This piece is featured in the “Stacks” column in the new Issue No. 22 | Courage of Evangelization & Culture, the award-winning quarterly journal of the Word on Fire Institute.
Print and digital editions of the journal are included with membership. Learn more here.
When we consider the virtue of courage, we might think of a first responder risking his or her life by venturing into a collapsing building or a flood on a rescue mission; it might seem to have its highest expression, at any rate, in crises and catastrophes. However, the Catechism’s explanation of courage, or fortitude, shows that it must be a virtue for daily use, not just for special occasions. To be sure, courage, or fortitude, “enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions” and “disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice his life in defense of a just cause”—but more fundamentally, “Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good.”1 It behooves us, then, to look for examples of everyday courage to help us understand better how to cultivate this virtue in our own lives.
One literary source of such examples is J.R.R. Tolkien’s great novel The Lord of the Rings, which gives us vivid depictions of the characters in situations that test them sorely, revealing their virtues and weaknesses. For courage, we might consider Aragorn bravely leading the forces of Middle-earth in a seemingly doomed confrontation with Sauron at the gates of Mordor, or Gandalf confronting the Balrog alone in order to save the Fellowship in Moria. However, I would suggest that the best example of courage is much more humble in stature: Samwise Gamgee, the hobbit who accompanies his friend Frodo all the way from the Shire to Mount Doom and back.
If there is one adjective that we might give to Sam, it is steadfast. He recognizes that Frodo needs his help on the Quest, and he sets himself to provide that help, to stand by his friend no matter what. Sam has no illusions about his own strength: He is no warrior and no sage, though he has an ample fund of common sense. The core of Sam’s courage is moral, expressing, as the Catechism has it, “firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good.” We see this most clearly in The Return of the King, when Sam and Frodo are making their long trek across Mordor. Sam realizes that their stock of food is, at best, enough to get them to Mount Doom and the completion of the Quest, but they will not have enough to return. “‘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 the job then I must do it.’”2
“I’ll go home by the long road with Mr. Frodo, or not at all.”
He is vividly aware of all that he is giving up—“I would dearly like to see Bywater again, and Rosie Cotton and her brothers, and the Gaffer and Marigold and all,” he muses—but he sticks with Frodo just the same. And in that resolution, “even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength”: the exercise of the virtue of courage, overcoming fear and despair, equips him for what lies ahead.3
As powerful as it is, this scene is not, I would argue, the most significant example of Sam’s courage. That comes earlier, in The Fellowship of the Ring, when the company visits Lothlórien and Sam looks into the Mirror of Galadriel. He sees a horrifying vision of destruction in the Shire: trees wantonly cut down, his father made homeless. “‘I can’t stay here,’ he said wildly. ‘I must go home. . . . I must go home!’” But Galadriel rebukes him: “You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the Mirror, and yet you knew that evil things might well be happening in the Shire.” Sam is devastated, but he accepts it:
“I wish I had never come here, and I don’t want to see no more magic,” he said and fell silent. After a moment he spoke again thickly, as if struggling with tears. “No, I’ll go home by the long road with Mr. Frodo, or not at all,” he said.4
Here we see Sam’s moral courage in full force. He does not disregard what seems to be happening at home; to the contrary, it deeply moves and distresses him. But he resolves to do what is right nonetheless. At this point, though he could not return to the Shire alone, he could have refused to continue with the Fellowship and remained behind, waiting out the War of the Ring with the elves. Instead, he continues, and does so wholeheartedly, doing all that he can to support and protect Frodo. He doesn’t know what is ahead—indeed, he can’t possibly know—but he is committed to helping his friend complete the quest, whatever it takes. Perhaps that makes Sam’s courage all the more beautiful, in that he is not brave for his own sake but for another’s.
Courage is one of the four cardinal virtues. The adjective “cardinal” comes originally from the Latin word cardo, meaning “hinge”: it means that something is pivotal; other things depend on it. In a précis of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien called Sam the “chief hero” of the story, and his role is indeed pivotal. Without Sam, Frodo would never have made it to Mount Doom, and the Quest would not have been fulfilled. Sam had no pretensions to glory, but his steadfast courage in support of his friend meant that Middle-earth was saved and the power of the Dark Lord was overthrown. Aragorn and Gandalf are impressive heroes, but we could do worse than to have Samwise Gamgee as a model for everyday courage.
1 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1808.
2 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (New York: Del Rey, 2012), 225.
3 Tolkien, Return of the King, 225.
4 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (New York: Del Rey, 2018), 407.
Members of the Word on Fire Institute receive a print and digital edition of the award-winning Evangelization & Culture journal quarterly.
Sign up now to receive your first month free and get your own copy of Issue No. 22 | Courage.