[davem]

Fordim makes some important points (as usual). Its too easy to forget that Frodo is a hobbit from a non-violent culture (no hobbit of the Shire had ever killed another deliberately) who has never encountered physical violence in any form (unless we count Old Man Willow, but that was very ‘dreamlike). There have been warnings, & his room at the Prancing Pony had been ravaged, but now someone, something, had tried to kill him, & the wound he recieved was not even a normal stab wound, but one that could slowly kill him. Clearly he begins to suffer from post traumatic stress, which grows throughout this chapter. Beings are trying to kill him, simply because of the burden he carries. What we see are his attempts to make sense of it, blaming others, himself, circumstances.

What is clear is that he is the kind of person who will turn on himself & blame himself for circumstances outside his control, & we can see a foreshadowing of how he will end up. He makes himself into both a victim of circumstances & at the same time he sees himself as culpable - he has brought things on himself, its all his fault. He failed to act properly. We may feel at the end of the book almost like shaking Frodo & telling him not to blame himself, it wasn't his fault that he succumed to the power of the Ring, & he should forgive himself, but it seems even now that he's not capable of that - as far as he's concerned the terrrible things that happen to him are somehow 'deserved', he brings them on himself through his weakness & foolishness. How many times throughout his journey will he do this?

He also has a tendency to blame himself for the failures of others, as if he's taking their 'sins' onto himself. At the end he can ask Sam to forgive Gollum, even forgive Gollum himself, but he can't forgive himself for the choice Gollum made, & can't bring himself to ask forgiveness for himself, because he seems to feel he's not worthy of it. The Shire has been saved - but not for him, because he doesn't deserve it. Whether we see Tolkien himself, the survivor of the Somme battle that took the lives of two out of his three closest friends is another mattter, but all along what we see in Frodo is 'survivor guilt'. One wonders if he even feels pity for the Ring-wraiths, seeing them as not responsible for their actions, being slaves of the Ring.

Why can't he accept that other's make free choices, & are responsible for their actions, when he sees himself as responsible for everything he himself does? Its like he wants to save everyone else, but can't bring himself to see himself as worthy of being saved himself. He refuses to ride off on Asfaloth, because that would be to 'desert' his friends, its only when Glorfindel points out that if he stayed he'd put them in greater danger than if he goes, that he rides off. Later he won't even let Aragorn look at his wound after the orc stabs him in Moria, because he doesn't want any 'fuss' made.

But has he always been that way, or is it some effect of the Ring on him, some isolating effect? Does it show some perverted sense of being in control, being the one who is responsible for everything?

Mithalwen’s point about crossing the river symbolising death seem important - with each subsequent river crossing Frodo seems to move further & further ‘inward’, towards the source of the ‘magical’ core of Middle earth (as opposed to the ‘mystical’ core) Orodruin, the place where the magic came into being, the place that draws the ringbearers.
(Random thoughts...)