LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 3 - Mount Doom

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by davem

My feeling is that if Frodo did not choose to claim the Ring then he is merely a passive victim of circumstances beyond his control. What makes him a tragic hero is that he does choose, & like Feanor, Turin (& even Sauron & Saruman), he brings his doom on himself by his giving in to desire.

Hmm... but if you're going to cite Tolkien's intention, you have to go the whole nine yards:

I do not myself see that the breaking of [Frodo's] mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been – say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.

[...] I think it is clear on reflection to an attentive reader that when his dark times came upon him and he was conscious of being 'wounded by knife sting and tooth and a long burden' (III 268) it was not only nightmare memories of past horrors that afflicted him, but also unreasoning self-reproach: he saw himself and all that he done as a broken failure. 'Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same, for I shall not be the same.' That was actually a temptation out of the Dark, a last flicker of pride: desire to have returned as a 'hero', not content with being a mere instrument of good.

--the oft-quoted Letter #246

I don't think Tolkien blames Frodo for breaking, and in fact cites Frodo's self-reproach for his failure as unreasonable and, in fact, prideful. In a sense, he implies that it is not Frodo's actions that need to be healed in the West, but his reaction to his actions, if you see what I mean.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

I think that by this point the Ring wanted to get inside Mount Doom because that would be where the Ring would think it would be safest.

Safest. In the one place in Middle-earth where it could be destroyed. Okay. All I know is that if the Ring was sentient, it was one dumb Ring.

[davem]

Fordim I'll see your 'Letter 246' & raise you CT (again)

Frodo's words 'But I cannot do what I have come to do' were changed subsequently on the B text to 'But I do not choose now to do what I have come to do.' I do not think that the difference is very significant, since it was already a central element in the outlines that Frodo would choose to keep the Ring himself; the change in his words does no more than emphasize that he fully willed his act.( Sauron Defeated)

[Kuruharan]

Safest. In the one place in Middle-earth where it could be destroyed. Okay. All I know is that if the Ring was sentient, it was one dumb Ring.

It may have been the one place where it could have been destoryed, but it was also the one place where somebody would be the least capable of acting to do so (as I believe everyone is in the process of repeatedly establishing).

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I think, as is so often the case around here, that the difference is one of semantics: davem says "constrained choice" I say "no choice" but it all adds up to the same thing. It's an established fact that nobody can withstand torture -- Hollywood's vision of the man strong enough to resist torture is a myth: this is why CIA agents always have cyanide pills: because their political masters (who are masters in the art of torture themselves) know that there is no one who can't be broken. Sometimes, if the torturer is sloppy, the subject dies before he or she breaks, but that's the only way the victim can 'win'.

This is what happens to Frodo: he is broken by the Ring after enduring torture far beyond what anyone could have expected of him: the only way to have avoided taking the Ring would have been to die on the way to Mount Doom. His decision to take the Ring is no more a "free" or "willed" choice than is the "choice" of a torture victim to reveal what he or she knows. Yeah, sure, the person being burnt by a blowtorch chooses to talk, but that's not really what I would call a failure of their will or of their moral fibre. What that moment is about is the violence and evil of the torturer, not the supposed weakness of the victim.

The purpose of torture is not to force the person to talk ("tell us what we want to know and the pain will stop") -- it's not a bargain. The purpose of torture is to remove the victim's ability to think or decide rationally, in which case the choice is not 'really' his or hers at all.

As to the supposed lack of heroism for Frodo looked at this way, well, I look at him this way and he's a hero to me. Am I wrong? It seems to me an odd argument: Frodo is heroic because he chose evil. It seems even odder to me to argue that a Catholic writer would not portray as heroic someone who is "a passive victim"....I've read the Bible and I don't recall Christ leaping from the cross and smiting folk with thunderbolts! And as far as I can remember, Mary cried for her son, but didn't exactly storm the castle of Pontius Pilate!

davem, flattering as it may be for me to be confused with Mister Underhill, it was he, not I, who cited letter 246....although I would have.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

As to the supposed lack of heroism for Frodo looked at this way, well, I look at him this way and he's a hero to me. Am I wrong? It seems to me an odd argument: Frodo is heroic because he chose evil. It seems even odder to me to argue that a Catholic writer would not portray as heroic someone who is "a passive victim"....I've read the Bible and I don't recall Christ leaping from the cross and smiting folk with thunderbolts! And as far as I can remember, Mary cried for her son, but didn't exactly storm the castle of Pontius Pilate!

Ah, but to waken that old monster that is "Allegory", Tolkien says that he did NOT write the Lord of the Rings as an allegory, and so Frodo is NOT intended to be a Christ figure.

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

Ah, but to waken that old monster that is "Allegory", Tolkien says that he did NOT write the Lord of the Rings as an allegory, and so Frodo is NOT intended to be a Christ figure.

I did not say that he was -- I only point out that it is untenable to argue that because LotR is Catholic (and I'm not sure that it is) then Frodo cannot be seen as a passive victim; quite the opposite really, insofar as Catholicism is founded on the worship of someone who accepted his role as a passive victim.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

I did not say that he was -- I only point out that it is untenable to argue that because LotR is Catholic (and I'm not sure that it is) then Frodo cannot be seen as a passive victim; quite the opposite really, insofar as Catholicism is founded on the worship of someone who accepted his role as a passive victim.

I guess the question then is whether or not Frodo is the hero of the book... My point is made in defence of the idea that Frodo is not necessarily to be taken as a passive victim. He could be, if one holds your views, but I personally don't see him as such, nor as the true hero. The true hero is Sam, with Aragorn, Merry, and Pippin as runner-ups. Those four all find themselves BETTER at the end of the book than at the beginning, they have all gone through the maturing process of heroification.

Frodo, more than anyone else on the "good" side, ends up less heroic than he did at the beginning. In the first part of the book this is not the case. Up until Rivendell he matures and becomes wiser as befits a hero. But from there on in, we see him slowly descend into a less worthy character. He becomes, in our eyes, weaker. He is still the central character, but he is no longer a "hero".

An anti-hero, perhaps...

[Lalwendë]

But he's gone now beyond recall, gone forever.'

'Yes,' said Frodo. 'But do you remember Gandalf's words: Even Gollum may have something yet to do? But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things, Sam.'

Frodo could not destroy the Ring, he admits it. In fact, nobody could have destroyed the Ring. That is the point of it, whether sentient or not, whether it has a will or not, nobody could destroy it. It's like the story of Pandora's Box - once that has been opened, once the knowledge is 'out there', it cannot be undone.

But the Ring is destroyed, whether through the hand of Eru, fate or just plain bad luck for Gollum and his big flapping feet, it does get destroyed. That to me is the whole point of this; it turns out that nobody can choose to destroy this thing, but nevertheless it is destroyed. Not only that, but unlike the knowledge that is released from Pandora's Box, the Ring is quite literally unmade, because with it, Sauron is destroyed and any inkling of how to make another one just like it. That's the joy at the end, knowing that unlike horrors of our own world that cannot be unmade, in Middle-earth this is possible.

And I would say that to unmake something to such a satisfying degree, it is far better that it is done so in a surprising fashion. Did anyone in Middle-earth expect that Sauron himself would be obliterated, or did they expect the destruction of the Ring would just 'mortally wound' him, annihilation to come at a later stage?

Then at the end, we are confronted not with heroes, but with ordinary people seeing pure chance take a hand in things. Frodo and Gollum both have suffered to get to this stage, that was the heroic part, not the destruction of the Ring. I find that perfectly, well, just perfect! There will be no crowing hero, no 'all-mighty destroyer of the Ring' who can brag that they did what nobody else managed to do. Gollum fell over his own feet and that was that.

At the end, which is the perfect end, Gollum who we cannot see existing without this Ring is dead, but his death was not meaningless. What's more, he was 'forgiven' by the one person from whom forgiveness would really count for something, and that was Frodo, who in the end was just like him.