Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Sam’s Speech from ‘The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers’
Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings trilogy is in my top ten favorites, both in literature and film. We’ve been rewatching the movies this month and watched LOTR: The Two Towers a few days ago. Sam’s speech near the end of the movie is so powerful and moving it still makes me well up every time I watch it. This time around, I thought of the political state of our country today and thought: yes, this.
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam…
Sam: I know! It’s all wrong!
By rights we shouldn’t even be here.
But we are.
It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.
A new day will come.
And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something.
Even if you were too small to understand why.
But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand.
I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something.Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
When I read Boss’s post about Rush Limbaugh, it reinforced the same message:
Published in GeneralNever stop fighting for America.
9 likes and no comments. Because there’s nothing else to say, you nailed it. One of the best speeches in the movies, and certainly one we need to remember right now. Thanks.
Other than posting the “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” speech from Animal House (bad language), there isn’t much to add.
You can always count on me for a really futile and stupid gesture.”
If only the same could not be said of our politicians.
< sarcasm(?)off >
< cynicism approaching infinity, and still insufficient>
Great movies but the two worst actors were Sean Astin and Viggo Mortensen. I won’t go into the Viggo disaster now.
This Sam speech should have been delivereee in a heroic and hopeful way. Instead he delivered it the same whiny way he delivered every line in the movie. Constant emoting and whining.
Wow, I couldn’t disagree with you more. :-)
Sam is a 35 year old gardener who’s 4 feet tall. By this point in the movie he has been through a lot, and he’s still on his feet, still fighting to complete the mission when his boss is about to give up.
He doesn’t have to sound heroic, he simply is heroic. In every way that word means anything.
Sure, objectively he is heroic. But this is a movie and he’s supposed to seem heroic too. Crying during every single line he delivers in over nine hours of the trilogy basically shows him to be a one dimensional actor, which is true, and boring as well. This speech would have been a great time to leave behind the whining and be more up lifting and hopeful.
I’m trying to see what you’re saying, but it just didn’t seem that way to me. I didn’t see whining, maybe pleading. Maybe an attitude before he truly grasped what they were doing, that they were probably not going to come back from this. I saw him as trying to be the best support he could be for his master, the task he had chosen, while still being human (tired, discouraged, etc.) He didn’t think about of himself as one of the big heroes in this story, just that he had to protect his master and friend. Might have been some kvetching in there, but I didn’t see any of it as whining.
But I’ll have to think about it, see if I can get what you’re saying.
Standing by itself, perhaps it could be seen that way, but not to me. Combined with the entire three movies and his inability to speak without crying, except when cursing Gollum, and to me he just seems like a pathetic whiny boy.
Well, I’ll have to give that some thought, see if I can see it from your POV. It’ll be interesting, because to me he has always been the the best character in the book. The most noble, the most courageous, the most loyal, and, in the end, the most critical. All from a lowly gardener, who was true of heart, knew who he was, but had confidence in the goodness of the world that he knew. He willingly gave up the Ring when he didn’t have to.
I named my firstborn son Samwise.
In the trilogy, as I read them, I saw Frodo as the main hero. But once I saw the movies, it became clear that Sam was the hero. The guy in the background who enabled Frodo to do as he needed to do.
I see it as a failure of my character that it wasn’t clear to me while reading LOTR.
Absolutely, the hero of the book. That’s why Astin’s performance is so disappointing.
He literally (is that a pun?) carried him to Mount Doom.