Ross Raymond Nunamaker

The twelfth installment of the Big Read took place on Monday, 7th September 2026, following the four day extravaganza called Oxonmoot. 

The session covered The Lord of the Rings, Book 4, part 2 (chapters 6-10) and was presented by Olivia Kate Burgham, who was described on the Tolkien Society page as “an independent scholar with an interest in queer history and literature.”

I will also quote the description of her session so as not to misrepresent it with my own interpretation or summary:

“This session explores Sam and Frodo’s relationship in Book IV of The Lord of the Rings through a queer lens – which, simply means really focusing on “that which is at odds with normal” – whether it encompass sexuality, gender, desire, love, or whether it looks at the “queer” in something like descriptions of landscape, weather.

Burgham argues in these chapters that Frodo and Sam’s relationship undergoes a collapsing of the boundaries of normalcy that, in the absence of women and the presence of the love between these characters, becomes queer.”

There were about twenty-five people online and I did stay for the discussion this week.

To begin, the queer lens perspective is to me misleading, because it speaks to two very different things that an individual is expected to accept both individually and collectively.

Let me explain. Queer in its original sense is ‘odd’. It became slang to describe gay men in the 1800s and was adopted in the late 1900s by the gay community as an empowerment movement.

The queer lens that Burgham advocated as I understood the presentation was to accept their being in an odd situation and their being gay, independently and further if it was odd then it must also be gay.

The odd situation arose from leaving the boundaries of normalcy, life in the Shire, which are collapsed as they travel into Mordor. In this odd state with no women, they find love in the absence of women and therefore it is gay. 

She used the descriptions given in the texts to portray a very sensual, intimate, interaction between the Sam and Frodo. 

I think from a distance, extracted and unaware of the context of their situation and dire circumstances of being near death and close to despair the image is fair to make.

Considering the ‘lens’ approach, as she spoke I wondered if a Christian ‘lens might argue that when all is lost, and despair falls upon you, you find love, which is the presence of God. And in God is beauty. And those with beauty are of God. And that is what the scene depicts.’

This would be a far different lens through which to view the scene.

Many stories, particularly involving war and extreme trauma, strip a character to their essence, and from that essence comes the response that yields the fruits of the story. If that were the case, all stories of this nature would be ‘queer’.

The issue relating odd to queer, and if it is odd it is then queer, would mean that nearly every story written was queer. We simply don’t read stories about normal. This is why to be queer some desire, anxiety or repression regarding one’s feelings to the other needs to be present,

While Burgham addressed the breakdown and intimacy of the situation, I don’t recall her pointing to examples of actual eroticism, anxiety regarding either’s emotions for the other in the moment, or desire for one to the other.

In the end, I had no issue with her having this lens, but I didn’t find it made a strong enough case to make the leap for the scene being queer in the sense of gay, while the entire novel is queer in the sense of being odd, or not normal, as is every other story worth reading.