The Fellowship was supposed to protect the Ringbearer Frodo from harm, while he pursues his Quest of destroying the One Ring...or so they say. But there seems to be either a big miscalculation on Gandalf's part, or the Fellowship had a darker purpose.
In
The Shadow of the Past, Gandalf tells Frodo to try throwing the Ring into his fireplace. Frodo could not do so, and puts it in his pocket. Then Gandalf says:
Quote:
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Gandalf laughed grimly. 'You see? Already you too, Frodo, cannot easily let it go, nor will to damage it. And I could not "make" you - except by force, which would break your mind.'
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So Gandalf knew that Frodo could not throw the Ring into his fireplace. How did he expect Frodo to throw the Ring into Mount Doom at the end of the Quest? After all, the Ring took more and more hold of Frodo's mind as he drew nearer to Mt. Doom and as Sauron's power grew. Therefore, perhaps the Fellowship was meant to do what Gollum did - take the Ring from Frodo by force and throw it in before it took a hold of their minds(One could argue that if Frodo could not do it, neither could any member of the Fellowship, but that's another matter). Perhaps they were even meant to push Frodo into Mt. Doom if needed
But seriously, if that was not the Fellowship's purpose, why did Gandalf send Frodo on a Quest that was doomed to fail? He did not foresee Gollum's role. He merely says that he felt that Gollum would play a part "for good or for ill".
Perhaps Gandalf truly
was clueless. He knew Bilbo's Ring was one of the Twenty Rings of Power yet did nothing for 60 years, sent Frodo with 8 "defenders"(of which 3 did not know how to fight) to the very heart of Sauron's realm, and expected Frodo to destroy the Ring at the end, which he couldn't do even in the very beginning. Everything that happened was purely luck, if you think about it. The only logical explanations are that Gandalf was a dolt, or his Maia foresight told him that sending Frodo on this quest would turn out to be good. Gandalf is personally my favorite character, so I'll take choice #2, but he does seem to have some holes...Boromir did the logical thing in trying to take Frodo's Ring, IMO. It turned out to be evil, but he saw that the Quest was hopeless.
Well, I sorta strayed from my original topic now.
