[HairOfTheDog]

I think it is interesting that Merry, rather than Sam, is given the first emphasis in Frodo's circle of friends... Merry accompanying him on his long walks, Sam defending him from the Green Dragon, but introduced as an employee, rather than a close friend. I wonder sometimes if Tolkien’s view of the roles the characters would eventually play was still developing in his own mind as he wrote.

[Penny1]

I noticed that too--both Merry and Pippin were singled out as being Frodo's closest friends while Sam is never mentioned in such terms. And you're right, Merry is the one who is the most involved in Frodo's life. Yet we are given many more glimpses of Sam than we are of M&P at this point--he is more fully developed as a character, as if we're being well set up for him to be the one whose life is most closely bound to Frodo's.

Perhaps the idea is that while Merry and Pippin became Frodo's friends during the peaceful years before the mission begins, Frodo's and Sam's friendship is forged in the trials and hardships of the mission itself. And it is their friendship that makes the biggest impact on the story.

There is also a great deal of "class consciousness" that underpins the story--Merry and Pippin are seen as Frodo's equals in class, while Sam is on a lower rung of society...at the beginning of the story...

-penny

[Overtaxed]

I think it is interesting that Merry, rather than Sam, is given the first emphasis in Frodo's circle of friends...

Frodo doesn't hang out with Sam the way he does with Merry and Pippin. I think that although Frodo is fond of Sam, they are not all that close. After all, you don't hear the Gamgee's being mentioned at all during the Party (they weren't part of the Gross) so I believe they "running" things. Frodo knows how Sam likes hearing about Elves, but he never takes him along on his wanderings to meet any of them.

At the end of Chapter 2 it seems that Frodo hasn't realized how devoted Sam is:

"He won't hurt you," said Frodo, hardly able to keep from laughing, although he was himself startled and rather puzzled.