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Originally Posted by davem
My feeling is that if Frodo did not choose to claim the Ring then he is merely a passive victim of circumstances beyond his control. What makes him a tragic hero is that he does choose, & like Feanor, Turin (& even Sauron & Saruman), he brings his doom on himself by his giving in to desire.
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Hmm... but if you're going to cite Tolkien's intention, you have to go the whole nine yards:
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I do not myself see that the breaking of [Frodo's] mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been – say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.
[...] I think it is clear on reflection to an attentive reader that when his dark times came upon him and he was conscious of being 'wounded by knife sting and tooth and a long burden' (III 268) it was not only nightmare memories of past horrors that afflicted him, but also unreasoning self-reproach: he saw himself and all that he done as a broken failure. 'Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same, for I shall not be the same.' That was actually a temptation out of the Dark, a last flicker of pride: desire to have returned as a 'hero', not content with being a mere instrument of good.
--the oft-quoted Letter #246
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I don't think Tolkien blames Frodo for breaking, and in fact cites Frodo's self-reproach for his failure as unreasonable and, in fact, prideful. In a sense, he implies that it is not Frodo's actions that need to be healed in the West, but his reaction to his actions, if you see what I mean.
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Originally Posted by Kuruharan
I think that by this point the Ring wanted to get inside Mount Doom because that would be where the Ring would think it would be safest.
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Safest. In the one place in Middle-earth where it could be destroyed. Okay. All I know is that if the Ring was sentient, it was one dumb Ring.