Editing Samwise Gamgee (section)

=== Relationship with Frodo ===

{{further|Sexuality in The Lord of the Rings}}

[[File:General Bernard Montgomery, Commander of the Eighth Army, Italy, 30 September 1943 TR1389.jpg|thumb|Tolkien stated that the relationship of Frodo and Sam reflected that of a British officer and his [[batman (army)|batman]] during the [[First World War]].<ref name="Carpenter 1977 p89" group=T/>]]

During the journey to destroy the Ring, Sam's [[Sexuality_in_The_Lord_of_the_Rings#Homosexuality|relationship with Frodo]] exemplifies that of a military servant or [[batman (army)|batman]] to his assigned officer in the [[British Army]], in particular in the [[First World War]] in which Tolkien had served as an officer, with different batmen at different times.<ref name="Carpenter 1977 p89" group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|1977|p=89}}</ref> His [[biographer]] [[John Garth (author)|John Garth]] stated:<ref name="Garth 2014"/>

{{quote|The relationship between Frodo and Sam closely reflects the hierarchy of an officer and his servant [in the First World War]. Officers had a university education and a middle-class background. Working-class men stayed at the rank of private or at best sergeant. A social gulf divides the literate, leisured Frodo from his former gardener, now responsible for wake-up calls, cooking and packing... Tolkien maps the gradual breakdown of restraint [through prolonged peril] until Sam can take Frodo in his arms and call him "Mr Frodo, my dear."<ref name="Garth 2014">{{cite web |last=Garth |first=John |author-link=John Garth (author) |url=https://johngarth.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/sam-gamgee-and-tolkiens-batmen/ |title=Sam Gamgee and Tolkien's batmen |date=13 February 2014 |access-date=17 May 2020}}</ref>}}

Tolkien wrote in a private letter: "My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and [[batman (army)|batmen]] I knew in [[World War I|the 1914 war]], and recognised as so far superior to myself."<ref name="Carpenter 1977 p89" group=T/> and elsewhere: "Sam was cocksure, and deep down a little conceited; but his conceit had been transformed by his devotion to Frodo. He did not think of himself as heroic or even brave, or in any way admirable – except in his service and loyalty to his master."<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|2023|loc=letter 246 to Eileen Elgar, September 1963 }}</ref>

Although Tolkien does not explicitly say so, Sam is in effect Frodo's self-appointed [[manservant]], carrying out more mundane chores thus relieving his "master" of the necessity to do so, the term being used in (for example) Ishay Landa's essay "Slaves of the Ring: Tolkien's Political Unconscious".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Landa |first=Ishay |title=Slaves of the Ring: Tolkien's Political Unconscious |journal=Historical Materialism |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=113–133 |year=2002 |doi=10.1163/15692060260474396 }}</ref> Tolkien himself gets closest to this terminology, possibly inadvertently, when in the account "Of The Rings of Power" in ''The Simarillion'' he writes: "For Frodo the Halfling, it is said, at the bidding of Mithrandir took on himself the burden [of destroying the One Ring], and alone with his servant he passed through peril and darkness and came at last in Sauron's despite even to Mount Doom; and there into the Fire where it was wrought he cast the Great Ring of Power, and so at last it was unmade and its evil consumed."<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1977|p=365 (paperback edition, 1999)}}</ref>