Guenivere - you sure got it right about sam!
Personally, I think that the reason many characters are flat is because of the type of story. As was mentioned earlier, the hobbits let us into the world of Middle Earth. We relate to them. Now reading something like The Odyssey, an epic, no character is very human. Each is either good or bad (probably the most Human, I think is Penelope - but that is an entire different subject) Tolkien wrote us an epic with epic characters like Aragorn and Gandalf. Characters without much "humanity." They are great and you love them, but you can't feel with them as you can with those that can relate.
It is an epic with a twist, because in Tolkien's epic we are given a set of "non-epic" characters that are like us, so we can have a deeper understanding of the heroism in the story.
Of course Sam is the prime example - but I could talk about that for forever!
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"Good bye, master, my dear! Forgive your Sam. He'll come back to this spot when the job's done - if he manages it." -TTT
Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point - Lewis
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