[Quempel]

Doesn't defeat mean to destroy, to nullify? Doesn't seem to me that Sauron was either, he was simply set back a step, not defeated. Not until Frodo threw in the ring was Sauron destroyed and nullified. Had Gil-galad, ect. actually defeated him, there would be no need for any of the Fellowship, none whatsoever. No need for Aragorn to be raised in Rivendale. No need for the Fellowship. No need for Helms Deep, no need for Pel Fields, no need for any of it whatsoever. Had he been defeated, none of it would have happened.

Elendil, Gil-Galad and Isildur failed to defeat Sauron. Had they succeeded, that battle would have been the last battle in ME and there would be no need of any of the rest of the story, that battle would have won the war. They won one battle, that's it. They did not win the war.

It was Frodo that ended the war. It was his small insignificant non-warrior like actions that ended the war. One would think that is what Tolkien was actually trying to convey, that even the smallest person can change the world, since that is what he repeatedly wrote about.

And if you want to argue real world non-military people changing the world, the two biggest influences in the world were not warriors of any sort. Those two people being Jesus and Muhammad. Jesus so influenced the world that the superpower warrior world of Rome changed religions and influenced much of the way we now live in the west, and he never once raised a sword to battle. The world has been so influenced by these two men that we elect our leaders because they will either not let gays marry or they will get the infidels. Neither were warriors.

And neither was Frodo, yet he did more for ME than Aragorn ever could. Aragorn did not have the spirit, purity or ability to destroy the ring, it wasn't in him, and all the warrior training in the world could not give him that, because it was not something he could ever attain, it was a true nobility that he could vaguely feel in himself. He recognized it in Frodo and thus wanted to help him. Eowyn possesed some of this nobility and Aragorn recognized this too, he wasn't playing cat and mouse with her, he realized she was willing to lay down her life and fight for what she believed in, and he honored that and he also realized a person willing to lay down their life for their family and beliefs can and often do defeat the military.