Letting logic guide him rather than emotion, Sam has made up his mind to leave Frodo’s body where it is and take the Ring to Mount Doom all by himself… except that he hasn’t, and soon the arrival of Orcs in the passage spurs him to go back and protect his fallen master from the defilements of Sauron’s servants or die valiantly in the attempt. We see the Ring find a new bearer, offer word-nerdery on a slightly less vulgar Orc insult, and discuss parallels in this chapter to Húrin’s last stand (and Beorhtnoth’s). Plus, who really put the words in Sam’s mouth to invoke Elbereth?
Recommended Reading:
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback) “The Choices of Master Samwise”, pp. 715-20
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Hobbit (Mariner Books, paperback)
Tolkien, J. R. R. and Douglas A. Anderson, ed. The Annotated Hobbit (HarperCollins, hardcover)Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) The Silmarillion (Mariner Books, paperback)
Tolkien, J. R. R. Tree and Leaf: Including “Mythopoeia” (HarperCollins, paperback)
Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, paperback)
About the Elbereth question — I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the invocation of Elbereth is very like Orestes’ invocation of Athena to protect him from the Furies. Sam cries
“O Elbereth Starkindler from heaven gazing-afar, to thee I cry now in the shadow of (the fear of) death. O look towards me, Everwhite!”
— translation in Letter 211
Orestes, embracing the statue of Athena, cries
“Oh, let her come — as a goddess, she hears even from far away — to be my deliverer from distress!”
— Aeschylus, The Furies line 295
I think the Cirith Ungol sequence is a set-piece of Faerian drama:
“those plays which according to abundant records the elves have often presented to men … If you are present at a Faerian drama you yourself are, or think you are, bodily inside its Secondary World”
— On Fairy-stories para 74
Which does raise the question, who is the dramatist? One can only suppose it is the Elves, or Galadriel herself — but only guess as to how it is done.