How unusual that my current problem is that there are so many interesting topics lately that I can’t find the time to keep up with and post in them all! Congratulations all around on the many articulate and thoughtful opinions, here and in other topics.
Stepping back a few posts, I found this comment by Maril to be particularly interesting and relevant to the topic at hand:
Quote:
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His fundamental complaint: never having a choice, he just wished it had never been found. From the very beginning the thing is thrust on him, and in Rivendell, while he would rather stay with Bilbo, he forces himself to do what he must.
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Frodo, to me, has a bit of a martyr complex, if we’re going to try to identify a weakness. He always thinks he has to do it alone, and has a tendency to feel sorry for himself (not, of course, without some justification [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]). I think that we never get a clear sense of what Frodo really wants because he seems to sense on some level the sacrifice he will be called upon to make, and on that same level, he both fears and embraces his fate. A part of him
wants to be the guy who sacrifices himself for the good of the world.
I think the possibility that he actually
relished bearing his particular “cross” is what helped him resist claiming the Ring for himself until the very last moment. It’s the one secret desire that claiming the Ring cannot fulfill. Was Frodo finally brought low by a cunning-but-deceptive vision given to him by the Ring? I agree that that’s one way it can work, but I think by the time Frodo reached the brink of the Crack of Doom, a much less subtle effect had taken hold. I always think back to “The Shadow of the Past”.
Quote:
Of Gollum:
He could not get rid of it. He had no will left in the matter.
Of ‘getting rid’ of the Ring:
A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. Itmay slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care - and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside.
Of the Ring’s power to dominate the user’s will:
It is far more powerful than I ever dared to think at first, so powerful that in the end it would utterly overcome anyone of mortal race who possessed it. It would possess him.
Of Frodo’s inability to will to damage it at Bag End:
Gandalf laughed grimly. ‘You see? Already you too, Frodo, cannot easily let it go, nor will to damage it.’
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I think by the time he was standing at the brink, Frodo had no real will left in the matter.