LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 3 - Mount Doom

[Alphaelin]

Well, I'm back.

(At least for a few days.) Luckily I caught up with Frodo & Sam in time to comment on this chapter...as Esty says, *the* chapter we've all been waiting for since the Quest began. I always have to put the book down after I'm done with this one, just to catch my breath. The Quest to destroy the Ring teeters on "the knife-edge of doom" right up to the last minute, however slapstick the final moments are.

I've always read Frodo's words as he claimed the ring in Sammath Naur as being spoken with full consciousness and will; Formendacil's comment about when Frodo decided to take control of the Ring makes sense in that way --

But I do know that FRODO would want Gollum gone. I think everyone here knows why Frodo would want Gollum gone. And if Frodo was acting with such power, the Ring seems the most likely source of it, as well as the most likely object to be the "Circle of Fire".

If so, then this is Frodo's first real use of the Ring's power. He has, Bilbo-esque, used it to turn invisible and escape, but this is his first use of it as if he were a lord, using its power for dominion over another person. As I said, it forebodes, to me, his claiming of the Ring only paragraphs later.

-- but I have to wonder why Sauron didn't sense Frodo's presence on Mount Doom at that point, instead of moments later. Did another person have to wear the Ring and make a verbal claim to it? I like Formendacil's idea a lot -- I just wonder about Sauron's lack of reaction.

I remember when reading LOTR for the first time how shocking I found the idea of Frodo refusing to finish the Quest and *Gollum* being the one who actually got the Ring into the Cracks of Doom. And yet...it is poetic justice. One, Evil ends up destroying itself. Two, the reason Gollum is alive at the end is through the compassion, the 'weakness', if you will, of Bilbo, Frodo and Sam. Three, it could be construed as Good using Evil, in the person of Gollum, to obtain a good end.

But we still ask why Frodo put aside the quest when he had all but attained it?!? My own thoughts are that it is Frodo's mental and physical exhaustion combined with one last desparate burst of effort from the Ring to save itself and reach its master. It is interesting to reflect how differently the story would have turned out if Frodo had gone into Mordor alone, or if Gollum had been killed off earlier!