LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 3 - Mount Doom

[Firefoot]

Alphaelin - I agree with everything you said right up to your fourth paragraph. Claiming the Ring was the only option. Our difference of opinion is in that where you think Frodo fully wanted to claim the Ring, made that choice, I think that it was more like his will gave out. You can only build a tower of blocks up so high before it collapses.

[davem]

So, Frodo is not allowed to be human, to 'sin'? He must be a saint, & if he does anything we don't like, well, he wasn't really there.

Of course he was broken by what he had been through, but he gave in - probably long before he got to the Fire - look at the times he threatened Gollum with destruction - first in the Emyn Muil, second on the slopes of Mount Doom. On some level, at some time he said 'Yes' to the Ring. That was his 'sin'. And that one 'Yes' overrides all the 'No's' he ever uttered. But because he had forgiven others he himself was forgiven.

Reasons are not justifications.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Fordim

His suffering is not what makes him heroic (there's nothing ennobling about agony) his perseverance does.

Criminey! Frodo tamed Smeagol, got past Shelob, walked through Mordor and climbed Mount Doom, all while the Ring got stronger. He could never have done it without Sam to be sure -- but he did do it. It always drives me wild when people say, after all that, Frodo 'failed' in his quest. That his will was weak or that he was somehow not up to it.....

I agree that it is his perseverance that makes him heroic. Destroying the Ring is not his greatest feat because he did not do it; it was the getting to the Sammath Naur that was his greatest feat and it is this that almost breaks him. I would say that what finally does break him is the realisation that he could not carry out the final act. It is like suddenly facing his own mortality and it leaves him shattered.

To acknowledge that Frodo 'failed' in the final step is not to say that he was weak as I think that nobody could have done this. Whether anyone else apart from Frodo could have managed to get the Ring to the Sammath Naur is another matter.

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by Fordim

His suffering is not what makes him heroic (there's nothing ennobling about agony) his perseverance does.

I'd even go another step and say his perseverance and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of others are what make him heroic.

Frodo is hardly a passive victim in this reading. He drove himself into a situation in which the only foreseeable outcome was the breaking of his mind under the influence of the Ring. He sacrificed himself, as surely as if he had thrown himself on a grenade. In so doing, he produced a situation which led to the destruction of the Ring.

Frodo isn't a saint. But neither is he a turncoat. What he himself fails to understand is that his tale (and all true acts of heroism, I think) is not about the triumph of the will or the triumph of power, it's about the triumph of sacrifice -- the triumph of love, really, of which sacrifice is perhaps the most perfect expression.

Footnote: Some of these sentiments were expressed earlier in an old thread titled "What caused Frodo to finally give in to the power of the Ring and claim it?", which may interest students of ancient Downs lore.

[davem]

What we're talking about is not Frodo's suffering & sacrifice throughout the Quest but what he does at the end, & why he does it. At the end he claims the Ring. Yes, anyone would have done the same in his position, & so everyone would have 'failed', succumbed, & said 'Yes' to the Ring & everything it symbolised.

If you remove him from being an actor in the drama at that point, you reduce him to nothing at the most important point in the story. He is not nothing. He carries the weight of the Ring & the fate of Middle-earth on his shoulders & at the end he surrenders.

My feeling (& I may be wrong here I admit) is that some people can't handle the idea that Frodo is weak, frightened, tired, & just gives in. Understandable, but a moral failure. He wills his action. There's too much emphasis on semantics: 'I will not do this thing' being interpreted as 'I have no will in this act', etc. But if we read his statement:

'I have come,' he said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!'

'I', 'I', 'I', 'mine'. Frodo is there. Tolkien deliberately changed the original draft wording:

’I have come’ he said. ‘But I cannot do what I have come to do. I will not do it. The Ring is mine.’

If he had said that - that he could not do what he came to do - I could accept what is being argued - that he had no control in the matter. But Tolkien changed the original words & he did that for a reason. And that reason is theological.

If Frodo was simply beaten into submission, then in theory if he had been stronger he could have destroyed the Ring. Frodo could have saved the world. But from the Christian viewpoint no man (being part of the creation) can save the world because Man (& by extension the creation itself) is fallen. Frodo succumbs not because he is weak but because he is a fallen being in a fallen world. Only an intervention from outside, beyond the Circles of the World, can save it. That's the only interpretation of the story that makes it fully understandable, brings out its full depth & meaning.

Frodo surrenders, says 'Yes' to the Ring, because he is human.

it's about the triumph of sacrifice -- the triumph of love, really, of which sacrifice is perhaps the most perfect expression.

It is about that, but its mostly about forgiveness of sins, about mercy unearned & undeserved - Frodo forgives Gollum not because he deserves it, or has turned over a new leaf, but simply as an act of mercy. Frodo also receives forgiveness & mercy for the same reason. Frodo's problem later on is that he cannot accept that forgiveness because he believes he hasn't earned it, doesn't deserve it. But that's the point - he doesn't, & neither do we.

'Consciously so in the revision' Tolkien said, & I think a perfect example of that 'revision' is that change in Frodo's words, from 'But I cannot do what I have come to do.' to 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do.'

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

Hmmmm…Mister Underhill has got me to thinking about this whole love and sacrifice thing. As he aptly puts it:

the triumph of love, really, of which sacrifice is perhaps the most perfect expression.

Seems to me that a nice way of looking at Frodo’s “choice” at the Crack of Doom (and it is the weight of this choice that, as Lal so nicely puts it, breaks him) is as the choice between desire and love. Love is all about the other person or thing: “I love you.” In Frodo’s case, in that moment, his love is for Sam and the Shire – for their sake, he would throw himself into the fire, he would sacrifice himself for their sake. Desire, on the other hand, is all about the self: “I desire you for myself.” In that moment, Frodo’s desire is for the Ring, which works against his self sacrifice insofar as to kill himself is to lose the Precious. I am sure that if there had been a way for him to sacrifice himself without losing the Ring, he would have done so in a moment for it would have resolved his conflict. But of course, that option is simply not there: he has only two “choices”

1) destroy all that he loves (the Shire), or

2) destroy all that he desires (the Ring).

Now at this point, it is easy to say that given what Frodo does do (claims the Ring) he clearly is choosing to destroy all that he loves: Frodo’s supposed moral failure. But go back to the few instances in which we actually see how the Ring works on people – there was heated discussion of Sam’s Ring, and who can forget Galadriel’s vision of herself – or Gandalf’s claim that he would take the Ring out of pity and the desire to do good. Given that in each of these instances the Ring offered the potential bearer a vision of him or herself doing something for the sake of love (Sam loves gardens; Gandalf loves pity and the weak; Galadriel loves Lorien) we can only assume that the same thing was happening with Frodo (although it is fascinating to me that Tolkien makes us rely on assumption at this point! Wouldn’t this whole episode be different if we had Frodo crying out, “I will take the Ring and destroy Barad-Dur so that the Shire shall be safe forever!?).

The choice that Frodo makes is still one in favour of love: unfortunately for him, however, he has – like all victims of torture – been so reduced in his capacity to judge rightly that he is making a mistake. We, on the outside, see his choices as I’ve outlined them above, but for Frodo the choices are:

1) destroy all that he desires (the Ring), or

2) save all that he loves (the Shire) and desires (the Ring).

This is why I say that Frodo is not really making a choice at all, for that presupposes that someone is able to choose from the options as they really are, and that they are able to do so in a rational manner. This is also why I see no moral failing at this point (which is not to say that Frodo is morally infallible, just that he does not demonstrate that here). Given the choices as Frodo perceives them (thanks to the torture/trickery of the Ring) he makes the only “rational” decision at that moment. In a weird way, his claiming the Ring at that point is a demonstration of his desire to do good: for the sake of the Shire, which he loves, he will take the Ring in order to save it.

(That last point is, I realize, quite a stretcher, but one that I think useful to make even if it doesn’t really stand up for very long.)

[davem]

Except that we don't know if he has claimed the Ring to save the Shire - we don't know what his true motives are. But even if he did claim the Ring save the Shire, it makes him an actor rather than a passive broken figure to whom things are simple happening because he is no longer capable of doing anything about them.

Do I sense a refusal to acknowledge Frodo's 'sin' & therefore an avoidance of the necessity to have to forgive him? I see a lot of attempts to avoid having to forgive him by making excuses for his actions. In order to forgive someone we have to acknowledge, admit, the fact of their offence. If we love someone its easier to come up with excuses & justifications for what they did, in order to avoid the stark reality that they did wrong. In that way we can avoid feeling let down, betrayed by them. We can go on believing that they are really the same person we've 'loved' (ie 'idealised') all along. But only when we see them as they really are, accept the truth about them, & accept the pain that that causes us, can we forgive them - & forgiveness is what they need. And, perhaps just as importantly, we don't want to hurt someone we love. We don't want to tell them they've done wrong.

As I think about it, my feeling increasingly is that one of the things that broke Frodo was that he didn't get what he needed from his friends - true forgiveness. They all made excuses for him - for the best of reasons - but I think Frodo actually needed someone to say 'You sinnedf. You failed, you betrayed us (because that's what he felt) but we forgive you. Frodo knew he had affirmed the Ring's existence. He'd said 'Yes' to evil. And exactly what he'd said Yes to was what confronted him on his return to the Shire. That's why its so important to the story to see Frodo's return to the Shire. Frodo sees his choice laid out before him. By claiming the Ring he became as (morally) culpable as Saruman. Its interesting that he forgives Saruman when all the others are demanding vengeance. He doesn't do that because he's a saint, but because he's a sinner. He looks at Saruman, sees him for what he is, & forgives him. And Frodo needed the same thing, but never actually got it from those around him, because they couldn't bear to think he needed it.

And if I've contradicted any of my earlier statements here its because I'm being forced to think on my feet