Quote:
Originally Posted by Boromir88
It's not a matter Frodo having some desire to be a Dark Lord in his heart, while he was wasting space in Bag End.
It wasn't Frodo finally caving into some hidden desire to be a Ring-lord, it was a matter of the Ring being greater than a physically and mentally beaten down Frodo.
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Great thread that really gets to the heart of the matter. And some very insightful observations.
I am inclined, however, to agree overall with Boromir88 that this was not really a case of Frodo's desire to be the Dark Lord, it was a case of the Ring finally destroying Frodo's personality and replacing it with its own. There on the brink of Sammath Naur, it is the Ring pure and simple talking. Here I think the Ring has taken on an identity that is distinct from that of Sauron's, despite Gandalf's statement early in the book that the "Dark Lord and the Ring are one". Frodo's failure, implied by Tolkien, is a failure to resist the destructive power of the Ring, and therefore a failure of strength, rather than moral purpose. Gollum at the end is also completely gone, fried to a crisp (before he falls into the volcano)...
If in the case of Frodo it was merely a matter of his basic character flaws somehow coming to the surface, as might be suggested by too close a comparison with Boromir, then one would expect the description of the gradual decline of Frodo as he approached Sammath Naur to emphasize the surfacing of inner demons. But Tolkien's description emphasizes instead the external malevolence of the Ring of Fire, which appears as an almost physical force beating Frodo down. It is a contest of wills here, and Frodo cannot match that of Sauron...
It seems that Frodo was chosen by Elrond and Gandalf for the quest chiefly because they knew he came with no hidden agendas for power, most similar in this respect to Bilbo, who was able in the end to give it up of his own free will (I doubt we would have had the same conclusion if Bilbo was poised on the brink of Sammath Naur, however).
This interpretation implies, however, that the much more rapid failure of such figures as Boromir (especially) and Isildur (perhaps partly to be expected given the fact that his decision comes also on the brink of Sammath Naur, after witnessing the destruction of first his brother and then his father) to resist the Ring is really a result of the fact that their character flaws removed or at least lowered the obstacles to the Ring's domination of their personalities. One might argue in fact that Boromir never got to the same point of total loss of personality as Frodo does at Sammath Naur, but then he never possessed the Ring.