Sam as geek?

[rabidsamfan]

teasel wrote a brilliant essay about Sam today and when I tried to respond to it, LJ told me my answer was too long.




In many ways, I think that the Sam which Tolkien tells us about and the Sam that he shows us are not the same Sam. Part of that lies in the disparity between what an author thinks has been written and what the reader finds there, of course, but part of it lies in some of the contradictions which are part and parcel of the character. Sam is not nearly as transparent as he first appears to be. So having read, and adored, your essay, I’m going to turn around and say that Sam is a geek – or rather a protogeek.

Of course, in comparison to Ted Sandyman even Gaffer Gamgee has some geeky qualities. He coins words, “ninnyhammer” being the one we see most often and has a “large paternal word hoard” of reproachful names. And he has developed an expertise in a narrow topic – root vegetables in general and potatoes in particular -- to the point where he can expound at the drop of a hat and is acknowledged as the expert by all and sundry. If that’s not geekiness I don’t know what is. But it’s useful geekiness, like a fascination with engineering or cars might be, and is allowed.

Sam has inherited some of that. His knowledge of the area around Hobbiton is “encyclopedic” and he coins the term “neekerbreekers” for the crickets of the Midgewater Marshes. But Sam has also got some things from the Gaffer that aren’t quite so benign. For one, he has an internal voice which keeps telling him that he’s not clever, and that his head isn’t as trustworthy as his heart, that some things – like maps – are beyond his comprehension. And like any loving child, he believes what he’s been told.

Aside: What did inspire Hamfast Gamgee to name his youngest son “halfwit” anyway? Did he or Bell have a vision of this baby being too different and try to protect him by minimizing that difference?

Fortunately, Sam had Bilbo. I often see the relationship between those two as being something like watching my mother dealing with my five year old nephew. The two of them seem to have a common language that I’ve forgotten and won’t be allowed to re-learn until I’m seventy. Bilbo and Sam spoke to each other in the language of stories. Years after Bilbo has gone away, Sam can still recite long stanzas of poetry he learned as a child (and probably hasn’t heard or read since). He makes up songs, and poems of his own, and he still loves stories, even if most hobbits his age have given up fantastical tales of Elves and all for the more familiar gossip of the Shire.

But what Sam hasn’t had for those seventeen years has been a chance to keep up with his book learning. Oh, he must have had a little somewhere – he recites poems holding his hands behind his back as if he were in school – and there may have been a book of stories at Number Three which the Gaffer would read on special occasions, for Sam speaks lovingly of listening to stories being read – but from the time of Bilbo’s party Sam has been responsible in large part for the gardens at Bag End, and a good part of his day is busy with hard, physical labor.

Aside #2: Perhaps it was Bilbo reading stories that gave Sam that image to hold onto. In many ways Bilbo seems to have been “younger” than Hamfast, who seems to have become old faster than most hobbits – Lobelia SB is still fairly spry at 100 and Hamfast is crippling up at 75, and has been called “grandfather” for some time already, even by his own children. Wonder if the Ring and Bilbo’s apparent youth had anything to do with that?

In fact, Sam at 21 seems to have taken on a lot of adult responsibilities in the face of his father’s increasing disability, in spite of Tolkien telling us that tweens are irresponsible. It doesn’t seem to have stopped him from going to the Cottons farm often enough to be good friends with the boys there, and learning a good bit of the local countryside, but there’s no real indication that Frodo continued to teach Sam in the way that Bilbo had.

Aside #3: Of course, Hamfast was taken on as the gardener’s apprentice at the age of fifteen, but Holman Greenhand was only 34 years older than he was, and presumably stayed active into his sixties when Hamfast would have come of age and been able to take over. Although Tolkien doesn’t say, I think that there must have been several servants at Bag End besides the gardeners, particularly when Bilbo was throwing parties, and possibly into the beginning of Frodo’s era as well. A maid of all work, a laundress, etc…. It’s quite possible that the inhabitants of Bagshot Row all were (or at least began as) servants to the big Smial on the Hill.

So by the beginning of the quest, the language skills of Sam and Frodo, already separated by age and station, are further separated by education, or lack thereof, as well as by natural inclination. Sam’s education has stopped with learning the narrative, and Frodo’s gone on to analysis and thinking about the narratives. Sam is uninhibited about touching and comforting, in part because he doesn’t think about what it might mean beyond the moment. His inner critic is not practiced on that sort of action (from the heart) as much as it is on intellectual attempts (from the head.) Sam doesn’t think out his feelings in complex language because he hasn’t learned it – hasn’t had the simple time to sit and read until learned language becomes natural to him. He has to express himself in simpler words because that’s what he has to work with. And then there’s body language. Sam spoken words don’t always match his actions/feelings, particularly with Gollum. And this starts right from the moment they meet, in spite of the fact that Gollum bit him. In “The Taming of Smeagol” Frodo looks at the knot Sam tied with the elven rope around Gollum’s ankle. He examined it and found that it was not too tight, indeed hardly tight enough. Sam was gentler than his words. Like the Gaffer, Sam uses harsh language, and expects his actions to speak of other things. (Unlike Sam, Gollum is unpracticed in understanding that the gentleness accompanying a harsh word is probably more truly meant, and is incapable of taking an apology when it’s offered.)

Sam’s love of words has never been trained to the next step of analysis – but the potential for analysis is in him, and gradually he begins to express it. He does so in terms of story, of course, since that is the language which he loves best. By placing their task into the context of a story, Sam becomes able to take that intellectual step back, and observe that “even Gollum might be good in a tale.”

Curiously enough, by “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol” Sam is closer to liking Gollum than he has been since they first met up with him. They had that near-truce in Ithilien, and Sam does apologize once he’s woken up enough, even though the damage is done. Even in the letter Tolkien notes that Sam’s reaction is driven by the logic of the story. (He also notes that Sam eventually reaches the point of pity for Gollum which Frodo had already accomplished, however late it was from Gollum’s point of view. It’s not that Sam is malicious on the stairs, it’s that he isn’t ready to see what Gollum briefly shows. His education is incomplete without the brief time of wearing the Ring.)

Sam isn’t used to being the thinking part of the equation, but in Mordor he has to be. He’s relieved when Frodo “recovers” after destroying the Ring, thinking he can go back to being the simple servant to Frodo’s good master, but it can’t really happen.

It isn’t until the hobbits return home that we begin to understand how deeply Sam has changed. The Gaffer has taught Sam that he needs someone else to think for him. The quest teaches him otherwise. Sam comes back to Shire and doesn’t hesitate to take charge of the cleanup – he oversees the restoration of Bagshot Row, and the cleanup of Bag End, and that’s on top of the forestry work. If he has any flaw, it’s that he doesn’t believe anyone can take care of things properly except him… (Cocksureness and conceit, perhaps?) Sam is very sure of himself when he’s right. But he still defers to Frodo. In some ways, Sam cannot reach the potential of leadership within him as long as Frodo stays in the Shire, but that’s another essay.

From HoME, we can see that Tolkien felt that once Sam was given the time and money he would, like Bilbo, teach himself to read Elvish – the ultimate in geekiness among hobbits (although more practical than it once was, if the King insists on sending letters written that way!) It’s too late for his speech patterns to change entirely, but in the end Sam finally has a chance to be a person whose head is trusted as much as his heart.