[davem]

But Frodo's 'Elvishness' predisposes him to take the Ring in the end. He thinks in terms of 'going back' to the old days with Bilbo in Bag End, of things being that way & never changing - which makes his realisation on the way home that 'There is no real going back' so terrible. Perhaps what we see going on in Frodo after the destruction of the Ring is what also went on in the mind's of the Elves - feelings of overwhelming loss, grief, failure, no option but to go back to Valinor.

Also, it seems Elves & mortals concieve of the Ring(s) differently. For Elves its a means of keeping things as they are, a way of stopping things moving forward, being pushed further & further from the only place they have any desire to be, their ideal past. Men seem to see it as their way forward - use it, get rid of Sauron, then use its power to change things.

I still think Frodo does fail the test Galadriel & Faramir pass, yes, he does suffer more than them, but in terms of a moral choice, a 'consenting' to what the Ring offers, they pass & he fails. 'The Ring is mine' is his surrender to the Elvish vice of 'flirting with Sauron' as Tolkien says the Elves have done in creating the Rings. He becomes more & more 'Elvish' as he goes on, more & more backward looking, till the future holds nothing for him, only a movement away from the place he wants to be. He stands at the Sammath Naur, an Elf in all but physical shape. The future is a horrible, grey nighmare, leading to nothing worth having. The Past is Bilbo & Bag End, woods, fields & little rivers. Destroy the Ring & guarantee that future, save the Ring, claim it & guarantee the past will go on forever. Tolkien says that Frodo expected, hoped even, to die in achieving the Quest. When did that desire arise - certainly not at the outset. I suspect it grew, along with the realisation that the destruction of the Ring would mean the end of the past, a guarantee that it would never return. Whether its Frodo's nostalgic mindset that draws him to the Elves, or the time he spends surrounded by Elvish things which affects him & changes his outlook from a mortal one to an Elvish one is another question. The destruction of the Ring is the destruction of what someone has called the Elven Block, a liberation from the weight of the past, freeing up all but the Elves to move forward - even, in a way, freeing up the Elves (against their will, perhaps) to go home to the only place they could be happy. Frodo tries to stop that. Psychologically Frodo was incapable of giving up the Ring at the end. He claimed it, because he'd already, mentally, 'claimed' the past. Destroying it would be destroying the past & leaving the way open for the future to happen. What Elf would choose the future over the past?