[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I understand your point. Mine is that the intentions, as well as the end result of the actions of the "fallen" might be a factor. Do we really hold Radagast to the same level of culpability as Saruman? The former, apparently through an innate attraction to nature, got caught up in the fascinations of fauna and got sidetracked. The latter became envious of Sauron and desired to supplant him and rule Middle-earth. It could be argued that Saruman had in his being a certain affinity, in his case for machinery and whatnot, and things made by hands. Yet, what we see to differentiate the two is the manner in which their "distractions" led them astray, and the ends thereof. We don't see Gandalf feeling the need to hunt down Radagast and break his staff. Gandalf let Radagast's "misdeeds", if one can call them so, go. There must be a reason for that.

Yes, yes. But that goes back to what I have said earlier: Radagast did not fall, only fail. His failure was the same to that of initial Saruman's, only Saruman proceeded to "final stage", where he turned against his original purpose.
In other words, the story of any Istari can be put somewhere into this kind of scheme:
Stage 1 - a Wizard is sent to Middle-Earth and stays 100% true to his purpose. That is Gandalf, who remains there all the way, thus earns his "return ticket"; other Wizards were in this cathegory initially, but later the "temptations of flesh" led them to Stage 2.
Stage 2 - a Wizard who neglects his vocation, nonetheless, he is merely lacking, he does not do any active evil. Radagast and possibly the Blues eventually proceed into this cathegory. Saruman proceeded into this stage originally, when he started concentrating more on his own devices and not on the good of Middle-Earth as whole.
Stage 3 - a Wizard who actively starts building his own agenda, selfishly, and wilfully abandons his mission for his own gain and power. This is, of course, Saruman. Note that Radagast did not fall into this stage, because I don't think he ever abandoned his mission consciously. Whenever Gandalf etc called, he would still come and help. He never sought the Ring for himself. But neither did he actively aid the Free Peoples unless he was asked to.

And also, let me repeat what I said before - Radagast perhaps no more cared about getting the "return ticket", just as much as he no more cared about his mission. So it is no "punishment" not to give him the place on the Last Ship (Saruman is punished by being cast out of the Order because he deserves it; but Radagast does not need to be punished for anything), it is simply agreeing to his terms. "Fine - you want to just be left alone and play with animals, so you may stay and play with them." It is, in fact, granting what Radagast wanted. So I don't think he was unhappy or anything. From the overall view, of course, he failed in his task, but that's it.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Much of the arguing seems to depend upon whether sidetracking amount to failiure.

It's like with opposites; sometimes the antonym of a word has a different meaning than the word with a "not" in front. F. ex., happy. Unhappy is quite the opposite. Yet so is not happy. But the latter can mean any number of things that do not include happy, like simply neutral but not necessarily unhappy.

It is like that here too. Saruman goes to the antonym of completing the quest - he works against it. Radagast, on the other hand, just puts the "not" in front of it.

So where do we pace the pass line now? Does one fail if he turns against the Istari's original intention, or even if he does not strictly stick to the original plan even though he does not go against it either? Does one need to dedicate everything and till the end to "pass the test", or is it enough not to be evil in order to, well, be considered not evil and therefore pass?

Where do you draw the line of passing?

Perfectly spoken. See what I said just above in this post; also, I think it is clear from Tolkien that you don't need to be a "workoholic fighter against evil" to be considered good. Continuing along these lines...

Originally Posted by Hookbill the Goomba

If you count the fight against Sauron as the ultimate 'good' and that anything that does not aid that to be therefore 'evil' I think there may be a case to be made. Though he does dip his toe into the waters of helping in the fight, Radagast generally stays out of the buisiness of helping. If he'd been more involved perhaps it would have gone smoother, therefore his lack of aid could be seen as inadvertently helping Sauron.
A sort of "if you are not for us then you are against us" situation.

Radagast's heart is in the right place, perhaps. His head may not be. Be does not turn to the dark side and so has nothing to repent of, unless his lack of full commitment to the mission counts against him.

...certainly not. So, to continue the previous thought: I believe it is rather clear that there are no extremes like that "if you are not for us you are against us" in Tolkien. I think the best proof of that is the existence, or the manner of existence of Hobbits - they certainly are not opposing Sauron in any active way (of course apart from Frodo et al.), but they are good and causing no harm (just like Radagast did, I guess), and they certainly are not condemned alongside Sauron and Morgoth as "enemies"...

Originally Posted by blantyr

Has anyone written any Radagast fan fiction that shows him as an active protagonist? We seem to be getting the tale from the hobbit's point of view, notorious Gandalf friends, the bunch of them.

I think certainly people did, or at least thought of such things (I did think about it). I believe there were some RPs in the roleplaying section of this forum operating with Fourth Age Radagast as the Wizard "whose time came now", I think perhaps the Blue might have also been involved, or I am mixing up two threads together, but there definitely was something like that, about Mordor in the Fourth Age, I believe? You can try to find it, I didn't take part in that one, but certainly there are people around who have been there.

Could Radagast have settled near where the One was lost, near where the Necromancer took shape, between the Orc filled Misty Mountains and the Mirkwood, all for a reason? Do we know he spent all his time stocking his bird feeder, or might he have plausibly kept himself quite busy?

That is just as well possible. I think originally he might have settled there - or been ordered to settle there (by Saruman? I doubt Radagast knew on his own where Isildur fell, unless some random vulture had told him...) to watch over the place, or even more likely, to watch over Mirkwood and its darkness, which however eventually degraded into just sitting more than watching. It seems to me that way.