Between this and your comment on Ms Berry it's getting a little scary.
Stop using my brain!!! :-)
Bastion's OST isn't included anywhere anymore, it's become famous all on it's own. It's very, very good.

Depends what you mean by hero. Gandalf or Aragorn could easily be seen as a hero because of their actions etc.

But I would say the hero of the book is Sam. Without him Frodo would have died and the ring would never have been destroyed. He's the one who gets the happy ever after as well.

You are absolutely correct. Samwise was indeed the hero, he was Frodo's batman (no not that kind of batman :-)). Tolkien was an officer during the First World War, and he had his own batman. He would always say that the common Tommy, the average English soldier, was far greater in worth than any officer, that it was they who achieved greatness, not the officers. He had Samwise be the hero to reflect how he felt, without Samwise, Frodo would have never destroy the ring. He is also only one of two people to give up the ring willingly (the other being Bilbo), and the only one to surrender the ring without being forced to do so (Bilbo was pressured by Gandalf). Despite his outwards appearance, Samwise was one of the strongest characters in the book. Perhaps not physically, but then there are many kinds of strength.

"My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself" ~ J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography.

I'm not sure he had the happy ever after ending, he was a Ring-bearer after all, and this did carry a taint. After his wife died, he travelled west, leaving his family and living his days with Frodo. I guess it could be seen as happy, he did live a long life with his family and was happy in the Shire. But Tolkien always had an undertone about him, as though the corruption of the ring was ever present with him, even though it was only slight and even though he only had the ring for a short time.

Of course Sam is the hero! Completely agree with you here.

Couldn't get into Bastion, through no fault of its own. I just can't seem to find any appeal in the genre.

I've been playing some DOW2, though the squad based tactics with RPG elements are enjoyable I tire easily of it. I can only play one mission at a time.

Yeah. I think Pippin and Merry are two similar takes on the same idea, and Frodo to a lesser extent. It's one of the best things about LoTR I think is that it's the hobbits, the unassuming race with no real talents, no desire for adventure or power who end up saving the world (which is how it usually tends to be in real life, as you said it's the soldiers not the officers who win the war)

I do see his ending as a happy one though. I think he got the best of both worlds. He had to let Frodo go and find peace in the west but he had a long life with his wife and family. And when it was done he got to rejoin Frodo and live an immortal life with him in the land of the elves (who he also loved). But I can see where you're coming from too.

Well you and adaliabooks seem to have more intelligence than the lecturer I knew at university :-). He was looking too much at the battles, failing to see how insignificant they were in complaisant to the destruction of the Ring.

The Hobbits are actually based on rural English people, but then most of the Lord of the Rings are based around England (which is not surprising, as he was an English author). Tolkien did not like the current style of heros, he wanted to show the underdog, the unexpected, to be the hero. As this is often how it was in the real world.

I'm not sure you are right about Sam and Frodo being immortal. They would still die, it's only the elves that were immortal. Travelling west would not grant the Hobbits any immortality, it was just a place they could live out their lives.

So that's discussions on politics, history, and now literature. This thread really is becoming high class. :-)

Indeed we are, with a subscription to this.

I can see how you might be confused, Sam is not a traditional hero for most of the book. It's only after the encounter with Shelob that he could be seen as the traditional kind of hero.
But if you look at the book as a whole and who is the 'hero' of the book then it makes sense for it to be Sam.

I could also see Gollum being the hero of the book, as again it's actually down to him that Sauron is ultimately defeated as Frodo wasn't willingly going to destroy the ring as he had been too corrupted by it by the end of the book.

In a way something of the point of LoTR (and probably part of what makes it so good) is there is no single hero like Harry Potter, Garion in David Eddings or Rand in the Wheel of Time. The fellowship are all mighty heroes and all play a part in bringing about Sauron's downfall.

And let me guess, you all read those magazines for the articles? :-)

I disagree. The way I understood it, going to the west did mean immortality. I may have gotten that wrong but I always took that to be the case.

I will look it up now though :)

It has articles? I never noticed.

True, most people would be hard pressed to find Sam the hero. But you would think a lecturer would :-).

You are right about there been no set hero. This was another aspect that Tolkien aimed for. Very few great achievements were done by a single person. No war was won by one person alone. Tolkien shows a nice mixture of characters that could all be considered a hero, which gives readers many different characters to relate to. He had the many characters each play their part, all working for the one goal of defeating the Lord of the Rings. If you ever get the chance, you should read some of Tolkien's essays, he shares such a vast amount of insight, not only into the LOTRs but his whole philosophy as an author and his outlook on life.

Fact is fact - one does not need to be a dirty old man to recognise and appreciate how generous nature was in the case of Ms Berry, and a few others. ;-)


Look at the upside - I may spare you from some unpleasant incidents. ;-D


It is indeed. When I first got it, I listened to it nonstop for days.

If I am wrong then no problem. But I don't recall ever reading that they were immortal. In fact, doesn't the literature (as I can't remember which book) mention them travelling to the west to " live out the rest of his days in some peace". This would imply that he will die, sooner or later. I understood it to be that the ring had stripped all meaning from their lives, that they could no longer stay in Middle Earth due to this, as they could never be the same after bearing the Ring (which is why Sam had to eventually leave to be with Frodo in the west).