Are Frodo and Sam...you know? A guide to the most common discussion at your next LOTR movie marathon viewing

I will be hosting a Lord of the Rings (LOTR) movie marathon in the near future, which explains this being my second LOTR-related post in two weeks. Much like Carlos Fuentes needed to read Don Quixote once a year, I occasionally have a mystical need to re-visit Frodo's quest to Mount Doom. It's like eating or having sex. I can only go so long without it.

Even though I've said before I'm not crazy about everything in Jackson's movie trilogy, it's still easily the best way to enjoy the story in a communal fashion. It'd be awfully hard to read through all three books in a day with a group of people. And even the films' flaws can be a good point of discussion.

If you watch the movie in the company of a lot of men, as I have many times, one topic of conversation that infallibly arises is the level of homo-eroticism in the films. Jokes and comments about homo-eroticism are a constant when a group of largely heterosexual males gathers. In my personal experience, this is as true today as it was three decades ago, even though now you would be hard-pressed to find a man even in a group of hetero-normative males who thinks there is anything essentially wrong with homosexual behavior. The jokes today have lost their mean-spirited edge of fag-bashing, of guarding hetero-normative standards by threatening harm to those outside the standards. But the jokes are still there. Why?

In my short story about male identity in the Marine Corps, "Brokedick," the main character notes that "most of the jokes they'd played (in the Marine Corps) had been either homo-erotic or homophobic. Possibly both." The Marine Corps requires that men within it become closer than most men become in normal life. But that closeness, when it starts to take on a deep and spiritual dimension, threatens hetero-normative standards. Men need to be close in the Corps, but the closeness required is itself suspect--or at least uncomfortable for most men. So men play jokes like "tea-bagging" one another. By doing this, they are able to hide physically homo-intimate behaviors that are a corollary of spiritual closeness in plain sight.

When men watch a story like Lord of the Rings together, certain male characteristics are called into question. There are heroes who demonstrate tenderness, gentleness, and compassion, traits that do not fit the standard male hero archetype. The men watching these things are at once uncomfortable with them and drawn to them. So we cope by joking about them.

...and joking, and joking, and joking...

Three types of intent

Before getting into various ways to interpret the physical and emotional closeness of Frodo and Sam, the two most important characters in the Rings trilogy, I need to make a quick digression into the question of intent.

Intent of the author

Most people who haven't studied literature seriously would most likely assume that the most important type of intent--maybe the only one that matters--is the intent of the author. Many, many discussion fora on the Internet have discussed the question of homosexuality in the relationship between Frodo and Sam in terms of Tolkien's intent (one example). Tolkien lived at a time when homosexuality was seen as a mental illness, an abomination. Tolkien was a devout Catholic. Tolkien cannot have meant these things, so Sam and Frodo cannot be gay, however it may seem to a modern reader.

It may surprise those who assume the author's intent to be the only intent that matters to find that literature scholars actually speak of something called an "intentional fallacy." That is, to think of literature only in terms of what an author meant is a mistake. This might seem crazy, and nothing more than a rearguard justification for the inventive interpretations of literary professors, but there is a point to it. We all say things that others take to have meanings we don't intend. If I tell my wife she looks nice for an older woman, I may insist I didn't mean it as an insult. I might say she is wrong to take offense, that she didn't understand my intent. But clearly, my intent is not the only thing that matters in such a statement.

Similarly, when an author writes a story, there are often images, symbols, and language in it that suggest things on their own that the author never imagined. Shakespeare may not have had in mind modern theories of the meaning of time when he wrote "there is no clock in the forest" in "As You Like It," but it doesn't matter. The statement expresses psychological truths about the way people experience time in a pastoral setting. Critics are free to view the statement's meaning on its own terms.

Intent of the text

The idea that the final written product of the author, rather than the author's mind, is the right place to look for meaning, is called "intent of the text." When I was in graduate school, we all learned to start our thoughts on what we'd read with "the text states..." rather than "Shakespeare states that..." Such a reading doesn't completely ignore the author. A reader still needs to know what a "nunnery" meant in Shakespeare's day in order to interpret a statement including a reference to a nunnery. But that doesn't mean a critic needs to restrain her possible readings to only those that she can plausibly argue might have occurred to Shakespeare himself.

There is obviously a great deal more openness in this kind of interpretation. If Frodo and Sam appear to exhibit a closeness that can best be explained by a sexual attraction, even an unspoken and unspeakable one, then that interpretation is on the table, whatever Tolkien himself believed.

However, a reading focused on intent of the text does not make any kind of reading possible. One still has to take the text on its own terms. Frodo and Sam are not space aliens. They are not ciphers for Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan, written by a prophet who guessed their presidential race 40 years ahead of time. But there is a kind of reading that might allow for this.

Intent of the reader

The most radical kind of reading is one that focuses on the reader's intent. What matters in reading a text isn't what the author meant or even what a close reading suggests. It's what the reader feels while reading the text. Much scholarship that examines Frodo and Sam in sexual terms actually focuses on fan fiction, in which readers of the stories respond by writing their own follow-on fiction about Middle Earth. This includes "slash fiction," erotic stories that focus on same-sex relationships. In a reading like this, if a reader feels that Sam and Frodo seem gay, then there really isn't anything to say that such a reading is wrong.

Which intent do I intend to follow?

A product of my academic times, I tend to favor the intent of the text, but I don't really exclude any type of intentionality when examining a text for meaning. Reading for authorial intent maintains the human side of the humanities, as one tries to see how the life of a writer lead to a certain work's creation as a response to the events of that life. A text-focused reading maintains integrity and intellectual rigor. Focusing on the reader preserves the reason any of us read: not just what does it mean, but what does it mean to you? When I attempt to give some ways to look at Frodo and Sam's relationship, I will try to keep a balance between them all.

Five Ways to Look at Frodo and Sam's relationship and sexuality, from least interesting to most

1. Frodo and Sam are sexually attracted, but either they hide it from each other or the text hides it from the reader

When I was in graduate school, Queer Studies was still a relatively new thing. I thought it was a little bit dull, because a lot of it back then seemed to amount to little more than reading old texts to see if one could find any secret clues about whether a character in it was really gay. One blogger (from whom I stole the above picture) followed this kind of reading in asserting that Frodo and Sam are "queer coded." The writer quoted a passage often cited by those who see something essentially romantic in Sam and Frodo's relationship:

Then as he had kept watch Sam had noticed that at times a light seemed to be shining faintly within; but now the light was even clearer and stronger. Frodo’s face was peaceful, the marks of fear and care had left it; but it looked old, old and beautiful, as if the chiseling of the shaping years was now revealed in many fine lines that had before been hidden, though the identity of the face was not changed. Not that Sam Gamgee put it that way to himself. He shook his head, as if finding words useless, and murmured: “I love him. He’s like that, and sometimes it shines through, somehow. But I love him, whether or no.

The blogger, Monique Jones, suggests that if Sam were a woman, we'd naturally assume the text meant romantic love here. It's a bit artificial to suggest that it must be a spiritual, Platonic love Sam speaks of.

I do believe there is a lot more at play with Frodo and Sam than just friendship. But if it's sexual attraction, then the story to me sort of just ends there. They're gay. So what? That doesn't really make their relationship more compelling to me. It doesn't add anything to my "reader's intent" interpretation. It's a possibility. There are portions of the text that certainly suggest something much stronger than friendship is there. It's possible it's romantic attraction. But if it's true that their friendship is not like most friendships, then it's also true that their sexual attraction is not like any other sexual attraction I've ever witnessed.

As Yvette Kisor put it, "What seems less likely to prove fruitful is a singular focus on the question of the homosexuality of characters in The Lord of the Rings…. Did Tolkien write a homosexual relationship between any characters, specifcally Frodo and Sam, in his novel? Clearly, no. Can readers fnd such relationship(s) in his novel? Clearly, yes."

Sam and Frodo as frustrated lovers just doesn't leave much room for continued, interesting readings.

2. Frodo and Sam are a little bit gay

Being gay may not always be the either/or thing we see it as. There is no one gene that determines sexual orientation. It's a host of genes, and those genes don't always do the same thing to everyone. Homosexuality is "epi-genetic," meaning there need to be environmental factors that "switch on" those genes.

So Frodo and Sam may have demonstrated some of the characteristics of a homosexual couple and yet still been, for the most part, heterosexual. We can reject the false dichotomy between being a rugged, hyper-masculinized heterosexual and effeminate homosexual.

3. Frodo and Sam are the closest friends ever, and every man should feel depressed he isn't close enough to another man to hold hands as they walk toward their doom 

Leonna Madill offers what I find to be a more interesting application of queer theory and feminist theory. She argues that LOTR is "not a text that invites criticism of hegemonic masculine values, but it is a text that can provoke multiple discussions about its various messages about masculinity." One discussion of hegemonic masculine values Frodo and Sam encourage is the meaning of male-male friendships. This is even truer and more interesting if Frodo and Sam are straight, rather than gay. If they are gay, all the intimacy between them is explained--perhaps even explained away, one might say--if it is all merely sublimated sexual attraction. The question of what all those gestures of affection mean is actually much more interesting if they aren't gay than if they are.

The deeper a friendship goes, the greater the intimacy within it. But modern, American masculinity--even in an era in which we no longer think homosexuality is a sin--does not feel comfortable with intimacy between men. This limits the friendships. There is a reason most men today will say their wives are their best friends. They are the only people with whom we are physically intimate, so they are also the ones with whom we tend to be emotionally intimate.

But what if we are limiting our friendships in this way? What if our insistence that any sort of physicality be kept out of a male-male friendship made those relationships anemic? Frodo and Sam aren't an example of a gay pair keeping their love on the DL; they're comfortable hetero-sexual friends without our hang-ups over what holding hands or laying you head on someone's lap means. As Madill put it, "male friendship can be more complex than simply protecting a friend from harm; caring and showing affection is another means of nourishing a friendship."

4. Frodo and Sam's relationship mirrors a parent-child relationship

The physical affection between Frodo and Sam could be understood as part and parcel of their parent-child relationship. Carolyn Hoke summarized this reading, first proposed by Verlyn Flieger. Frodo starts off as the grown-up, the wiser, more mature one. When Sam is first allowed to participate in Frodo's adventure, he "springs up like a dog invited for a walk." However, Frodo is eventually worn down by the ring, and Sam, like all children eventually do, must care for the parent who once cared for him. Sam carries Frodo "like a hobbit-child pig-a-back" when Frodo cannot carry on anymore. As Hoke puts it:

This physical aspect accentuates the spiritual bond between the two hobbits, such that in a way, it seems as if the two of them are linked in a strange, inverse relationship of power. When Sam is childish, Frodo is mature and capable; when Frodo grows physically and emotionally weak, Sam is the strong one who helps him see the Quest through.... comparing their parallel journeys in this way leads me rather to compare the hobbits’ relationship instead to that of a Parent and Child. Initially, in a Parent/Child relationship, the Parent takes control and directs both their paths, but as both mature, the Parent falls back into the second-childhood of old age and it’s up to the Child to carry their combined burdens.

5. Frodo and Sam are "married" for the duration of the quest

There is a sense in LOTR that some things happen because they are meant to happen. "You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck?" Gandalf asks Bilbo at the end of The Hobbit. Gandalf also suggests at one point that what others call chance might not be chance at all.

In a world where things happen by design, one of the most obviously meant-to-be happenings is Sam's marriage to Rosie Cotton. Sam is a gardener who marries a woman named Rose. They have thirteen children named for flowers. Clearly, there is some providence involved in this union. So Frodo and Sam aren't frustrated lovers meant to be together but denied their chance by the world. Sam was always meant to be with Rose.

Yet Sam can't really be the husband, father, and lord of Bag End he was meant to be until Frodo leaves. With Frodo around, Sam is "torn in two," as Frodo puts it. That's because when Sam agreed to come with Frodo, he agreed to see it through to the end. Throwing the ring into the fire was the end for most people, but it wasn't for Frodo. Frodo carried the ring long enough that he would never truly be free of it until he traveled to the undying lands. That means Sam can never really be free of his duty to care for Frodo until Frodo leaves.

That's a pretty profound bond they have. The only bond we have in most societies that comes close is the sickness-and-in-health, til-death-do-us-part version of traditional Western marriage. I'm not sure that either hobbit realized the profundity of their tie at the beginning of the quest. Frodo didn't know when he set off from the Shire that he was headed to Mount Doom. He thought he'd be gone a short while. Sam didn't know he was headed with Frodo to Mount Doom, either. He just thought Frodo needed someone to look after him.

Frodo and Sam realize what their bond is to one another while on the trip. That passage quoted earlier in which Sam looks down at a sleeping Frodo and realizes he loves him is something Sam only realizes after Frodo has become "old and beautiful" as a result of fighting the ring's power. Frodo was called to confront evil itself and he answered the call. In that fight, Frodo became something Sam loved.

The ring binds its wearer to it. The only reason the hobbits were able to fight its power was because their bond to one another grew along with the ring's power. Their bond needed to be stronger than any bond in existence, and that meant it was a little bit of every relationship. It was master-servant. It was friend-friend. It was parent-child. It was man-wife. It was every kind of relationship you can think of, which made it deeper than any relationship you can think of. The two were, in every sense, bound to one another. You may think of them as married. Their intimacy was appropriate and natural.

Many people have opined that Frodo and Sam's relationship was more spiritual than physical, and they are right. But the spirituality of it doesn't necessarily preclude the physical. While they were together, they were bound, body and spirit, to one another. I tend not to think of the physical side of that as a Brokeback Mountain-type sexual awakening, but that doesn't mean it cannot include parts of that. C.S. Lewis distinguished between the Four Loves--storge, philios, eros, and agape--but we need not think that there are clear borders between them. Sam and Frodo developed agape love to such a degree that they were able to use the other loves, eros included, to help one another.

In the end, Sam cannot divorce Frodo. Only death can do them part, which is why Frodo needs to leave. The time when he has interrupted Sam's purpose is over.

Or is it? The book suggests that Sam may one day follow Frodo. Sam was, after all, a ring-bearer, too, if only for a brief time. Before telling Sam he must no longer be torn in two, but be one and whole for many years, Frodo wonders aloud, "Your time may come" (to go to the undying lands). I can only wonder, too.