The Choices of Master Samwise

[The Lady of Ithilien]

I've read that when JRRT read that part to CS Lewis and others, they wept. It's one of the best, if not the best, scene in the whole book -- Sam is so human at that point, and his reactions so understandable.

I think Tolkien was setting Sam up for his greatest challenge that would come a bit later: giving the Ring back to Frodo. Thus, he had to first take the Ring.

When Sam gave the Ring back to Frodo (OK, he didn't just say "here it is" and plunk it in Frodo's hand, but he did lift the chain and Ring off before Frodo, crazed by the Ring, grabbed it from him), he became the first Ringbearer since Bilbo to give it up willingly, and unlike Bilbo, he had no help...just his love of Frodo. The really critical part was right after Frodo had grabbed the Ring back -- what would be Sam's reaction? With just about anybody else, it would have led to a terrible fight. Sam just knelt there with tears in his eyes, which besides showing that he himself had escaped the Ring's lure also brought Frodo back to his senses.

A little touch of love there in that awful tower at a moment when the Ring should have driven these two apart and betrayed them to its Master -- how wonderful! To lead up to it, it had to be stressed earlier that Sam's nature wasn't to leave Frodo, even if the Quest required it. Thus it was said, when he learned that Frodo was alive, he abandoned the Quest and chased after his Master. Yet the net effect was to save the Quest. Very complex, that.