They could have fitted the whole ring / tape / mouse assembly into a small paper bag Aragorn could have kept it in his jacket and fed it little bits of lembas on the way how lovely x
They could have fitted the whole ring / tape / mouse assembly into a small paper bag Aragorn could have kept it in his jacket and fed it little bits of lembas on the way how lovely x
Here’s my answer from the last time this came up (which might as well have been yesterday from how often people unfairly lionize Sam and shit on Frodo):
“As he stood there, even though the Ring was not on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, and vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor…”
"Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dur… He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. "
“In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”
Sam was tempted, and if he possessed the ring long enough he would have been overcome like any other, but his Hobbit-sense saved him in that one small moment, when he had held the ring but a short while.
We can read the same words and take something different from them. That reads to me like he was able to pretty easily dismiss the temptation. Maybe he would’ve been tempted like Boromir was, maybe he would’ve had the resolve of Frodo, maybe he could’ve held it for much longer like Bilbo.
His Hobbit-sense saved him there. The only one who can tell us with certainly where it lies in relation to Frodo is no longer able to.
Also arguably the ring was having a big effect on him the entire time. The entire journey sam hates Smegal, which he sees as what Frodo is becoming carrying the ring. Smegal was a walking personification of the fear sam had for Frodo. That fear was turned into hate by the ring slowly corrupting Sam’s love for his master into a weakness for the ring to leverage. He absolutely was not immune to its power.