Well, Frodo, it's nice to see you again, but...

[Firefoot]

Because Tolkien would have earned my undying spite if he had killed off Frodo...

Seriously, though, one thing that I have discovered as a writer is that there tends to be a "right" time and a "wrong" time to kill characters. You generally do not kill of characters when they have more to do and further to grow. It would have been easy to kill Frodo off, but it would not be right. If anything, I would kill him off at Mt. Doom, which might be more logically than the Eagles coming in from nowhere and rescuing him, but Frodo's journey was not complete, per se.

For example, with Boromir's death, it effectually "completes" his story. He did not have to die; Tolkien could have let him live and gone on with different plot wrinkles. But he had reached the point where he wanted to go with Boromir, so killing him worked. Likewise, there really wasn't anywhere more for Theoden to go when he died. He had been rid of Saruman, had led his people to battle, and was basically at peace. Tolkien could have had him go home to keep ruling, but his story was essentially finished. The third example I can think of is Denethor - his death was the logical and best way for his story to end. For him, it doesn't get better, it just gets worse, and his death is a culmination.

But not so with Frodo. Frodo is still growing and changing to the very end of the book; killing him off at Shelob's Lair or Mt. Doom is not the logical or right place for him to end.

[davem]

Can only agree with Firefoot. LotR is not the story of the destruction of the Ring, it is the story of the end of an epoch & Frodo's story is that greater story in microcosm. To kill off Frodo & just have Sam go on & destroy the Ring may have been interesting enough, but it would have been a different story & probably meant less.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

However I think that, if I were being hyper critical, Tolkien played the Frodo" seems dead/mortally wounded but isn't" card slightly too often - especially with Frodo..

I think its the same as the Gandalf case. Tolkien never intended Frodo to die at that point, but he did intend for Sam (we readers actually only by extension) to believe it too, because its the ideal way for him to lift Sam to the heroic level, which is necessary for the rest of the story. Up to that point Sam has basically been Sancho to Frodo's Quixote. From this point Sam will have increasingly to become the hero, as Frodo 'fades'.

Its in this episode that Sam finally becomes a three dimensional character in his own right as opposed to comic relief or handy crutch for Frodo to lean on. In the final chapters he must become more than that - he must carry the emotional weight of the story as Frodo becomes more & more distant.

Of course, Frodo will 'surface' again later & take up that burden himself once more. But the effect, the power of the Ring, is brought home to us by seeing its effect on Frodo on the trek through Mordor & we can only see that effect through another's eyes.

Or something like that..

[tom bombariffic]

There's no way of telling what would have happened if Sam had had to finish the quest on his own, but my speculation is that he'd probably cast the ring into the fire. (I'm taking it that he'd get there for the purposes of this further speculation; frankly Im not sure he actually would.) The reason that frodo and bilbo are able to resist the power of the ring for so long is that hobbits have such little craving for power, and it takes less of a hold on them.

Sam is depicted as the quintessential hobbit in the book, and, while he may not have understood the urgency of the quest, I think he would resist the power of the ring even better than Frodo. Add that to the fact that he'd only be bearing it for a very short time (comparatively), and I think he'd still be able to cast the ring away.

But Tolkien had built up the story of Frodo fighting the ring, trying to resist its power, from the start of the journey. Sure, in the final showdown in mt Doom, The Ring beats Frodo, but the result goes right to the wire, as it were - the tension builds up to a terrific climax as he stands in front of the fire. To kill Frodo off and pass the ring to Sam in a tag-team style manouvre would ruin this effect, and the personal tussle between ring and bearer would be lost, and start over again. Sam may cast the ring into the fire, but the sense of climax and achievement would be lost, and the actual power of the ring possibly underestimated - it is only when Frodo cannot throw the ring in that we realise how entirely it posesses him.

[Legolas]

In the end, Frodo neglected his mission and effectively died...he accomplishes little after his rescue by Gandalf and the eagles aside from recording his story and leaving his friends.

I do not think that it would've been wise to kill Frodo with Shelob. As well as bypassing the Cirith Ungol scene, it would defeated all the building tension between the triangle of Frodo, Sam, and Gollum with the Ring looming overhead. I don't agree with the contention that Sam vs. Gollum alone would've been trickier...it would've been less complex and more physical action as opposed to psychological struggle. The Ring's part would've been ignored with a simple Sam vs. Gollum, untainted vs. tainted struggle.

Frodo's death would've likely pushed Sam past his boiling point - Sam would've killed Gollum and suffered through to the end, nobly tossing the Ring into the fire. Sounds boring to me. Also absent would be the mark the Ring left on Frodo that held him back from enjoying the rest of his life, despite having 'saved the day' (however reluctantly).

In your hypothetical situation, having Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to Rivendell to inform Bilbo of his nephew's death would've been too negative a scene since Frodo would not have seen his goal to completion. A situation in which Frodo and Sam were both lost in the lava of Mount Doom after the Ring's destruction would've been more palatable to both readers and Bilbo.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Legolas

In your hypothetical situation, having Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to Rivendell to inform Bilbo of his nephew's death would've been too negative a scene since Frodo would not have seen his goal to completion. A situation in which Frodo and Sam were both lost in the lava of Mount Doom after the Ring's destruction would've been more palatable to both readers and Bilbo.

I think Tolkien would never have considered having Frodo fail to get to Mount Doom - whether through dying or appearing to be dead. Frodo seems to represent the courage of those friends Tolkien lost in the Great War; he may have been shattered by what he went through, but he went through it all the same, carrying on even though it would have been all to easy to give up and go home.

Maybe whether the quest would have been a success without Frodo hangs on whether we think Sam would have been able to follow it through? That means we must look at Sam's character. One of his failings is his anger towards Gollum, which seems to drive him at certain points in the story. His reactions to Gollum are entirely natural (I suspect most of us would find it hard or impossible to see the 'humanity' of Gollum if confronted with him), but they could also have been the undoing of any solo attempt to get to Mount Doom. Sam would almost certainly have killed Gollum given half the chance, and there is also the possibility that Gollum could have killed him; Sam may have been capable of overestimating his own physical strength.

Either way, I think Sam would certainly have bravely tried to get to Mount Doom and destroy the ring, but I do think his anger would have failed him.

Then again, what about Sam's delusions of grandeur when he wears the Ring? What do they tell us about him and his attitude towards the Ring as a bearer? What might that dark side of Sam tell us about the likelihood of his destroying it?

[Legolas]

I'm not sure why you quoted me, but I wasn't supposing that Frodo would ever not make it to Mount Doom. I was responding to the original poster's scenario, pointing out several reasons why it would not fly:

Originally Posted by Tuor of Gondolin

I think it would have been quite interesting if Shelob had killed Frodo and Sam had had to carry out the quest with only Gollum as a hindrance/help/guide?

[Rhod the Red]

I would have found it very sad if Frodo died, his departure from ME was sad enough for me!

[The Saucepan Man]

Some compelling arguments have been put forward as to why the alternative scenario envisaged by this thread would have been less satisfying than the way in which it was actually written. Certainly, I agree with Legolas that it would have been a great disappointment if Sam had simply ambled up Mount Doom and thrown the Ring in.

I have a very clear memory of thinking, when I was first reading LotR, what an anti-climax it would be if they made it to Mount Doom and simply threw the Ring in. Notwothstanding the travails of actually getting to Orodruin, it would just have seemed too easy. Perversely, therefore, I was actually rather relieved when Frodo claimed the Ring as his own and refused to destroy it. In consequence, the events of Sammath Naur were (and remain) utterly compelling to me and thankfully brought no sense of anti-climax whatsoever.

Somehow I doubt that, even had he killed off Frodo at Cirith Ungol, Tolkien would simply have had Sam willingly destroy the Ring. He knew the nature of the Ring too well to allow that to happen. Despite having borne the Ring for a shorter period and having successfully resisted its lure at Cirith Ungol, I don't believe that even Sam would have been able willingly to destroy it. I suspect, therefore, that Tolkien would have come up with something different.

Whether it would have been as satisfying as the way the story actually turns out, we cannot tell. I tend to agree that it would probably not have been, for the reasons already stated by others. But, since we are used to it being the way it is and find it so compelling, it is difficult to imagine it being as good any other way.

Perhaps, had Tolkien written of Frodo dying at Cirith Ungol, Sam journeying with the Ring to the Crack of Doom and there claiming it as his own and Gollum somehow being (involuntarily) involved in its destruction, we would be saying how much more satisfying that was than if Frodo had survived and made it to Mount Doom with Sam.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Legolas

I'm not sure why you quoted me,

I suppose I was responding to what you said about how it might appear if the other Hobbits had come back to Rivendell to tell Bilbo about Frodo's death. It immediately brought to mind the situation of fellow servicemen coming home to tell those left what had happened to their relatives. How that led into what else I said, that's just Lalwende Logic...

To me, it makes perfect sense that Frodo came back alive but broken. He demonstrated the effects of the Ring to others, he acted as Tolkien's 'sacrificial' figure, and the end was all the more bittersweet. There was the relief that Frodo lived, but then the horror of what had happened to him; the world was changed after the Ring was destroyed, and in that sense, Frodo was emblematic of that change.

Originally Posted by SpM

I have a very clear memory of thinking, when I was first reading LotR, what an anti-climax it would be if they made it to Mount Doom and simply threw the Ring in. Notwothstanding the travails of actually getting to Orodruin, it would just have seemed too easy. Perversely, therefore, I was actually rather relieved when Frodo claimed the Ring as his own and refused to destroy it. In consequence, the events of Sammath Naur were (and remain) utterly compelling to me and thankfully brought no sense of anti-climax whatsoever.

I don't remember thinking that clearly about the end! I was probably just thinking "whoa!" at the time. But afterwards, it always stayed with me as an incredible climax to the story. At that age I was used to the traditional 'happy ending' to a story, and on one level, LOTR does have a happy ending - Frodo Lives! And then he gets to go and live with the Elves! I remember thinking wow...they all live happily ever after. But it isn't really like that at all. That only struck me some time after finishing the book. I now think it is the perfect ending to the story, and even more, that Gollum's death was the perfect way for his character to be 'signed off'.

I wonder would Gollum still have been the one to destroy the Ring if Frodo had died at Cirith Ungol? I don't honestly think it would have been possible, and so we would have lost that perfcet ending.

[mormegil]

I would echo what Davem so eloquently stated and add my few thoughts. Frodo's 'death' was needed for Samwise to become a hero and overcome his greatest obstacle and show that he could sacrifice his master to accomplish the task. However if Frodo had in fact died, in the end it would have defeated poor Sam. He cared too much and was to dedicated to Frodo. Samwise would have returned a crushed and defeated man with no future. I think it would be similar to Frodo's fate after the ring but different in that it was a combination of the ring and the loss of Frodo.