[Amarinth]

i'm sorry i just saw this thread, it's interesting what's posted here. funny, though, i too did intuit some light-and-dark pairs in lotr, but not in the way you and the others did, shadowfax.

one was boromir and faramir-a heartbreaking contrast of pride and wisdom, self-destruction and selflessness. faramir was such a far cry from boromir that he almost comes across as a mitigating or redeeming member of the house of stewards.

smeagol and gollum was all-in-one for me, and a point in tolkien's superb genius for vividly illustrating the internal battle of good vs. evil, of good ultimately coming out of evil that had seemingly won.

gandalf and saruman are spoken for. and so on...

agree that frodo and the hobbits are pure, unlike the stained seed of greater men, and this pureness is the source of their native strength. there is no native evil in frodo, but he was "marred", just like galadriel was after falling under the doom of mandos by following feanor. both made wrong choices at one time, but these were not necessarily evil or "dark" choices nor did these necessarily mean the existence of a "dark side". i think they just meant the possibility for wrong choices for both the weak and the great.

having said all, i do but acknowledge that there may have been no conscious effort on tolkien's part to pair off one character of light with another of dark. maybe he was just trying to show that all are fallible, but that it is the entirety of our being and not any singular choice that we've made that defines our soul.

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every man's life is a path to the truth -- hesse