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Throughout their journey Frodo and Sam had no idea whether they would accomplish their task and how this accomplishment would effect their individual lives, the Shire, or Middle Earth.
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Great call, El Haveņero. Maybe Groundskeeper Willy could make this one of his Tolkien Themes - that the virtue of the deed is in the doing and not in the result. I find it interesting however that, despite the fact Tolkien was a Catholic, his heroes largely received their rewards during their lifetime, without having to wait until they were dead to go to heaven (which I've always thought was a real downside of Christianity). That said, of course, a certain select few were allowed to go to the Undying Lands.
Reading The Shaping of Middle-Earth, I came across a
fantastic example of Evil Defeating Itself. Melkor destroys the Two Trees with his sword, stabbing into them. Ungoliant sucks the life out of them, but the trees are still clinging on for a while, and the Valar manage to extract some goodness to make the Sun and the Moon, which afterwards became two of the greatest foes of the darkophiliac bad guys. If he had used an axe, the world would have been vastly different. But perhaps this is just a case of a simple mistake.