The Choices of Master Samwise

Frodo’s brave advance upon Shelob is soon outdone by Sam’s own attack after his master is felled by the spider’s sting. That vicious assault is motivated by love, the strongest force in the universe, far greater than any of the weapons the Enemy has in his vast arsenal. As is lovingly and proudly written by Frodo in the Red Book, “No onslaught more fierce was ever seen in the savage world of beasts, where some desperate small creature armed with little teeth, alone, will spring upon a tower of horn and hide that stands above its fallen mate” (LotR IV:10, 711). One gets incredible strength and courage when protecting or rescuing a beloved one, power that would not have come otherwise, such as those who can lift a car to free someone pinned underneath. That strength does not come from us alone; it flows from God. Also present in Sam’s desperate struggle is Elbereth who the hobbit is inspired to invoke and Galadriel’s phial whose power is strengthened by Sam’s goodness and love.

It is after this great victory of light over darkness that Sam is plunged into the worst agony of his life when he believes his beloved master dead. Despair, rage and grief fill him to overflowing, while a black night in which he sits long swallows his shattered heart. Though Sarah Arthur is speaking of Bilbo, her words are very applicable also to Sam:

How tempting it is to curl up, pull our hoods over our faces, and remain where we are in the dark! And sometimes God knows we need simply to sit and grieve - and that’s perfectly natural. But eventually he calls us to get up, assess the situation, and move forward. We may not be sure the direction we’re headed is the right one, but we’ve used whatever common sense we can muster, trusting God to give us wisdom. The rest is in his hands. (Walking with Bilbo 55)

When the first shock has worn off, Sam holds Frodo’s hand as he holds court with himself as to how to continue or if to continue at all. He has had to make a lot of choices on the Quest involving whether to do something else or remain with Frodo. As long as his master is with him, his decisions are easy: go where Frodo goes, even into deep water or black night. Any fears he has are conquered by his ever-increasing love. Sam faces the same choice here, but this is the first decision that he has had to make since the light which has sustained his life has been quenched; he has to face the night alone and find his courage elsewhere.

He is afraid that he will make a mistake, but he has grown much since he saw in a vague way that he had a job do the morning after meeting Gildor in the Shire. He is now a hobbit with “a deep capacity for discernment and reflection” (Gardener et al. 245). He considers pursuing Gollum out of vengeance, even thinks of suicide, but dismisses both as not being what he is meant to do. After careful deliberation, he comes to the terrible conclusion that his job is to take custody of the Ring as the sole remaining member of the Company and to make the horrible journey to Mount Doom alone. If he does not, the Quest will fail, the Enemy will regain his most prized possession and all Sam loves will be lost. He does not want to become Ring-bearer because he does not consider that to be his place, yet he hears an inner voice say, “But you haven’t put yourself forward; you’ve been put forward. And as for not being the right and proper person, why, Mr. Frodo wasn’t, as you might say, nor Mr. Bilbo. They didn’t choose themselves” (LotR IV:10, 715). We need the same courage to step forward when we hear the call just as Sam did: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will be our messenger?’ I answered, ‘Here I am, send me’” (Isa. 6:8-9).

Sam does not rashly choose, and we should not either. The entire debate he holds with himself is the same we must have as we weigh and discard options and gain a clearer understanding of our purpose, along with much praying to discern the right choice. Sam was not alone while he tried to figure out what to do. Neither are we. Though the hobbit does not know how to pray, he is still given the grace and insight that comes from such seeking of God’s Will. Although it is “altogether against the grain of his nature” (LotR IV:10, 716) to take on a leadership role and leave his master’s side, Sam realizes that he is a vessel of Another. This sits better with him because it allows him to continue in his role as servant. His realization of being “put forward” is, as Fleming Rutledge states, “the key factor in helping him make up his mind. This is called . . . ‘prevenient grace,’ the grace that goes before the human response and - even more important - is present in the response itself” (Battle 237).

“This passage says something to every human being,” remarks Phillip Goggans. “We don’t put ourselves forward; we are put forward. We don’t choose ourselves for the role we have in life; we are chosen. We do not forge our destiny; we submit to it” (“LotR and Meaning” 104). We are not nor should we try to be ‘masters of our fate and captain of our souls.’ That is God’s place. ‘God is my co-pilot’ is a bumper sticker that has it backwards. God should be Pilot. ‘My boss is a Jewish carpenter’ is a better reflection of the order of things. We should all be servants as Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf and others are.

It is in this terrible lair, “where all his life had fallen in ruin” (LotR IV:10, 716), that Sam “begins his rise to supremely heroic stature,” as Tolkien wrote to Milton Waldman. “He fights the Spider, rescues his master’s body, assumes the ghastly burden of the Ring, and is preparing to stagger on alone in an attempt to carry out the impossible errand” (qtd. in Hammond and Scull 746).

The grace that enables Sam’s willingness to be Ring-bearer remains with him, even in his anguished doubts whether he has made the right decision. Rutledge notes, “Immediately, as if to confirm the role of the unseen providential Power in the matter, we are told that Sam is still engaged in an inner struggle. The battle of the will against the forces of the Enemy do not end just because one makes a decision or takes a step in the right direction” (Battle 237).

It is very much that way with us as well. Any decision, no matter how well thought out, may not be always be comfortable, especially in the beginning when the doubts and fears that eat away at our resolve will be their most corrosive. We may, like Sam, tells ourselves that we have made up our mind, but we may not, like Sam, believe that we truly have. We may, like Sam, stand “motionless in intolerable doubt,” (LotR IV:10, 716) but we must, like Sam, keep going. It could very well be a blessing to have obstacles instead of an easy path, for when the Enemy sees the direction we have taken away from him, he will put up all the roadblocks he can to stop our forward progress. We may continue to be assailed with second guessing, just as Sam wonders, “Have I got it wrong?” and “What ought I to have done?” (IV:10, 716). These questions are very natural and are to be expected, even after making the most carefully sought out and deeply prayed for decision. We are never going to have all our questions about a path answered ahead of time, or see all the consequences of a choice. If we did, there would be no reason for hope, faith and trust in God.

Sometimes, it is even essential that some vital piece of information be, at least temporarily, hidden from us, so that we may make the decision that is best, though not necessarily the one we would have made had we had more answers. When that missing piece is revealed, we may be convinced that we have made the wrong choice, even with all our careful thought and prayer, just as Sam berates himself for leaving his master’s body, allowing it to be captured by Orcs.

However, Sam did not make the wrong decision. He was inspired to make exactly the right one. If that humble servant knew his master was still alive, he would not have taken the Ring or left Frodo’s side, yet it is critical that he bear the Ring for a little while himself to know what Gollum endures. It is this knowledge that later allows him to extend pity and mercy to the miserable wretch, which was incomprehensible to him before. The Quest would indeed “have been in vain, even at the bitter end” (LotR VI:3, 926) if such had not happened.

It is the coming of the Orcs that causes Sam to completely throw aside his doubt-wracked decision to continue the Quest alone and resume instead the role he knows is truly his. He begins to rush back to Frodo, knowing this will be his death and the ruin of the Quest, but also knowing he cannot bear to have his master’s corpse violated by the Orcs. However, this is actually precisely what he is meant to do. His first choice (to leave Frodo’s body and continue the Quest alone) combines with his second (to rescue his master), and together they are the vocation Sam has been conceived to fulfill: the Quest will be completed because the Ring will now remain free from enemy hands, and Frodo will be rescued in order to fulfill his own purpose. Sam’s second choice could not have taken place had not the first been made.

When Sam sees the Orcs coming right at him, he rebukes himself for having taken too long to decide what to do after his master’s apparent death, but the timing actually is perfect, showing once again the hand of Providence guiding things along. Upon the sight of the enemy patrol, the new Ring-bearer is inspired to put on the Ring through no willful choice of his own. He gains not only protection from discovery but sharpened hearing and the ability to understand the language of the Orcs, and so learns the staggering news that Frodo is alive after all. If Sam had left his master’s side any earlier, he would not have come upon the Orc patrol when and where he did and so have gained the knowledge that helps makes the Quest a success. If he had left any later, he would have been closer to Frodo and able then to defend his body, but he would have fallen under the Orc attack. The Ring then would have been recovered and returned to Sauron. Positioned exactly where he is when the patrol comes, Sam starts back to rescue his master, but he is too late. The Orcs take him inside the Tower of Cirith Ungol, and Sam is left outside, knocked unconscious by his desperate charge to enter. Although this appears to be a disaster, it is actually a great good that will be shown as the tale continues.

We will discover such links and stages in the chain of events that enable our own vocations to be lived out when we come to the point, as Sam does, that we are suddenly free of doubts and fears and know with clearer vision that there is one particular path that we are meant to take. The struggles to fulfill our vocation will not end, but we will have broken through the first webs of darkness that the Enemy weaves about to keep us from moving forward. God allows this to test and strengthen our faith, trust and courage. As Sam discovers, courage is one of the things the Ring – or anything contrived by the Enemy – cannot bestow. That comes from the opposite end of the spiritual spectrum. As Greg Wright notes, “the ‘choices of Master Samwise’ perfectly demonstrate how ‘suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope’ as Paul says in Romans” [5:3-4] (Perspective 112).