[Gardener of Gamwich]

For me it's Sam. But it has been a journey.

I received LOTR and the Hobbit books for Christmas in 1973. I read them and thoroughly enjoyed them. I would have attested that I had re-read them multiple times in the years since. But thinking about it last year, I confess that I realised that as far as LOTR went, I had only read the Frodo and Sam parts in TT and RotK a couple of times in all of these years. I guess it was scary when I was younger and once or twice was enough. But in addition, I was too young to enjoy the quality of the writing (just as I was too young at age 13/14 to really "get" "To Kill a Mockingbird" or Grapes of Wrath" and the other books on that year's literature syllabus). So in re-reads I would stick to the first half of TT and then to the Rohan/Minas Tirith chapters of RoTK. In reading those sections I came to realise the quality of the writing in itself, but I never revisited Cirith Ungol, re-trod the journey along the Morgai or the trek across the Plain of Gorgoroth to Mount Doom until recently.

Times being what they are, I have had plenty of time in the last few months to read a lot. And a large portion of that time has been dedicated to re-reading the whole book. And reading slowly as well – sort of at 20 or even 30 chews per mouthful. Before the re-readings, I had read much of "Unfinished Tales", in particular the portions directly related to the Hobbit and LOTR.

Amongst everything else, the books have a theme of personal growth. The four hobbits leave the comfort of the Shire, gradually realising along the way that they have been protected from the very dangerous world outside its borders. If much of their growth is implicit, we are left in no about it doubt by Gandalf stating, "...that is what you have been trained for," just before he departs to visit Bombadil. (Indeed on another plane with the "dream that that has slowly faded."/"...falling asleep again." references at the end of "Homeward bound", you could pretend that in an alternate universe, everything that happens between "Three's Company" and the arrival at the gate at the Brandywine Bridge in "Homeward Bound" is an Ebenezer Scrooge-like dream.) But I digress...

Using only physical distance as a measure, from Hobbiton to Mount Doom, it is Sam who makes the longest journey – on the second day of the hike across the Shire he was farther from home than he'd ever been before. Socially, Sam climbs from being a junior gardener and manservant to become the well respected and long-serving Mayor of the Shire, Counsellor of the North Kingdom and bearer of the Star of the Dúnedain, as well as being acclaimed greatest gardener in the history of the Shire.
Who could ever have foreseen all that Hamfast Gamgee's youngest son would accomplish when he was mowing the lawn at Bag End?

It seems to me if Sam had been only a passive figure experiencing the trauma of the journey, he would have registered as much "growth" as the other three "Travellers" (Let's allow that Frodo dealing with the burden of the Ring is on another plane – the "trauma" I'm talking about here is Willows and Barrows and Dells and Watchers and Mines and numerous Orcs.

In the face of all of that trauma – Old Forest, the Barrow-Downs, Weathertop, the Flight to the Ford, Moria, Emyn Muil and the journey along the borders of, and then through the confines of Mordor, Sam is not a just reactive figure but a hugely proactive one from almost the very first. Admittedly on day two he's apologising to Pippin for not having washing water ready in the morning. But he's the one that realises things are coming badly unstuck in the hot afternoon sun by the Withywindle.

A few days later he's an equal participant in a discussion about whether to allow Strider to accompany them/lead them from Bree. But it is particularly through his contribution from the breaking of the Fellowship to the climax at Orodruin that Sam exhibits his quality and wisdom and leadership (indeed even after the climax, leading Frodo away from the lava flow instead of sitting there "at the end of things...").

I've seen many, many discussions about Sam's other crucial contributions to the ultimate success of the Fellowship on the pages of this forum and won't repeat them here – I'll just say that his thought processes and internal discussions/debates following Shelob's attack to the final ascent of Mt Doom are to be treasured.

But one of my favourite points was when, in "The Land of the Shadow", Sam crawls out from under the curtain of brambles where he and Frodo are sheltering and looks up at the night sky. And there, above Ephel Duath, "peeping above the cloud-wrack" he sees "a white star twinkle," the beauty of which "smote his heart" and "hope returned to him". Now it was only because of my fully reading the Silmarillion two summers ago that it occurred to me when reading that passage that what he was seeing in the West was actually the light of the surviving silmaril, bound to Earendil's brow as he rode through the night sky aboard Vingilote. (My suspicion was, much to my excitement, confirmed when reading the Appendices some weeks later – in a footnote a cross-reference is given to the page where Sam sees the star, the footnote's number is given after the sentence near the beginning of Appendix A, which reads, "...and his ship bearing the silmaril was set to sail in the heavens as a star, and a sign of hope to the dwellers of the Middle-earth oppressed by the Great Enemy or his servants." – and just having checked, the same cross-reference is in the Ballantine, Methuen and Collins paperback editions, so it's not the work of some rogue editor at one of the publishing houses.)

Seeing the star or Earendil puts the whole matter into perspective for Sam – "... the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond his reach." It seems to me that the Sam we first meet in the Green Dragon would not have been capable of that leap of perception. But having made that leap, he is equal if not above Pippin, Merry and perhaps, in his way, equal with Frodo in his subsequent perception of the Middle-earth.

Frodo is, of course, forever scarred and will never heal – "I tried to save the Shire and it has been saved, but not for me." Merry and Pippin on the other hand seem to spend much of the following years riding around the Shire wearing their chain mail and carrying their swords. I suppose in doing this they continue to remind the general populace never to forget the "Great Danger" – a message Frodo was very concerned should always be in the forefront of Shire minds. But it seems to me that men returning home after WW2 sought to put the war behind them, pretty much not talking about what they'd seen, trying hard to pick up with their lives where they'd left off before they went away.

It's as if Merry and Pippin went out to help save the Shire and having accomplished that, then returned to find they had in some way outgrown the place. Not trying at all to be nasty or anything but unlike Bilbo putting the mithril coat in the museum at Michel Delving and putting away Sting and his travelling clothes in a drawer and resuming his old life and waistcoats, Merry and Pippin don't get reabsorbed into day-to-day Shire life or certainly take much longer to do so – just an observation on my part .

Sam, with other three through their exploits, has shown himself to be anything but a "typical" habitant of the Shire. And though much changed by the experience like the others, Sam is the only one of the four hobbits who seems to truly re-integrate into life in the Shire Sam gets married and starts a family and is hugely active as a community organiser, repairing the damage wrought by Sharkey's men – in a way enjoying the full fruits of the Shire he sought to save. If you asked him a few years later what he'd been fighting for during the War of the Ring, I can imagine him sitting watching Rose and his his children playing in the garden, looking out across the field at the Party Tree, and climbing to the top of the Hill and looking out and seeing the Shire spreading out prosperously around him. In answer to the question he could have waved his arm at it all and say, "I was fighting for all of this."