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....although trauma teaches people many things, and you may survive it, many like Frodo do not really survive it.
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Lalwende,
Perhaps that's why Frodo rings true for many people yet vastly irritates others, who see him as hapless victim and may blame him for his inability to deal with loss. Even in the seventh age, it is an experience we can tap into. We may not be individually trudging across Mordor with the Ring, but the experience of loss and change is so central to life that we are inevitably moved by it. Some folk pick up such a load of grief and heartache in a lifetime that it essentially changes their basic nature.
The problem here is that the reader is left behind on the shore watching the ship depart and does not know what, if anything, comes later. Are we simply looking at a representation of death, or were the shores of Tol Eressea able to bring healing? How much of that healing lay in the land and how much lay in Frodo's ability to respond and change?
So perhaps Frodo hasn't grown "too much" but rather he's reached a point where further growth seems so painful that he is unwilling to try it. It all gets down to the question of how we regard Frodo's departure for the West. Is he merely fleeing in distress because he is afraid to stay in the Shire, or is there the germ of an honest attempt to reach out for a warmer environment where change and growth are possible? Perhaps the mere willingness to change, to leave one environment for another, is an indication that he is capable of further change and growth.
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he may as well be dead to us as he has gone where others cannot follow.
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I'm not so sure. That wasn't the feeling I had when I watched the boat sail outward. We at least know something about the nature of Aman and what awaits Frodo, unlike the puzzle of physical death. What sticks in my head from that final chapter is the image from the Bombadil dream sequence, now repeated and implicitly made real. The grey rain curtain turned to silver and the green country under a swift sunrise do leave me with the hope that Frodo was capable of change within the blessed lands. The fact that Bilbo was with him and was going to need Frodo's help also lifted the darkness a bit. If Frodo was capable of responding to Bilbo's need, and I believe he could, then there was the possibility that he could grow beyond the point where he currently was. If that is not the case, then the ending is indeed very bleak and somehow I can't accept that. I guess I'm a hopeless romantic.
As to the comparison of Harry and Frodo, it is thin at best. The comparison breaks down at a lot of points, even before we've read that final book. But it will be interesting to see what kind of ending the author gives to her character and to what degree she was influenced by Tolkien, since she was certainly influenced by Tolkien in certain aspects of her story.