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Originally Posted by Wiscott
I think you may be asking the wrong question. It is not really "who was the true hero" but "who do we learn from most?"
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However, when it comes down to it, Sam is the character you identify with, not Frodo. Frodo's role is tragic, because he does succumb in the end. By the time the ring was destroyed, the noble attitude that drove Frodo to make his choice was all but gone. The reader begins the story identifying with Frodo, but ends it identifying with Sam because he is more human.
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Well said Wiscott. But I also think there are some other problems here too. One of them is the "writing out the thing I'm after" -stuff by J.R.R..
What I mean is: look at the "main roles" in LotR. So full of life and character all of them! Bilbo with his earlier travels and the thirst to make all of his last days, his love of Elves, his past with the ring.... Sam with Rose in his head through the journey, his garden, the cooking, the empathy... Aragorn with his major internal fights between the woman and the Elven maiden (add all the symbolism here), the conflict between his "fate" and his initial nature... Boromir & Faramir with their father, contradicting loyalities and the similarities & differences in their personalities... And one could go on.
But what is there for Frodo? Just being the hero. As a character I see him as a shallow one, at least when comparing him to others (aside with Legolas, who's somewhat an empty "hero" too). Somehow Frodo never gets "the flesh over the bones" (as the Finnish idiom makes it) as he is just the vessel of the story. The hero without a personality, without affinities, without feelings that would relate him to the world around him.
Surely Tolkien spends a lot of time trying to make these connections, but often they seem to be more like abstract ideas or ideals dressed into the story (pity, accepting a preordained fate, standing for one's values etc.) than building a real living character in the story. So being a hero in a story with moral connotations thins the character?