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I can't help feeling that Tolkien wished to explore the effect of war on a survivor, someone who goes through the worst trauma imaginable & survives it. Sam, for all his suffering, does not go through the worst experience - Frodo does. Frodo is broken by what he goes through, but survives. The final chapter would not have been as powerful if Sam alone had survived. Frodo had to be taken to the lowest point a human could reach & still go on. Tolkien stated that Frodo expected to die in achieving the Quest. The fact that he didn't, but survived, broken & without hope, is the point.
My feeling is that Frodo had to survive - Tolkien owed a debt to those who survived the war he had fought in, not to those who died. The ones who died had found peace & could be allowed to rest. Those who survived were the ones who mattered, because they were the forgotten ones (as Esty points out). Having Frodo survive forces the reader to deal with what survivors of horror have to live with. Its too easy for us to mourn the dead, wear our poppies in November, lay a wreath & think of them as stories that have come to an end & move on. Through Frodo Tolkien forces us to confront the reality of the survivors of horror who have to live on with their experiences. They are living instances of the fact that wars don't end when the ceasefire is announced & the peace treaties signed. Wars go on as long as the survivors live. Frodo was still fighting the War of the Ring till he left Middle-earth, still trudging through Mordor, still struggling up the Mountain, still claiming the Ring. Over & over & over. His wounds never healed, he never was able to find rest.
The fact is, all the others were able to move on & find a new life - which most of the survivors of WWI did. Some weren't - & Frodo personifies them - the ones who needed to find peace but could not.
Now, this is not to treat LotR as an allegory in any way. Frodo is a broken survivor of the War of the Ring, but there are always broken survivors of Wars - in the Primary (& occasionally in Secondary) world(s); & not just broken survivors of wars, but of violence, rape, abuse - those who have to continue on without hope. The ignored & forgotten ones who we wish would go away because their very existence denies us the chance to pretend that we can all live happily ever after, whatever happens to us.
It would have been so much easier for us if Frodo had died on the Mountain, because then we wouldn't have been stuck with him moping around & making us miserable. Or if he didn't have the decency to die then at least he could have snapped out of it for our sakes so we could enjoy Aragorn's & Sam's weddings & had the 'And they all lived happily ever after.' that we deserved after our long journey through Middle-earth. But no, that bloody Frodo has to hang around, getting under our feet, making us feel guiilty, when all we really wanted was to enjoy Sam's healing of the Shire & a quiet pint in the Green Dragon.
There's always one who has to spoil the fun...
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