Would you have been suspicious?

[Bêthberry]

Child, I've been thinking about Sam, the 'good' character who is suspicious. This I think arises from his role as servant. LOTR, after all, does not represent a democracy. Let me give some other literary examples.

In the novel Jane Eyre, the young girl Jane has run away from Rochester after discovering his bigamist proposal of marriage. She takes a stagecoach far away and then gets out, wandering on the moors, having left her purse behind in the coach. She is starving and bedraggled after spending several night out on the cold moors. She finds a nice cottage and knocks on the door, begging some bread and shelter. The servant, Hannah, who is called honest but inflexible, rejects her request to speak to the ladies of the house, in part out of fear that "housebreakers" roam the neighbourhood. Jane is saved when the gentleman of the house, St. John Rivers, steps up and accepts Jane. His comment is

You have done your duty in excluding, now let me do mine in admitting her.

To this I would add Tolkien's comments on the difference between heroic and chivalric behaviour in his little essay "Ofermod" which concludes his dramatic poem The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth where he discusses the leaders who have responsibility downwards and the subordinates who have loyalty upwards. Here's Tolkien's comment on the character who uses that word, ofermod.

Yet the doctrine appears in this clarity and (approximate) purity, precisely because it is put in the mouth of a subordinate, a man for whom the object of his will was decided by another, who had no responsibility downwards, only loyalty upwards. Personal pride was therefore in him at its lowest, and love and loyalty at their highest.

Thus, I would say that Sam's suspicious behaviours are appropriate for his role and do not disprove the point that Gandalf must think well of Saruman until he has clear evidence to the contrary.

Bethberry