Frodo's Fall?

[Child of the 7th Age]

The stabbing was only one tiny part of this whole equation. Whether or not Frodo had been stabbed, he was "doomed" to fail. To understand this, you must consider the "real" reason Frodo failed at Mount Doom: the fact that he was a mortal, and inevitably flawed.

Tolkien has told us at least three different places in his Letters that Frodo was in an impossible situation. By definition of who he was, a mortal man with imperfections, he could never succeed in his quest. No finite creature would have been able to throw the Ring into the crack: not Sam, not Aragorn, not even Gandalf in incarnate form. No one within Arda! The stabbing was merely incidental to this.

To put it bluntly, Tolkien believed in the reality of original sin. He perceived man as a finite creature with absolute limitations upon his powers. By going against Sauron, Frodo was in effect taking on all the evils in the world embodied in a single Ring. That meant all the killing, the pettiness, the wars, the jealousy, rage, and darkness you can think of, rolled up in one big bag. It was Tolkien's consistent position that there could be no complete victory over evil until the end of time. Until then, we will only have little victories, puntuated by continuing battles, and numerous defeats.

Listen to Tolkien's words:

I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum--impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved.

The surprising thing is not that Frodo failed to throw away the Ring voluntarily; the surprising thing is that he got as far as he did.

Perhaps, some of this inability to understand Frodo is our own failure to recognize the real nature of most "heroes" in this world. We deceive ourselves into thinking there is some magic wand that will make us morally invincible.

Think of it in contemporary terms. How many of us live a life with no mistakes, no errors, no misteps? Exactly zero. How many times do we come to a critical point or decision in our life and fail to do the right thing? Many, many, and we don't have to do battle directly with the Dark Lord.

Tolkien knew and understood the fatal flaw in mankind. And as much as he loved his little hobbit, he knew that perfection was not possible, and, on his own, Frodo would inevitably fail. It was oly with the intervention of Providence that the quest was able to succeed, a situation made possible by Frodo's show of mercy to Gollum.

The pain of the wound did have some bearing on Frodo's decision to depart to Grey Havens. However, even here, I believe, the real reasons lay deeper. Frodo's own fear that he had failed in his quest, along with the continuing pull of the now destroyed Ring, played as much of a role as the stab wound itself.

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]