Life or Death Debate: Best Character in Hobbit or LoTR

[Phoebe]

Am I allowed to make one of these? I choose this one because I have no stake in this fight and my kid wants your answers. We are reading through all of this together. We have seen the film versions. I don't care whether you want to talk about the book or the films or whatever. I'm just interested in the characters as characters: which one is the best. Actually I do have a slight opinion about this but not enough to make it a knockdown argument. I won't participate.

[Mike]

Easy. The hero of the whole LotR trilogy: Samwise Gamgee.

[Phoebe]

Oh my, that's a very strong entry, already looking very hard to beat. Maybe it can be done, I don't know.

[Phoebe]

Dude/tte, your theory may be correct for all we know, but when you post it in Russian or whatever that is, we will never know. So far Mike still winning this thing, no contest.

[Tahlvin]

Samwise is a good entry, and perhaps the best character in LotR. But I’ll go with Bilbo from The Hobbit. He’s the reason the whole thing exists.

[Eliahad]

I'm going to choose Fezzig.

[Tahlvin]

Wait, I change my answer to Tom Bombadil! C'mon, the ring of power has no hold over him, he can see Frodo even when he's wearing the ring. Some say he is the Valar Orome, and Tom's wife is the Valar Vana. He was present in Middle Earth before the first raindrops fell. What's not to love about this guy?!

[Kyle]

[bralbovsky]

Sam isn't a modern hero, but he's the best overall.

The best to read the voice for is Treebeard.

The best cameo and name go to The Witch King of Angmar.

[Kyle]

No one is defending their positions. They are just stating opinions without support. I posted a definitive picture. Y'all are pathetic.

[bralbovsky]

Sam is a classical hero. He has very few, if any, internal conflicts. He's highly and usefully and firmly class aware. He's a great demonstration of who does the actual work of heroing (Gunga Din), because as a person he is exemplary. He's brave, self sacrificing, has remarkable stoicism, endurance and grit. He has one excusable ethical weakness ( his prejudice towards Gollum, which is part chauvinism and part threat detection); he even maintains his loyalty to his childhood sweetheart. He bears but resists the ring. He punches above his weight. He gets on with the business of living after these nasty affairs are complete instead of fleeing to the West.

[poorpete]

It's Sam. Solid as a rock, steadfast and loyal. Selfless. Willing to share the load.

But to mix it up, maybe the favorite character isn't the best character. Maybe it's the one who needed the steady heartbeat of Sam nearby him while he toiled with an intense character arc. He went on a epic journey, was tempted, nearly went insane, and overcame demons, external and internal. I'll claim Frodo.

[Phoebe]

It sounds like the consensus pick is Sam, which is a very good pick because he's a very good character. But this raises questions The judge needs to resolve (I am not the judge obviously):
Can Tom Bombadil be measured in goodness against the others if he really is godlike or is some type of spirit of the landscape?

And does the morally best character make for the best character in the story?
Because if I were going to answer personally, I would say Smeagol/Gollum, since he is in a way the most essential and ultimately responsible for destruction of the ring he so loved and hated and hated to love but loved more than he loved himself. And everything about his big scene in the Hobbit is the central core and the most hilarious and memorable.

But I'm not offering this as an entry, I'm just raising questions on behalf of the judge.

[Eliahad]

It's Eowyn and the way that she fought back against the arrogance and misogyny around her. She wasn't going to sit back and be kept safe. No! She was going to get out there and do what needed to be done. And if that meant cutting off the head of the Lord of the Nazgul, then she was going to do it.

Eowyn is the only legitimate contender to Sam.

[Tahlvin]

Can Tom Bombadil be measured in goodness against the others if he really is godlike or is some type of spirit of the landscape?

Are you changing the goalposts on us now? Now it's not just a question of which character is the best, but which character is the most righteous and good? Because if that's your criteria, then same is the "best", as in Sam is the good-est character in the Hobbit+trilogy.

If I had to put an alignment on Tom Bombadil, I'd say he's neutral good. But like many immortals, things that concern mortals don't mean the same to him. So yes, he is not tempted by the ring. But you also cannot give him the ring to hide or protect, because it doesn't concern him the same way it concerns the rest of the fellowship, so he would just end up losing track of it, and someone else would find it, another Smeagol, and the cycle of possession would start anew. I find that interesting as hell, thinking about how one could have such a drastically different outlook on things, an outlook that is not wrong, necessarily, just different.

[Eliahad]

I seriously can't believe you're all upholding the patriarchy. We all need to fight against the Man. And Sam is the Man. Therefore, logically, we must fight against Sam.

[poorpete]

And does the morally best character make for the best character in the story?
Because if I were going to answer personally, I would say Smeagol/Gollum, since he is in a way the most essential and ultimately responsible for destruction of the ring he so loved and hated and hated to love but loved more than he loved himself. And everything about his big scene in the Hobbit is the central core and the most hilarious and memorable.

Excellent point, judge! And who is the person with these two, an angel and a devil, on his shoulders? Stuck between the morally best character Sam and the best story character Smeagol, it's Mister Frodo!

[Phoebe]

Lol I am trying to get an answer out of the judge but the judge won't text me back.

[Mando]

Best character, not Sam. No, sir or ma'am, that is the Wonderbread answer.

The most heroic, not Sam either. That'd be Boromir

The absolute best character with the most depth is Smeagol. Why? Because everyone is Smeagol. We do bad things and then some good things. We struggle with our desires which to some are minor but to us they are colossal. Smeagol struggles with his infatuation/addiction/possession every day of his sorry life and lives in the shadow of the murder of his brother for his own covetous reasons. If we are honest humanity has more in common with Smeagol/Gollum than it does with Hobbits, men or elves, which are nice and all that but very shallow and quite vanilla.

Frodo tried and very nearly did the job.

Without Smeagol/Gollum Sauron gets the ring.

Gollum for the Precious win....imo

[Phoebe]

If I were judging I would Totally agree with Mando, who has given an eloquent defense and is obviously correct, but this is tyranny and The Judge at last has spoken, and The Judge said only this:

SAM

[Mando]

By The Nine this will not stand!

[Eliahad]

And by Sam you still mean Eowyn.

[Phoebe]

We'd have to text the judge and ask if by Sam she means Eowyn. I'm not ruling it out but it seems less likely. She has always liked Sam and was one of the first to point out to me that he was in many ways the hero and not just a sidekick. As if a sidekick is ever "just" a sidekick... But you know.

[Mike]

Fine... Neville Longbottom.

[Mando]

Fine... Neville Longbottom.

The Sam Gamgee of Harry Potter!

[Phoebe]

Fine... Neville Longbottom.

This also happens to be the judge's favorite Harry Potter character.

[Eliahad]

Eowyn chopped the head off of a Nazgul. Not just a sidekick. Won the battle of Pelennor Fields. Eowyn. Would have marched into Mordor and ran her sword down Sauron's throat if she could.

[Phoebe]

I can't tell you the reasoning - I'm just a messenger here.

Also does Sauron even have a throat?