[Child of the 7th Age]

One of his readers raised a similar question to Tolkien. Here is some of his response.

I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum--impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.

This all ties in with the view Tolkien held of human nature: the fact that we are all inherently flawed, and that until the end of time, history will be a series of tiny victories but punctuated with great and continuing defeats.

We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure in either action or endurance....I do not see that the breaking of his [i.e. Frodo's] mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been ---say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.

So there you have it from the author! Just remember that Gandalf himself feared to take the Ring upon his body. So if the greatest and wisest of the Maiar knew that it would corrupt and break him, how could we possibly expect that a tiny mortal hobbit could escape its inevitable effects?

<font size=1 color=339966>[ 9:30 AM December 18, 2003: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]