1.  Sam's world has come crashing down and it seems strange and unfair that the rest of the world seems to take no notice of it.  Sam thought Frodo so great, so wonderful that he was taken aback that nothing dramatic happened upon his death.  I can indeed think of a similar incident.  My great aunt died about three years ago, and going to school the next day, I was upset and a little angry that my friends could continue on with their day and laugh and argue like nothing had happened.  It seems like the world should stop when we grieve, but it doesn't, and sometimes that makes us angry.

2. Sam's journey to adulthood has occured along the entire quest.  He learns from the things he sees and the people he meets, but I think that it is at the moment he takes the ring to go on and leave Frodo behind that he truely comes into his own.  It is at that moment that he realizes that though he may be lost without Frodo, there is still a world beyond that tunnel that will be lost if Sam doesn't continue on.  Of course, the moment Sam realizes Frodo is still alive, the world becomes of small importance again...^_^

3. Sam is first and foremost being practical; he will need the things he is "borrowing" from Frodo if he is to continue on.  I do think that Sam is taking on a part of Frodo, maybe to comfort himself, which makes me wonder: if Frodo was truely dead and Sam made it somehow to Mount Doom with the Ring, could he have thrown it in, knowing that it was one of the only links he had left to his beloved master?

4. Througout the books I noticed Sam speaking to himself, most often when he berates himself or calls himself names.  I think he is speaking to Frodo because he is still in a state of denile, that maybe its all a bad dream and Frodo will say something like "Sam, you ninnyhammer, you can't possible take the Ring alone! Are you utterly mad?!" Silence may be safer, but it is also very unsettling, and as Sam is trying to give himself the courage to go on, comfort proves better than safety.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In this fair land, I'll stay no more
Here labor is in vain
I'll seek the mountains far away
And leave the fertile plain
I am going to the West

You say you will not go with me
You turn your eyes away
You say you will not follow me
No matter what I say
I am going to the West
I am going to the West

I will journey to the place
That was shaped by heaven's hand
And I will build for me a bougher
Where angles footprints mark the land
I am going to the  West

Wind, my blanket, earth, my bed
My canopy, a tree
Willows by the river's edge
Will whisper me to sleep

I am going to the West
You say you will not go with me
You turn your eyes away
You say you will not follow me...
No matter what I say

~Connie Dover