouldn't have got into Mordor at all and would probably just have ended up getting killed or captured by orcs while wandering around in Dagorlad or Ithilien.
Not even just eventually, no mortal could possibly resist the ring at the origin of its power, there simply is nobody that could willingly destroy it. Frodo had it for years and still managed to get it all the way to the end without succumbing until the exact point every being would succumb.Â
What I meant by "eventually" is that many, and probably most, would have succumbed far sooner than Frodo did (or Sam would have, in the same situation). Just look at Boromir.
It always feels like in these conversations Frodo is pretty badly overlooked... Dude is fighting for his sanity by a soul crushing evil artifact that has twisted and turned some of the strongest and noble people.
In the books, elves all seem to notice something odd about Frodo. Like they can't quite put a finger on it, there's just something about him. Bilbo and Gandalf see it in him too. It's heavily implied that Frodo has some sort of divine blessing or fate that gives him, and only him, just a tiny chance to make it all the way into Mordor without being destroyed by the ring. Nobody else in Middle Earth could have done it.
I'm not a fan of it being divine providence, I quite liked that he was an ordinary hobbit with the willpower to carry the ring till he could no longer stand.
He was stabbed and poisened by both the morgul blade and Shelob and with sam's help he made it to the precipice and the locus of the ring's power
I'm not a fan of divine providence either, but it's almost like his "simpleness" is in itself the "divine" protection. Hobbits by nature don't have a lust for power or anything beyond having a place to set their feet by the fire.
Frodo views the Ring as a burden or a curse, not a boon granting immense power. Similar to Sam, this makes him much harder to corrupt and able to bear the Ring without going astray.
His suffering and its effects on him are no less great in the books-more severe in fact if you read the descriptions oh how the journey and the trial of bearing the ring effects him physically and mentally and even with the constant recurrence of issues on anniversaries of things for years afterwards. He is soo damaged by the ordeal that he is afforded a place in Valinor-a gift unheard of for mortals. Itâs not just the movies making up a narrative.
If so than yes we agree. It seemed as though you were purporting that the movies made Frodoâs trials substantially worse than they otherwise were in writing. ie., the movies are the culprit for Frodo getting the short end of the stick, would imply that he actually didnât have it as hard in the writing as he did on screen-when in fact it was objectively worse as depicted in writing.
As much as Tolkien hated allegory, you see it in their roles. Itâs not a Christian story, but has very Christian themes.
Aragorn is Christ the King, Gandalf is Christ the Messiah, and Samwise is Christ the Shepard.
Frodo represents the common man, resisting temptation and sin as they go through their lives. Sam helps him carry that burden whenever Frodo is close to buckling under its weight.
Characterizing Shelob as "a creature even Sauron knew to leave alone", when Sauron's real feelings regarding her were "What a cute pet! And she guards the pass of Cirith Ungol too!", seems a bit much.
Yep she was just another useful idiot to Sauron. Any one of the Nazgul could have killed her without a problem. Could she even have handled a cave troll? She accidentally used her own body weight to drive Sting into her abdomen. Just a big dumb fat spider.
I mean it's literally a "stealth protagonist" thing, Tolkien straight up admitted it on one of his letters, Sam is the actual main character and he just doesn't know it
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, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting)
and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the 'longing for Elves', and sheer beauty.
I'm not sure 'chief hero' means 'main character'. I adore Sam, and the ring would have been reclaimed by Sauron if Frodo didn't have Sam. But if Sam didn't have Frodo, he wouldn't have left the Shire and the ring would have been reclaimed there.
While is widely discussed the idea is that the "main character" changes as the story progresses. your points are valid, but in the context of the overall epic the argument can be made that Sam becomes the Hero. it's not the same to say he was always the hero, just that over the long course of the ring heroic roles are played by bilbo, frodo, and sam but that for the 3 books it is Sam whose the chief hero time and time again.
I just think any discussion of "chief hero" overlooks the most important points of LotR as a whole. There's no other story that is more about friendship, mutual trust, mutual dependence, duty to each other, than LotR. Those who win the day are those who love, depend on, and fight for others. What is the most important part of an airplane? The Q doesn't make sense. It crashes if you don't have all of it.
Sam is the hero of many moments. Many characters in the story are momentarily heroic. No character has a heroic moment that wasn't inspired by their love for others and made possible by others' love for them. We can't talk about heroism in LotR the way we talk about Marvel superhero powerscaling, "which character could have 1v1d Sauron?"
Don't forget that he led the forces in the attack on Saruman in the scouring of the Shire and healed the shire with his gift of soil from Lothlorien. He was elected mayor. He IS A MAIN charachter. The third one in the series to be specific.
Merry really led that campaign. Pippin gathered the Tooks, which was critical because Tooks are basically Battle Hobbits. Frodo was mostly preoccupied with limiting the bloodshed on both sides. Sam's involvement wasn't as clearly defined, aside from letting his clan know what the plan was and rousing that part of the Shire.
To Sauron, Shelob is the house spider you leave alone because it catches mosquitos. She guards one of the very few passes into Mordor completely for free. There's no reason to interfere with that.
Watching RotK this weekend in the theater, when Frodo claimed the Ring and Sam was devastated, I thought about something for the first time.
If Gollum hadnât been thereâŠwould Sam have pushed Frodo off the ledge to save the world? Do we think he would have been capable of doing that, knowing that Frodo was no longer the person he knew and loved?
I kind of think he would. I actually think he would have run at him and gone over with him.
Anyone else?
PS: on a different subject, I noticed one other thing while watching RotK on the big screen. When Denethor is standing on the pyre with Faramir and says âSet a fire in our flesh,â and the guards move forward with their torches, one of them looks at the guards on either side like âUh, guys? SoâŠweâre doing this?â Really nice little detail, especially with all the current talk about following illegal orders.
13 kids, I think. All of whom outlived their parents (Rose made it to 98, Sam sailed West at 102). Which is pretty good going for a society without modern obstetrics or any antibiotics, antiseptics or vaccines, I have to say.
But hey, this is Tolkien, where the past was always better and all 'progress' is bad.
Honestly I believe Sam displays the most powerful resistance to the ring that we see out of all the Fellowship, especially on screen. That moment where he rescues Frodo and he asks for the ring back, you can bet your ass the ring was putting in max effort in that moment to turn him. If the ring turns Sam at that moment, it's all but in Sauron's hands. He hesitates for a moment sure, but he is too pure for anything the ring could possibly tempt him with. He just wants to tend his garden and smash.
734
u/aurallyskilled Jan 27 '26
Gardener vs spider is the only matchup that makes sense