davem,
Yes, I do like these discussions... quite a bit.
Meanwhile, you've caught me without Letters... again. But in Letters if I may paraphrase, Tolkien discusses the difference between a moral failure and a failure that comes from being utterly spent. He says that one cannot judge the two alike.
Let me try an example of my own... let's suppose two men are each supposed to carry a message to a king. The first is twenty-seven miles away from the king. The second is half-a-mile from the king.
The first runs twenty-six miles and drops dead of a heart attack. The second (who only has to run half a mile) just gives up and chooses instead to get a cup of coffee. The half-miler who gave up is a Moral failure. He was able; he had plenty of miles left in him to spend; but he chose to give up.
The first, however, completely spent himself trying to deliver the message. He gave himself over to his mission. The king did not get the message, true; but one can hardly fault the messenger; he did all he was able to do. He was utterly spent.
Tolkien discusses this difference between failing at something you CAN do (the man who chose to give up during his half-mile run) and failing at somthing you CANNOT do (the man who died on Mile 26.)
His point is that Frodo's body AND will had been utterly spent, and he had been placed in an impossible situation. There was no way he could have thrown the Ring in. In both will and body, he was utterly spent.
Tolkien says that Frodo's failure, since he was utterly spent in will and body, was not a moral failure, any more than if he had failed in the quest because for instance he was killed by a large falling rock. We wouldn't call that sin. We'd call that being flattened. Frodo was flattened, and put in a situation completely beyond his ability. He was honored because he got that far, which nobody else would have been able to do.
Tolkien says that Frodo was at peace once the Ring was destroyed. Peace is key. He's neither under conviction nor condemnation (if you understand the Christianese; if not let me know, I'll explain.) Anyway, he was at peace immediately after the experience at the Sammath Naur. Tolkien does qualify that he also expects to die, however. But that doesn't happen-- no glorious martyr's death.
If anything, Tolkien says that his sins come in later.
One of them is pride, in that he wished he could have come home (or die) a hero instead of coming home quietly as a "tool of Providence." The other, was that he was tempted to regret the destruction of the Ring and *still to desire it*. ("It is gone, and now all is dark and empty." )
Pride, regretting the destruction of the Ring and desiring still to posess it, those three things are what Tolkien clearly pinpoints as Frodo's sin, and what he cannot get past. For that, he sails west to what TOlkien describes as a purgatory and a reward both; to understand his true place both "in littleness and greatness."
EDIT:
Rereading your post and seeing this
Quote:
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did his will assent to claiming the Ring
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I believe, if I uderstand what I've read, that Tolkien would say, No, he had no will left. I think this is what TOlkien means by saying that his will had been "utterly spent" along with his body. (I wish I could say what letter that was; I'll look it up tonight if nobody beats me to it.)
ANOTHER EDIT:
Sharon, I think I just explained why I don't think Frodo put the ring on intending to rule. Because of that line of Tolkien's: "His will and body were utterly spent." According to Tolkien, he had no will left; he had spent every scrap of it in getting there.
When he says "I do not choose to do what I have come to do. I will not do this thing. The Ring is Mine.", I don't see that as Frodo choosing, *willing*, a new outlook and change of plans. Tolkien says his will is spent, so how could he choose? What he does "choose to do", if choice you call it under such circumstances, is to submit to the Ring and stop resisting it. I see that as an ultimate surrender to the Ring itself. I see that as, he is so spent, he cannot resist the domination of the ring for another moment. He simply surrenders to the Ring because he is utterly spent, and overwhelmed. He obeys it instead of resisting it.
At that point, the Ring owns him. It takes over. All of its' powers are free to work, and they do, like an avalanche. Because his will and body have been "utterly spent", he cannot resist it at all, and he becomes its tool; he belongs to it, and not the other way around.
<font size=1 color=339966>[ 10:35 AM January 20, 2004: Message edited by: mark12_30 ]