[mark12_30]

Sharon, I do think we are seeing it differently... as usual? [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

In terms of Tolkien's previous texts: I don't see that they guaranteed what is behind the final text. There is much that between the early sketches and the final version.
In the earlier versions Frodo puts the Ring on outside the Sammath Naur; this was not crossed out, but it was tossed.
"He struggles to take off the Ring and cannot." Tossed.
"Here we will perish together, said the Wizard King. But Frodo draws Sting. He no longer has any fear whatsoever. Frodo is master of the Black Riders. He commands the Black Rider to follow the Ring his master and drives it into the Fire." Tossed.
In the same vein, Frodo's decision about world domination occuring to him outside the Sammath Naur and claiming the Ring outside the Sammath Naur were both also tossed.
Frodo doesn't put on the Ring til he's standing on the edge of the chasm, and the final text says nothing about world domination. It simply says, "I will not do this deed. The Ring is Mine."

Tolkien also writes as a footnote to letter 246:

"Actually, since the events at the Cracks of Doom would obviously be vital to the tale, I made several sketches or trial versions at various stages in the narrative-- but none of them were used, and none of them much resembled what is actually reported in the finished story."

The quotes from the letters look to me like they apply to after he put the Ring on. Before he put it on, I think his struggle was the same as the one he had back beside his own fireplace.

Once he put it on, then yes, its heady, raw power got to him instantaneously and he was overwhelmed; just as Sam was pretty quickly when he wore the Ring near Minas Morgul, imaginng Sam's Great Big Garden. So also with Frodo. Once he put it on, yes; the fantasies multiplied. But in the final version I don't think that's why he put it on in the first place.

We've seen Frodo again and again demonstrate violent posessiveness over the Ring, towards Gollum but also especially towards Sam. Gollum's attack just before they got to the doorway was all about posessiveness again:

This was probably the only thing that could have roused the dying embers of Frodo's heart and will: an attack, an attempt to wrest his treasure from him by force.

Meanwhile, in the Letters, it's precisely the letter that Lyta quotes that convinces me otherwise; that the decision to rule as 'Wise and Gentle Emperor Frodo' took effect AFTER he put on the Ring. I think that's why Tolkien left it out of the final version.

From the same area that Lyta quotes:

They (the Nazgul) would have greeted Frodo as Lord. With fair speeches they would have induced him to leave the Sammath Naur-- for instance 'to look upon his new kingdom, and behold afar with his new sight the abode of power that he must now claim and turn to his own purposes.'

There, I see an echo of the very same sales-pitch that I imagine the Ring gave Frodo the moment he put it on. However, Tolkien continues:

Once outside the chamber wile he was gazing some of them would probably have destroyed the entrance. Frodo would by then probably have been already too enmeshed in great plans of reformed rule-- like but far greater and and wider that the vision that tempted Sam-- to heed this. But if he still preserved some sanity and partly understood the significance of it, so that he refused to go with them to Barad Dur, they would simply have waited.

"Sanity" to me is the key word to that whole passage. "Sanity" points me to the Shadow of the Past, and Gandalf's repeated statements: if anyone tried to take it from you, you would go mad. Posession again.
And just as Sam recovered from his megalomania, Tolkien implies that Frodo would have recovered too, if he had had time-- and if he had not been so desperate not to lose, as Tolkien calls it, "his treasure."

One page previous, Tolkien says this: (letter 246) which begins by talking about Gollum:

Certainly at some point not long before the end he would have stolen the Ring or taken it by violence (as he does in the actual Tale.) But 'posession' satisfied, I think he would have then sacrificed himself for Frodo's sake and voluntarily cast himself into the abyss.

I think that an effect of his partial regeneration by love would have been a clearer vision when he claimed the Ring. He would have perceived the evil of Sauron, and suddenly realized that he could not use the Ring and had not the strength or stature to keep it in Sauron's despite: the only way to keep it and hurt Sauron was to destroy it and himself together--and in a flash he may have seen that this would also have been the greatest service to Frodo. Frodo in the tale actually takes the Ring and claims it, and certainly he too would have had a clear vision-- but he was not given any time: he was immediately attacked by Gollum. When Sauron was aware of the siezure of the Ring his one hope was in its power: that the claimant would be unable to relinquish it (my italics, posession again) until Sauron had time to deal with him. Frodo too would then probably, if not attacked, have had to take the same way: cast himself with the Ring into the Abyss. If not he would of course have completely failed.

So Tokien takes the stance that if Frodo had put on the Ring, claimed it, and then had time to *think*, he would have realized the folly of trying to use it to rule (as did Sam). But he had no time. And rather than giving up the Ring, Frodo would have gone into the abyss with it.

Going back to letter 246, Tolkien says this:

however that may be explained, he had not in fact cast away the Ring by a voluntary act: he was tempted to regret its destruction, and still to desire it.

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 1:34 PM January 19, 2004: Message edited by: mark12_30 ]