LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 3 - Mount Doom

[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.