[littlemanpoet]

Child:

When a person is totally immersed in despair, they are incapable of appreciating either goodness or beauty. The fact that Frodo could look on those shores and sense their underlying purity suggests that something in him was still capable of responding to goodness.

No. I must disagree that despair removes one's ability to appreciate goodness or beauty. I speak from personal experience. This simply does not ring true. It is quite possible for Frodo to be in the midst of despair, the world seeming grey to him, and the present goodness and beauty around him not touching him, because it cannot reach past the despair; but other beauty and goodness can reach him; it simply cannot be found where he had always looked before. There is Frodo's Elvish nature, which, because the 3rd age has died, no longer can find fulfillment in Middle Earth.

Davem:

If we accept the 'conceit' behind LotR - it was written by the Hobbits involved - then who exactly wrote the account of Frodo's arrival at the Undying Lands? Sam did.

In this case, the conceit doesn't work. At this point we have omniscient narrator. Not Sam. I really don't think that the conceit does work. (hmmm.... has there ever been a thread about this?) Whereas the conceit serves it purpose as a means of adding to the historical feel of the story, by this point in the story, the conceit is no longer needed, nor affecting the reader. If the reader has stayed with it as far as Frodo's journey across the Sea, the story itself, and all that has transpired, is enough to move the reader, and does so, obviously.

Davem:

I can't see Frodo thinking 'Whoo, yeah! I'll have some of that! Where do I sign up?'

Firefoot:

Frodo could not have known what he would go through when he volunteered to take the Ring in Rivendell.

But Frodo did, at the Council of Elrond, have a notion of what was going to be required when he volunteered to take the Ring; he knew then that it was a sacrificial quest, and likely would end in his own death. He had already experienced the Morgul Blade, and been changed by it. Think of Gandalf's thoughts as he watches Frodo: "to the wizard's eye there was a faint change, just a hint as it were of transparency, about him, and especially about the left hand that lay outside upon the coverlet." And Frodo "signed on". Why would anyone do such a thing? Would you? Would I? The answer is that indeed, some of us, many of us, would. Why? Because we weigh the thing out as did one high priest a couple thousands of years ago: the sacrifice of one is worth the saving of many - even if that one is myself.

Firefoot:

I believe Frodo had hope - not for himself, but for the whole of Middle-earth.

Precisely.

Child:

One of the things that strikes me is how generally moral the Hobbits are, a morality based on instinct rather than formal belief.

It's not really based on instinct. Tolkien's Hobbits are strongly based on pre World War One English society, the culture of which was deeply rooted in Western Christianity. Those underpinnings remain among Tolkien's Shire, even if they have been unmoored from their initial context. This is proven all the more by the familiarity between the Hobbits and the Rohirrim, by which Tokien essentially evokes a time travel within his novel from 19th century England to Anglo-Saxon England of 1000 years previous. In other words, the Hobbits travel back in time as they travel south toward Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor. All of which is to say that the Hobbits' morality is basically God-fearing, even if the text does not say so, per sé.

At the beginning of the story, even, Frodo is different than the other Hobbits, which is in part why Bilbo chose him as his heir. Even here, I suppose, Frodo didn't have a choice. Bilbo made it for him, to be the heir of the Ring. As Child said, davem, when it comes right down to it, none of us has a whole lot of choice in much of anything, only sometimes between the worse, and the lesser, of two evils. Such is fallen/flawed life. And it hurts. Heh. Reminds me of an aphorism I made up for myself: "The essence of humanity is not in the exercise of free will but in the nuanced expression of suffering." Ouch! But I guess I still believe it, two years later.

Dininziliel:

Is it possible to have the opposite outcome where "all is light and full of joy"?

I believe that is is possible. Notice the quote in my sig. It's the essence of being human, I think: "You will be healed in such a way that the harm done to you, and the suffering you endure, will become the stuff of your healing." How this happens, I don't know. Does it happen in LotR? It's hard to say. Does it happen in real life? Absolutely. Thus, it seems to me, that light and joy take up into itself all the darkness and horror and suffering, and transform it into something new. How? It depends on what you believe, I suppose, and it's a little bit what this season is about for some of us.

Well, I haven't waded through the entire thread, but I'm getting long winded here, so I'll post up and be quiet for a bit.

"May your song always be sung." -Bob Dylan

LMP