Fordim -
Have to run and take someone to work, but can't help mentioning this...
As I was reading this excellent thread, an oddball idea occurred to me.
First, let's review the original criteria you put up for a character to be included on this thread:
Quote:
1) All three of them face despair and, oddly, triumph over it.
2) They all are rather unwitting players in a larger drama that they do not fully understand.
3) They are motivated, if not defined by, desire.
4) Their failures to fulfil their desires are integral parts of the successful completion of the Quest and of Aragorn’s Return.
5) They oppose the wills of the heroes, even try to hinder them, but they are not evil.
6) They have the same ‘place’ or role in the overall structure of the narrative.
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If we look at the trudge up Mount Doom and the final scenes at Sammath Naur, couldn't we apply these same criteria to the character of Frodo Baggins? OK, maybe I am stretching things a bit, but there are many elements shared in common by these four individuals. Let me trace these point by point and link them to your six criteria listed above.
1. The final steps of the journey are surely a study in despair with Frodo unable even to remember the Shire, that which he is fighting to save. Frodo's "triumph" over despair is simply the fact that the object of his desire is destroyed and, at the same time, he manages to survive with a great deal of help from outside himself....Sam, Providence, and even the sacrifices of the good folk as a whole. Like the other three characters, his fate does not rest wholly within his own hands.
2. He is certainly a player in a larger drama that he does not fully understand. He has grown in wisdom thoughout the story, but does not have a complete understanding of what is happening. Just one small example....the person he has most relied on in the early part of the journey is actually a Maia, but Frodo still does not know that and would not even understand what the term "Maia" means.
3. The entire trip to Mordor is a study in desire, and it is this which defines Frodo's entire place in the story. Frodo is constantly battling his desire to put on the Ring. Sometimes the Ring triumphs and sometimes it does not. But it is when Frodo stands before Sammath Naur that desire wins out.
The fact that Frodo is able to fight and resist the pull of the Ring for some time should not exclude him from this group. There are certainly hints of this same thing happening to Boromir on the initial journey of the Fellowship, and also to Gollum in his dealings with Sam and Frodo. In both these cases, the reader is aware that there is internal conflict occurring, just as with Frodo and the object of his desire.
4. Frodo's failure to fill his desire, to become master of the Ring, is certainly an integral part of the fulfillment of the Quest as a whole.
5. Certainly, Frodo is opposing the stated will of Gandalf when he refuses to toss the Ring into the fire. Yes, Gandalf may have suspected right from the beginning that Frodo would be unable to dispose of the Ring. But I don't think that would exclude a name from your list. After all, the reader who listens to Boromir at Rivendell knows, and probably Gandalf suspected as well, that Boromir will be unable to resist the lure of the Ring. In that respect, Frodo is no different from Boromir.
6.
the same place or role in the overall narrative.... This one is harder to address. Yet I think it might be said that Frodo as the Ringbearer is the central character who most exemplifies the themes you have delineated above. Eowyn, Boromir, and Gollum all have smaller battles or conflicts that seem to mirror Frodo's primary dilemma in certain key respects. These characters perhaps present us with alternate suggestions as to what may eventually happen to the Ringbearer at the end of the story when he must fully face his desire? For if one measures the amount of evil and despair that these four characters must face, it is surely Frodo who has the toughest job of all.
Yet the central dilemma for all four remains the same: how a 'human' faces temptation and what happens when they succumb to that temptation. ( For purposes of this discussion I am arguing that Gollum has enough of Smeagol potential left inside him to be classified along with other hobbits as a "Man"....)
Interestingly, there is also the question of which of these characters are later able to accept "forgiveness". Eowyn and Boromir both seem able to put their mistakes behind them and go on (however short that might have been for Boromir!). With Gollum, we shall never know. And then there is poor Frodo....., though I have always felt that his decision to sail to the West was at least an acceptance of the fact that healing and acceptance of forgiveness was needed.
Oh, yes, with a nod to
Boromir88, Frodo also is motherless.....