[davem]

Well, he couldn't have resisted the power of the Ring, especially at the end, not physically or mentally, but the question is, did his will assent to claiming the Ring. Did he continue to resist spiritually? He was going to get 'stuck' with the Ring at the end anyway, because it would overwhelm anyone, but Galadriel could not only reject the Ring physically & mentally - which Frodo could not at the end, she could also reject it 'spiritually'. I think the fact that Tolkien can relate the words of the Lord's Prayer to those last moments in the Sammath Naur - 'Forgive us our tresspasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us' & refer them specifically to Frodo's act of mercy to Gollum - ie, Frodo 'forgave' Gollum's trespasses against him, & so Frodo was 'forgiven' by The Authority - implies that Tolkien considers that Frodo was in need of 'forgiveness' for something, that he had 'trespassed', gone where he shouldn't have gone, claimed something he had no right to claim. His mercy to Gollum lead The Authority to show him mercy.

None of this makes Frodo a 'bad' person, or lessens his struggle. Frodo was forgiven, by The Authority. Frodo did break in the end, & in the end he failed, but he failed in not trusting & giving in to despair. He couldn't trust in providence, or believe there was hope in the future. He couldn't, in the end, trust The Authority. He couldn't believe that, as Julian of Norwich put it 'For sin is behovely, but all shall be well, & all shall be well, & all manner of thing shall be well'. For Frodo, All had been well, but wouldn't, couldn't, be so any more, because once the Ring had gone, the past would be gone with it. 'The Ring is Mine' - the past is mine, Bilbo, Bag End, the Shire, the Green Dragon, wandering in the woods of the Shire, the innocence of childhood, the comforts of the past, suffused with a golden glow of nostalgia, is mine, & I will keep it forever & ever & ever. The future will never happen. Everything will be preserved for ever, just as I want it. (Just like the Elves. Like Galadriel, wanting to live in a land where the trees & flowers don't die. Like Tolkien himself, perhaps, in the trenches, with his friends dying around him, would have maybe wished to go back to his childhood at Sarehole.)
Its understandable, & not deserving of condemnation - certainly not by us - but it is, in the end, wrong, because it rejects Illuvatar's plan & trust in The Authority. So, Frodo, I think, does 'sin' because he does as the Elves did & 'flirts with Sauron', seeking control & domination, not motivated by malice, but by fear, exhaustion & hopelessness. Galadriel could take the Ring & have everything she'd dreamed of, but is wise enough to know how it would end & humble enough, finally, to trust. Frodo, in the end, did claim it.

Of course, you're right, it was only after he put on the Ring that the fantasies of world dominance surfaced in his mind, but the Ring had taken what was already there, the desires that had tormented him for so long. Those desires were his, not planted by the Ring.

(Isn't this kind of discussion great? I love this [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]