[Kalimac]

I'm afraid I'm coming a little late to the party here, but Kalessin, I thought what you had to say was spot-on. Homosexuality may not have been talked about but in some ways the feeling of it (not necessarily the practice) was even more prevalent than it is now, since the sexes were much more rigidly separated. I knew a man once who had spent the better part of his childhood in an all-boys boarding school in the UK (this was in the 1940s) who said that it was pretty much a matter of course to have crushes on other boys, some of them quite severe (and he's not gay, incidentally). His only verdict on the whole thing was along the lines of "Most people need to fall in love with someone. If the only ones available are the same sex, well, that's who it will be." And in the artists and so forth whom you mentioned the change was permanent, or perhaps a natural inclination was just well-fostered by the structures they grew up in. Not talked about, obviously. But did they talk as revealingly about heterosexuality as we do now?

But I digress. It's clear that Frodo and Sam are much closer to Eros - erotic love - than to Caritas - platonic/friendly love, to be simplistic - but you have to consider the situation they're in. They have been essentially keeping each other alive for the better part of a month, very much like a battle in the trenches as Maril pointed out; the emotional investment they have in each other in tremendous. They've always liked each other - Caritas-like - even though Sam was obviously in a subservient social position, but what their quest together did was to intensify that feeling beyond comprehension. Erotic love isn't always the total opposite of platonic love, it can be a very intense distillation of it; as in your whole body is experiencing a love that was pretty much confined to your head before. You're not going to have mixed feelings about anyone whom you've kept alive/been kept alive by for that long; it's going to be pure love or pure hatred (Sam and Gollum, anyone?). Frodo and Sam had the love that comes from friendship, all their experience did was purify and strengthen it.

I said that erotic love and ordinary platonic love could be related, but that would usually be true in situations where nothing got physical. Sam cradling a naked Frodo is a distilled version of the rather more ordinary love he had for him earlier - only instead of keeping Frodo comfortable by making his breakfast, he's now keeping him comfortable by preventing him from being tortured to death. There's really no physical parallel to that, though. Sam cradling Frodo has a parallel from their life before, Sam or Frodo inviting each other out back for a little private time together has none at all. That's why I don't believe it ever got to the point of a "physical relationship" or that either of them even imagined it to be possible. Where was the parallel from before? Hobbits don't seem to be terribly sexually-oriented in the first place; not that they don't, um, like it (those 13 kids) but that they don't see it as being THE most important thing in life. You're not going to routinely wait until age 35 or so to marry if sex is the Holy Grail of your society. Hobbits probably saw it as something there was a time and place for, like most other things (except food of course - there's always a time for food).

Oh, and the scarlet skin - probably that was how Sam was literally seeing him. The windows in the tower couldn't have been too big, and somehow it's easier to see Orcs favoring red lamps over white, which would cast an interesting color over everything. Sam probably looked pretty red to Frodo too, but of course we're not seeing it from his point of view.

Just my 2 1/2 cents. Thanks for reading the end! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img].