Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age

Here's a one-paragraph excerpt from something I'm working on, which has to do with children and heroic tales in Tolkien's legendarium. First, I'll quote the passage from The Lord of the Rings I am discussing in the paragraph that follows. 

Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. (RK 6.i.901)

Sam’s relationship to hearing and telling tales is pretty much the first thing we learn about him, and we learn it in the first real scene in The Lord of the Rings, from the very first character to speak, Sam’s own father, the Gaffer: “crazy about stories of the old days, he is, and he listens to all Mr. Bilbo’s tales” (FR 1.i.24). Despite the Gaffer’s no doubt relentless admonitions about the “trouble too big for you” that awaits Sam in the adventures he longs for, Sam knows at least some heroic poetry by heart and creates some poetry of his own. In response to one of these poems, Frodo jokes that Sam “will end up becoming a wizard—or a warrior” (FR 1.xii.208). Though Sam demurs, it’s no accident that the temptation he faces when he has the Ring takes precisely this form (RK 6.i.901). The warrior he fantasizes about becoming is also familiar. He does not walk, but strides like Aragorn, and wields a flaming sword, which recalls the name of Aragorn's sword, Andúril, the Flame of the West (RK 6.i.901). But then there's the tiniest hint of something darker. For Boromir, who would have been quite familiar with heroic tales since his boyhood, also imagined that "all men would flock to my banner" (FR 2.x.398; RK 6.i.901).