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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.
It would not be shocking (it would not hurt so much either) if Frodo's mind & will was overwhellmed by the Ring & by his sufferings & effectively turned into an automaton. What hit me from my first reading, & still does to this day, was a sense of deep shock &, dare I say it, betrayal. I'd struggled along with Frodo, willed him to get to the Fire & cast in the Ring & he let me down. In the end he took it for himself. He broke my heart!
Sorry Fordim, but your version takes all that away, makes him into a pathetic figure, someone to feel sad about. Not a master of his fate, a captain of his soul, a heroic failure. Frodo is a hero for our time, he speaks to us so profoundly, precisely because he failed, because he surrendered, because, in the end, just when he was about to win through, he threw it all away, took the easy way out.
And the point is, he knew he'd done that - Tolkien states that in his final days in the Shire he felt like a 'broken failure'. In the end he wanted that Ring & took it - & that's why we feel so close to him - because if we were in his position we'd have done the same & we know it, dammit!
I love Frodo because he's Everyman. He's both a heroic failure & a tragic hero at the same time. We watch him at that moment when he claims the Ring & we think 'You bloody fool!!!' & we weep for him & for ourselves.
'Heroic failure', 'tragic hero', or, in short, Everyman.
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