Ugh -- I can't think of anything more repulsive or demeaning than Frodo having to be forgiven by his friends for his supposed moral failure. "Nice job saving the world... except for that part at the end where you claimed the Ring. Yeah. We're gonna have to think that one over and see if we can forgive you on that one. We'll get back to you." Lord. It reminds me of that scene in
Cool Hand Luke where Luke is finally broken and all his 'friends' turn away from him in disgust. What's missing from such a judgment, as Tolkien notes in the aforementioned letter, is mercy.
What is happening here is not a refusal to acknowledge Frodo's sins. Everyone here defending him has said he's not perfect nor without sin nor a saint. What is happening is a judgment tempered by understanding of the circumstances. By empathy and mercy. Holding Frodo to a superhuman standard is what demeans his humanity. It implies, "I could have done better." And to say that Frodo needs to be forgiven is to imply that he could have --
should have -- overcome the Ring and thrown it into the fire. Surely, Frodo feels that guilt -- both for craving the Ring even after its destruction and for not having the strength to throw it into the fire himself -- but in the end
that's what he needs to be healed of.
The Ring Quest was Frodo's
Kobayashi Maru test. His solution may not have been as glamorous as Spock's, but it was just as successful.