Sam Gamgee black?
I've noticed after reading the lotr that given the era it was written in, and how Sam Gamgee is described that there is a possibilty that he was black. I can't think of any exact page references off hand, but there are a few that made me wonder whether tolkien actually pictured sam as being dark skinned. Again, in his era, slavery and racism had not fully subsided?
😕
No, he was just badly sunburnt from all that gardening. The hobbits are intended to be diminutive rustic Englishmen. They are always lightskinned. Middle Earth is a sort of equivalent to the area of Earth Europe would fill, so the only dark skinned characters are those outside Middle Earth (the Haradrim etc)
In Tolkein's time, noone had ever migrated to Europe from other continents, but some indigenous Europeans did leave Europe to the continents of America and Australia.
And Sam was never a slave, he was the gardener who also happened to be Frodo's VERY good friend... with a doggish loyalty? 😕 (In the book Frodo and Sam are very much more attached to each other than they are at any point in the films.)
The Afro-Carribeans were rarely enslaved in British isles, usually only in the Carribean before slavery was abolished. I got the impression that LOTR is a sort of distant past even in Tolkein's time.
Tolkein has some lightskinned villains (Gollum, Wormtongue, Saruman and some of the Nazgul) and certainly Boromir, Denethor and the latter day Numenoreans were not 100% perfect. If he had been intending to portray the Haradrim in a hostile light, the attitude of the narratorial voice would have been very different.
You don't need an excuse to reread it, Peregrine Took 🙂
Originally posted by ash007
yeah i know that but you goto remember that Tolkan wrote this beofre 1950 and thats when Blacks were being used as servents because the British empire still existed then
The fact that LOTR was written before 1950's doesn't have anything to do with the descriptions that Tolkien was giving to his characters. Just because Sam as you said is sort of a slave doesn't mean he's black. Remember, Tolkien said he hates allegory with a passion. 😉
The descriptions of every characters and events that were happening in LOTR doesn't have anything to do with the world of our own here. It's just a coincidence though we can all admit that it's really very, very close. (WWII, Hitler, Industrial Revolution, etc.) But Tolkien said so himself that it just is, so yeah...
i remember reading that Sam is to frodo as the poor brits were to the upper class of tolkiens time, whether tolkien intentionally set it up like that or not, and that it has nothing to do with blacks.
if u want tolkien talking ab blacks, in a pretty racist fashion, see the battle of the pelennor fields, where they is compared to apes i think. at least theyre still badassed warriors though.