[davem]

I supppose the question is 'Does Frodo claim the Ring, or does the Ring claim Frodo?'. Frodo must succumb in full consciousness, must be a full player in the cosmic drama - he deserves that. If, after all his struggles, all he has suffered, he is just 'pushed aside' to become merely a passive observer of the action, then he & we have wasted our time & effort.

Frodo is precisely not a 'hollywood hero', he is a human being, & at the last, when it really matters, he makes the wrong choice. He screws up. He has the chance to save the world, be the movie star, score the winning goal, get hoisted up on his team mates' shoulders & get the girl & live happily ever after. The little guy comes through!!!

Nope.

Or he could have been the other kind of movie hero - the one who, though wounded, takes the machine gun & waits for the pursuing bad guys, holding them off in a desperate last stand so his pals can escape, but is finally gunned down to the strains of Rule Brittania or The Stars & Stripes Forever!. Or the one who... well, you get my point.

But he doesn't. He gives in. He goes over to the other side. He sells out his pals. And that's what he does. However much he had suffered, however great his fear, however much he just wanted it all to STOP, just so he could have a rest. In the end some part of him willed his surrender.

Bad guy, turncoat, traitor. Yes, sorry, but that's it. He claimed the Ring. He joined the other side, & didn't care about his friends, the rest of the world, any of it. The whys & wherefores don't matter as much as the fact that he did it.

And what happens to him? Is he punished, executed even? No. He's forgiven. He's forgiven not because Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond & the rest decide 'Well, after all he'd been through we can't really blame him, so we'll let him off this time.' - how pathetic, how 'modern' (or should that be 'post-modern', or 'post-post-modern???). No. He's forgiven precisely because he forgave the sins committed against him.

Whether he's the 'hero' of the story or not depends on what the term means to you. He's not a classic hero - & because of that we shouldn't expect classic heroics from him. He willed what he did - in that deep, untouchable part of his soul. He wasn't simply beaten into submission, so that he couldn't help himself. I agree with Formendacil - Frodo is not a Christ figure.

But Peter springs to mind.