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The Ultimate StruggleHumanities 30

Cassy Johnston

March 2010

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In the film The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, we see struggle everywhere, whether it is to

resist the power of the ring or the struggle of competing demands. But how far will an individual

struggle? And is what they are struggling for the determining factor? Sam faces the ultimate struggle by

risking his life on Mount Doom to restore his honor and certainty, and in this gesture I know that an

individual will struggle to any lengths if what they are struggling for is important to them.

During the Return of the King we see that Sam is a good friend to Frodo and is honest and loyal,

but Sméagol begins to destroy that trust between them by tricking Frodo into thinking Sam is being

unfaithful. Sméagol’s last plot in which he throws the Lembas bread over the side of the cliff and then

sprinkles Sam’s jacket in the crumbs, is the last straw for Frodo. Frodo believes Sam has eaten all the

Lembas and quickly becomes enraged, he orders Sam to leave and go back home and Sam does. Sam

has lost all of his honor and certainty and to give up now and go home would be no struggle at all, it

would be the easy path. Sam does not choose the easy path and he goes back to Frodo to help him

finish the difficult journey, and to save his life from the deceitful Sméagol. For Sam to go back after

Frodo has sent him away and for Sam’s best friend, Frodo, to lost all faith in him would have been hard.

A struggle that Sam easily could have avoided, but a struggle worth facing to restore his honor and

certainty.

Through Sam we see that honor and certainty are two things worth struggling for and that

people will go to great lengths and effort to restore them. Sam risked his life on the dangerous slopes of

Mount Doom to restore his honor and certainty because it is important to him. Individual values and

beliefs are the determining factor to how far someone is willing to go to restore them. If honor and

certainty were not important to Sam he would not have gone back to Frodo’s side, he would have kept

walking. Through this Peter Jackson suggests to us that an individual will risk their life if they belief what

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they are fighting for it is worth it and therefore we cannot put a limit on how far someone is willing to go

or how they are willing to struggle because it is different for each individual.

In this film, Sam proves that he is not a regular guy but instead a dedicated and honorable friend

and hero. He always had Frodo’s back even when certainty between Frodo and Sam was weak, and he

fought to restore it. This shows us a lot about Sam’s dedication to Frodo and the journey and his

character. If Frodo was to have been in Sam’s position he would not have had the strength or the pure

moral desire to go back, and that is why this great act of Sam’s proves him a strong hero. Sam is no

longer Frodo’s guardian but now an equal in the journey to destroy the ring and save Middle Earth.

In the end you cannot put boundaries on the lengths to which an individual will struggle to

restore honor and certainty because it is determined by how much they mean to an individual. Sam

shows us that if what an individual is fighting for means enough to them they will risk anything, including

their life, to have them restored.