Hope and the Hobbits?

It was Samwise Gamgee who said this, in The Two Towers, to Frodo:

It’s like the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and dangers 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 has happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”

Tolkien’s remarkable tales contain a lot of wisdom--and I think this quote is a bit of that. This is a story about hope as the commitment to good in the world--and to fighting for it. It shows hope as muscular defense, even the invisible, that protects whatever good there is in this world.e as muscular defense, even the invisible, that protects whatever good there is in this world.