As the grey light of morning came again to Mordor, Sam woke and looked about the hollow where he and Gulible had taken refuge the previous night. A foul sump of oily water ringed with lurid algae lay at its bottom, and as he slept Sam had slid down nearly to its edge. Gulible was nowhere to be seen.
Unwilling yet to move, Sam thought through the whirlwind of events that had landed him in this unhappy place. Affection, revenge, and simple inertia had carried him this far, but weariness at last led him to frankly consider the task that lay ahead.
“Was this the job I was hired to do when I started?” Sam asked himself. “To help Mr. Frodo into his inheritance and then die with him? Well, that is my job, but I’m nowt but a ninnyhammer if I go through with it. I would dearly like to see Bywater again, with Rosie leading the Revolution at my side. Much as I’d like to see Mr. Frodo draw his last breath, this quest is useless; it’s high time I cut my losses and head home.
“Still,” he thought, “I can’t think somehow that Gandalf and Elrond would have sent Mr. Frodo on this errand if there hadn’t a’ been any hope of his coming back with more money for them to take. What do I have to show for all the work I’ve done these past months? A deed signed over that nobody will believe, Mr. Frodo gone so I can’t bring him back to the Shire to set off the Revolution, and a lot o’ wasted blackmail that won’t do no good either way. If I’m to get anything out of this at all, the Ring must go into the Fire and Frodo’s got to live through it… for a little while. Why am I left all alone to make up my mind?”
–J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book VI, Chapter 3
And who is the editor of this redaction?
Apparently, you can find the original at the Tolkien Sarcasm Page – a ‘loose’ [url=http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/book/book.htm]e-text transcription[/url] of the great work 🙂
That’s not Sam Gamgee. I knew Sam Gamgee and traveled with him all across Middle Earth, and that writer is not Sam!
The real excerpt is quite different in tone, particularly with its final emphasis on hope and strength:
“So that was the job I felt I had to do when I started, ” thought Sam: “to help Mr. Frodo to the last step and then die with him? Well, if that is my job then I must do it. But I would dearly like to see Bywater again, and Rosie Cotton and her brothers and the Gaffer and Marigold and all. I can’t think somehow that Gandalf would have sent Mr. Frodo on this errand if there hadn’t a’ been any hope of his ever coming back at all. Things all went wrong went he went down in Moria. I wish he hadn’t. He would have done something.”
But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam’s plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.