New Republic Article

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I believe that I may have implied that I agreed with Mr. Jenkyn's assertion that

Tolkien is unable to convey anything beyond the fact of a psychic wound--no enlargement or transformation of experience, and no philosophy of grand disillusionment, either.

Whilst, as I mentioned in a past posting, I do not believe that these things are necessary in a classic novel, it is by no means fair to accuse The Lord of the Rings of the deficiency. As regards Frodo's spiritual growth, note the changing attitude to distasteful characters: in The Shadow of the Past he says of Gollum:

What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!

but in The Scouring of the Shire he says of Saruman:

Do not kill him even now. For he has not hurt me. And in any case I do not wish him to be slain in this evil mood. He was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against. He is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it.

This change is all the more striking in that Frodo's words to Gandalf are spoken when Gollum's wicked deeds are only a matter of hearsay; but the later request is made of a character who has spoiled Frodo's homeland and imprisoned his friends, and who has just tried to kill him. Clearly Frodo has learned a great deal about the nature and need of mercy, as even Saruman admits:

You have grown, Halfling...Yes, you have grown very much...

If this is the nothing that Frodo has learned, I hope that I may learn so little in my lifetime!
As for the grand disillusionment: Frodo knows at the beginning of his quest that his story is to be no "there and back again", so one can scarcely expect him to feel disappointed when this proves to be the case. There is, however, a sense of disillusionment in the situation in which he finds himself, with his efforts unappreciated (he is far too wise in himself by the end to desire appreciation, but Sam feels the sting of it) and his home, long an imagined haven, changed beyond recognition.
Perhaps in this we may catch a glimpse into the mind of "a jobless soldier in 1918":1 Tolkien and many like him had fought a war of mechanical savagery for four years, enduring terrible hardships, wounds, sickness, horror and the loss of close friends. At home, they were accused of everything from incompetence to cowardice, so that by the end poets like Siegfried Sassoon were heaping invective on jingoistic British civilians, whilst the likes of Wilfred Owen were speaking with great sympathy about the German soldiery (as evinced by the line in Strange Meeting: "I am the enemy you killed my friend..." - the italics are mine). The attitude of many soldiers towards their countrymen at home is summed up in the following lines by E.A. Mackintosh:

'Lads, you're wanted, go and help.'
On the railway carriage wall
Stuck the poster, and I thought
Of the hands that penned the call.

Fat civilians wishing they
'Could go and fight the Hun.'
Can't you see them thanking God
That they're over forty-one?

Girls with feathers, vulgar songs -
Washy verse on England's need -
God - and don't we damned well know
How the message ought to read.

'Lads, you're wanted! over there,'
Shiver in the morning dew,
More poor devils like yourselves
Waiting to be killed by you

2

When Tolkien returned home, he was changed by his experiences, and the homes fit for heroes promised by Lloyd-George were nowhere to be seen. Frodo returns to just such a deformed parody of the Shire, tempered by suffering and tired of war, yet unable to rest and unappreciated for what he has already done. If he feels no disillusionment it is precisely because he has grown. The sadness is for Sam to feel and for the narrator to express, so that by his lack of complaint Frodo may seem all the greater, and his homecoming seem all the more bitter to the reader.
I wonder that anyone with any degree of sensitivity could miss this mood on a thorough and mature reading of the story, and for this reason I cannot ascribe such a reading to the Oxford critic.

1: Tolkien's description of himself at the time in his Valedictory Address (1959)

2: First four stanzas of Recruiting, taken from Up the Line to Death - the War Poets 1914-1918,edited by Brian Gardner (Methuen, 1967)