[Child of the 7th Age]

I've always had a strong interest in trying to understand how and why Frodo left the Shire for the West. There were a number of early discussions on this topic on the Downs. Lal has provided links to some of these, but there were others, even earlier, like Frodo's Sacrifice.

First, I have to admit I have a bias that stems from the way I look at history. And, on some level—perhaps in some alternate universe of my own making, I see the Legendarium not merely as a faerie story, but as an early history of our own world. It’s become very popular among some historians to interpret particular individuals in psychological terms. That approach can be helpful, but if applied too indiscriminately merely "reduces" an individual's accomplishments down to the lowest common denominator: minimizing personal volition and the ideas that lie behind a particular action and instead representing the accomplishments as merely a knee jerk reaction generated by a specific psychological disorder or bent. (Certain studies of Martin Luther, for example, are guilty of this.)

With Frodo, we’re not talking about questioning his overall accomplishments. Most readers would agree that Frodo made a “free” choice to bear the Ring. Whatever elements may have played a role in this decision (and there are certain providential and/or psychological elements suggested at the Council of Elrond), few readers would question Frodo’s personal determination to destroy the Ring so it could not hurt his beloved Shire. The real question of psychological motive comes in when trying to assess his reasons for departing from the Havens.

Certainly, many of Frodo’s reactions after he came home to the Shire were similar to those described in classic PTSD. And it’s hard not to think that Tolkien’s experiences in the war and/or what he went through as an orphan had something to do with this ability to portray loss and grieving. Like Lal, I’ve had a personal loss that made me empathize with Frodo. Way back in the eighties, our seven month old daughter died of SIDS. In the year that followed that loss, I strongly identified with the grieving and guilt that characterized Frodo in the final pages of LotR: the feeling that nothing could ever be the same again and that things were totally out of control.

Still, even from that perspective, I am not comfortable saying psychological factors were the only, or even the chief reason, why Frodo chose to leave the Shire and sail West. Frodo’s “hurting” was one element driving him West, as well as his need to be near Bilbo. But his basic nature and the entire journey he’d been through also played a part. In one real sense, he had simply gone beyond what the Shire had to offer.

One of the strongest pieces of evidence in this regard is what CT records in Sauron Defeated. According to CT, long before Tolkien decided to portray Frodo as a “broken” survivor, he had already made two critical decisions about the ending of the story, which he recorded in several different outlines and drafts. Frodo would not be able to destroy the Ring, and Frodo would sail West:

[JRRT] had known from far back that when Frodo (still called “Bingo”) came to the Crack of Doom, he would be unable to cast away the Ring, and that Gollum would take it and fall into that chasm…… (Sauron Defeated, 37)

….Many years before, he had written that when ‘Bingo’ returned to the Shire he would make peace, and would then ‘settle down in a little hut on the high green ridge—until one day he goes with the Elves west beyond the towers.(Sauron Defeated, 53)

Island in Sea. Take Frodo there in the end…. (Ibid.)

But the final scene will be the passage of Bilbo and Elrond and Galadriel through the woods of the Shire on their way to the Gray Havens. Frodo will join them and pass over the Sea (linking with the vision he had of a far green country in the house of Tom Bombadil). Letter of 29 November 1944

The interesting thing is that all these quotes, including the reference to the vision in Bombadil’s house, were recorded long before Tolkien began to darken Frodo’s fate. The symptoms of PTSD (or whatever you care to call them) lent an extra poignancy to Frodo’s departure, but PTSD was not the original reason why Tolkien thought it important to lead the hobbit to the Blessed Lands. Other elements were equally important: Frodo’s personality, his longing for Elvish ways as exemplified by the light that Sam saw in his eyes, Gandalf’s comparison of Frodo with the Phial of Galadriel in Rivendell, and the lure of the white shores that the hobbit experienced while staying with Bombadil. All this suggests that what happened on the journey itself as well as the events of Mt. Doom, played a role in sending Frodo to the West.

Formendacil makes one interesting comment in response to Littlemanpoet's reference to the "consciously shell-shocked Frodo in the revision". :

In Tolkien's original plot outlines, I think, there was a gaier, less shocked Frodo post-Mount Doom, but I'm fairly sure that from the original draft of the post-Mt. Doom chapters that he exhibited most of his PTSD traits.

I would not agree with this. I think there is a drastic difference between the first two drafts (A and early B) when compared with the final product. Sauron Defeated does suggest a gradual darkening of Frodo's fate. For example, the original draft of these later chapters, what CT calls “A”, includes a discussion between Gandalf and Frodo on the road home where the hobbit states: “My wound aches…and the memory of darkness is heavy on me (75). It also contains one statement by Frodo in which he says “I do not think it is my part to strike any blow again (80).” Yet, other than these two statements, the reader of Draft A is struck by how active Frodo is in terms of the Scouring and how comparatively healthy. He laughs, he leads the other hobbits and speaks for them, and is an active fighter. CT comments on this several times: “It will be seen in what follows that in this original version of the story Frodo played a far more aggressive and masterful part in events than he does in RK, even to the slaying of more than one of the ruffians at Bywater and their leader at Bag-end….”

Even in the initial draft “B”, Frodo’s active role is little changed. It’s only in the final revisions of that draft that we get a very different picture:

At a late stage of work on the B text…., my father perceived that Frodo’s experience had so changed him , so withdrawn him, as to render him incapable of playing any such role in the Scouring of the Shire….The text, as it stood, required no large recasting; the entirely different pictures of Frodo’s part in the events was brought about by many small alterations…and a few brief additions.

We see a similar change in later chapters between Draft A and subsequent drafts. For example, draft A contains no references to Frodo’s illnesses in March 1420 or 1421, though there is a reference to the October illness. Draft A also includes a statement about Frodo's fame in the Shire, which leaves a very different impression than the way the chapter was eventually written:

And so the year drew to its end. Even Sam could find no fault with Frodo’s fame and honour in his own country. The Tooks were too secure in their traditional position—and after all their folkland was the only one that had never given in to the ruffians—and also too generous to be really jealous; yet it was plain that the name of Baggins would become the most famous in Hobbit-history.

I think that somewhere in the middle of Draft B, Tolkien became far more aware of what was going on in terms of Frodo and his suffering. How and why this awareness grew on him, I do not know. But one thing is definite. Even at the beginning of Draft A, the Grey Havens scene was fairly intact. According to Draft A, Frodo was an active leader in the Scouring, received acclaim in the Shire, and had relatively few bouts of illness or suffering, but Tolkien was still very certain that he had to leave the Shire and go West. Sailing west remains the constant. The emphasis on personal suffering in later drafts did not determine or change Frodo's destination. It merely added another compelling reason for him to go.