I agree with most everything you said, but I am not sure about "No one could be
more humble, no one more willing, no one more loving, no one more
innocent." No one? I guess here's a place in the logic of the story
where there's some tension similar to that of free will v. providence.
Aren't Frodo and Sam as well as the rest of the hobbits supposed to be a sort
of "everyman"? Isn't the idea that within the simple, provicial men there
lies some untested, untapped potential for greatness? Sure, there's a lot
of bad apples, but isn't the idea that any man can gain a victory over evil if
he will choose humility, self-sacrifice, pity, and love? What's more,
they don't even have to choose it 100% of the time because of divine grace and
mercy?
Take Sam, for example. As it says in the excellent Nancy Marie Ott Green
article you referred to:
As Tolkien later wrote, "My 'Sam Gamgee' is
indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew
in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself."
Is
Sam not like an "ordinary" soldier?
I suppose it's the idea of recovery -- "simplicities are made all the more
luminous by their setting."
Thanks for your
thoughts!
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