[Firefoot]

Interesting topic that I missed the first time around.

I think Morthoron hit the nail on the head:

I would say that Frodo did not spend his time becoming Sauron; on the contrary, he did not possess the will or need to dominate. The Ring, more coersive and addictive than any drug, simply took control of him where it was at the zenith of its power, in Orodruin.
...
Therefore, the fall of Sauron occurred precisely because Frodo lacked the intent to become Sauron personified, and his mercy and compassion -- virtues utterly alien to the Dark Lord -- compensated for his inevitably succumbing to a power greater than his weakened spirit could handle.

Without the external struggle against Sauron and the Ring, there is no internal struggle for Frodo. Here, the external creates the internal, quite the opposite of Donaldson's statement.

I'd like to comment on a couple other sections of the article as well:

Remember, of course, that he was a Beowulf scholar himself: he was attracted to Beowulf's epic vision. On the other hand, like all the rest of us he was a modern human being and could hardly have been blind to his own life, his own culture, his own religious and psychological milieu. Like all the rest of us, he was caught - tragically caught - between his ability to respond to epic perceptions and his inability to achieve them. And out of that conflict he forged a rather staggering achievement.

He restored the epic to English literature. Roughly a century after the epic became an impossible literary form, he made it possible to write epics again. But - a crucial
but - he did it by divorcing his work entirely from the real world, by insisting that there is no connection between the metaphors of fantasy and the facts of the
modern reality, by rejecting allegory. He claimed that his work was pure fantasy, that it existed solely for itself. And the subtext of that assertion is that it is indeed possible for us to dream about heroism and transcendental love, about grandeur of identity in all its manifestations - but only if we distinguish absolutely between the epic vision and who we actually are as human beings. Tolkien restored our right to dream epic dreams - but only if we understand clearly that those dreams have no connection to the reality of who we are and what we do. [emphasis mine]

Don't completely agree with this either. Just because a work is not allegorical does not mean it does not have connection to the real world. I think any semblance the Legendarium has to something allegorical comes from Tolkien's desire to create something mythological. I think this line at the end of the Sil says it well:

Here ends the Silmarillion; and if it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and If any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

If this isn't at least a little bit reflective of how Tolkien saw our world, I would be surprised.

Honestly, I don't really see how allegory or metaphor is supposed to make fantasy any more or less real or applicable. Just because the character in Donaldson's book (which I haven't read, for the record) travels back and forth between lands and lives out his struggle in this fantasy land doesn't make that fantasy land any more accessible to me in the real world.

I much prefer Orson Scott Card's viewpoint here (from Xenocide):

When you hear a true story, there is a part of you that responds to it regardless of art, regardless of evidence. Let it be the most obvious fabrication and you will still believe whatever truth is in it, because you can not deny truth no matter how shabbily it is dressed.

And that I think is the power of fiction in general - to express some kind of truth about the world, the human condition, or ourselves, and that I think is what speaks to us. I think Donaldson tries to get at this but seems rather hung up on the allegorical aspect.

And just because I thought that Donaldson's article wasn't totally off base, I'd like to quote a bit that I did quite like and do find applicable to fantasy as a genre, LotR included:

In all the rest of modern fantasy, however, the movement is away from futility. The approach of modern fantasy is to externalize, to personify, to embody the void in order to confront it directly. The characters in fantasy novels actually meet their worst fears; they actually face the things that demean them; they actually walk into the dark. And they find answers.

Apparently, the techniques and resources of fantasy - magic and personification, for example - attract writers who want to challenge the void, defy the notion of futility. Searching as they do for ways to meet their own inner voids, they posit fictional situations which allow them to define answers, allow them to say that, "Man is an
effective passion."

(On the other hand, it seems pretty clear that this was written pre-Game of Thrones, which in my opinion rather contrarily embodies the notion of futility. )