Malacandra: As I pointed out, I think the depiction of Frodo and Sam’s relationship is ambiguous. I would never argue that Tolkien deliberately left great whoppin’ heaps of gay feeling around in the story - even if he weren’t as Catholic as he was, I doubt he would have seen it as appropriate to the Great Northern Epic he was writing. (I seem to recall one of his objections to the Arthurian stories as the formative British myth was that there was too much French sex in them.)
However, I’m not at all convinced that the author’s intent is the primary determinant of what the characters are feeling and thinking. As an author (albiet not a terribly good one), I have often experienced characters running off with a story; that experience is reported often enough by authors far better than I for me to think it’s not just me. And, as a reader, I know I am capable of finding all kinds of jewels hidden in a work that I’m sure the author never left there deliberately. (For a much less epic example, look up “alchemy” and “Harry Potter” on a good search engine; I’m sure Rowling didn’t purposely plant any of that, but there it is.) Once the text has left the author’s hands, it is no longer his/hers alone; the reader becomes an active participant in the creation of the characters, the setting, the story - the whole shebang.
All of which is to say that if this many readers find something, if not directly sexual, at least partaking of longing and unfulfilled sensual promise in Sam’s and Frodo’s relationship, I’m sure not going to say they’re wrong. In particular, if those of us who are not Kinsey Zeroes find recognition in what Sam says and does, I think it’s a little mean-spirited to call it “unjustifiable.” At most, all you can say is that Tolkien didn’t put it there.
I have nothing to say about Aragorn and Arwen, as that all seemed proper muse-like chaste longing to me. Not much erotic tension in it. (Now, Eowyn and Faramir I could write a proper dirty fanfic about . . . 
)
Disclaimer: Yes, I’m certified to teach high school English lit, and yes, the dominant literary philosophy of my training was reader response theory.
Oh, and thank you for your parenthetical disclaimer there; my leaves very definately wilted at that . . . 
“Hey, baby, wanna see my sword of Allendil reforged?”
I’m finally rereading the books, after 30 years, but Tom Bombadill ain’t just singing to that river maiden, I gawrantee.
“Run naked on the grass!”
There’s plenty of unrequited love in Tolkien (Finrod and Amarie for instance - Aragorn weas their engagement Ring some 8,000 years later) – yet if you guys are really digging for satire - look to Legolas and Gimli. Both become tight companions, neither gets married - and both sail to Valinor together in a hand-crafter ship.
I can spell: “Aragorn wears” : Legolas and Gimli sail to Valinor in a hand-crafted ship that may or may not have been called Pink Flamingo
D&R
:smack:
I apologise. It was not aimed at you in the first place. Some people could not have digested my little argument-by-analogy without reading into it an implication that I equated homosexuality with paedophilia, and it was for them, not you, that I put the disclaimer in. If I expressed myself poorly enough that you thought I was insulting you, the fault is mine.
Being in some respects a writer myself, if neither a very good nor a very successful one, I know what you mean about characters ending up doing things that you never thought they would in the first place. However, I would have to be very wary of confusing this tendency with my own tendency to use my characters and their situations to preach about my own pet soap-box issues.
Concerning Sam and Frodo, I still maintain that there isn’t a shred of evidence in the book to argue for anything other than a deep mutual affection and loyalty, and that any tendency on the part of the reader to extrapolate from the occasional non-sexual physical expression of this is entirely a product of the zeitgeist that insists that any same-sex touching must necessarily be a sign of homosexuality, and that anyone who says differently is just in denial.
However, I suspect we shall need to agree to differ, and I do accept that this does not necessarily mean that I am right and am content to let you be wrong. 
Again, let me reiterate my apologies for the offence that, I promise you, was not intended.
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Just noticed your username there, Malacandra. Have you seen a certain product of my old [ahem] High School creativity called Hnakra Wars?
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emphasis mine
Thank you Malacandra.
You have succinctly and articulately summed it up.
Zeitgeist.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Back to the OP.
I think the exchanges in the book between Faramir and Eowyn are pretty sensual. At least very romantic.
Tolkien was emphatically well aware of human sexuality and dealt with some of the seamier issues connected with it in various parts of the Silmarillion, notably the Turin/Nienor relationship.
What people are missing is that the LOTR set out to be a sequel to the Hobbit – a children’s story. And that as it evolved it became a traditional quest epic. Romance and sexuality are not integral to that tradition – they may amplify it as sideline stories, such as the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” in the appendices, but are not part of the plot.
One might equally well criticize the latest Catherine Coulter novel for not discussing how to prevent natural disasters, or, to use CJ’s example, Lord Peter Wimsey for failing to make reference to Taoism.
Two other examples of love (not lust) are Tom Bombadil and Goldberry and the Ents and the Entwives. Neither of which made it into the movies coincidentally.
Although I think Tolkien’s style was totally appropriate, I also LOVE what some modern authors have done by injecting eroticism into a Tolkien-esque framework. One excellent example is George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series.
And while we’re mentioning him, do you think it’s just a happy accident that his name’s like that?
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Strangely, no…
/me checks it out
“Thinly disguised Christian smarminess”, indeed! May you be forgiven!
For me, the most interesting aspect of the books is Lewis’s attempt to contrast mid-c20th Earth morality with an imagined world in which, so to speak, Adam never ate the apple. They certainly don’t work as science fiction.
Pearls before swine? 
However, Hnakra Wars works nicely as a spoof wargame 
Urendi Maleldil
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Regarding Frodo and Sam, while I completely agree that there was no intent on the author’s part to imply anything beyond a deep loving platonic friendship, I also cannot see any harm if any reader should want to read the books as if there were a romantic subtext there. Certainly there’s enough material to embelish upon, and if a person happens to enjoy reading the story imagining the two of them engaging in wild sex after Sam moves into Bag End, leaving poor Rosie to lie alone in the next room listening to their cries of passion, I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t, so long as they don’t fool themselves into thinking that Tolkien had anything of the sort in mind when he wrote it.
Okay, I think we can all agree that the Tolkster never intended for Frodo and Sam to be seen as lovers. And if he were alive today to respond to this idea, he’d probably be aghast and horrified. (He was a remarkably orthodox Catholic, and unless the Church’s views of homosexuality have changed since my childhood, I’m pretty sure they still say that sort of thing is a big no-no. Not only that, it seemed to piss him off endlessly when people read more into his works than he intended- check out his letters for more info on this.)
However, (and Tolkien would probably be the first to admit this) when you get something published, and it is read by thousands of other humans with their own ideas and perceptions, you’ve let a genie out of a bottle than can never be returned. There will be interpretations of your work that are far from what you originally intended, and due to human nature, character sexuality seems to be a large part of that. A work of imagination on such a scale as LotR will be read and re-read and interpreted and re-interpreted by so many different people in so many different cultures/time periods/states of mind that it becomes in effect a game of Whisper Down the Lane- everyone who says anything about the work in question somehow adds to it in a way the author never intended or even foresaw. Once a work leaves your desk it enters into the world and passes out of your control- people will put their own spin on everything.
And I believe that this in no way diminshes or lessens the original work. It still exists entire to be read and interpreted by anyone as they themselves see fit. You take from a book what you want to take from it, and your view of it exists as a seperate thing from both the author’s intent and the view of everyone else who read the book. So if you want Sam and Frodo to be gay, then for you, they’re gay. This might make the story have more personal meaning for you, and that’s always a good thing. If you don’t want them to be gay, then they’re not, and you enjoy the story in your own way, as you see fit. But arguing about canon and what the author truly intended becomes simply an intellectual exercise without much impact on readers’ opinions. Read some fanfiction if you don’t believe me. Does this in any way insult or harm the original work? I don’t believe so; in fact I think it honors it, insofar as people obviously care enough about it to make it more real and more meaningful to them as they read it. So take from LotR what you want- a story of friendship, of love, and of sacrifice in the name of love, whatever that love ultimately means to you.