Quote:
Originally Posted by Alfirin
no decimation means no way to get past.
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Perhaps their Lórien-cloaks - Frodo would of course still have his - would have aided their cause?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lotrelf
Professor does not say "Frodo would have sacrificed himself", he instead says that Frodo would have to do the same- sacrificing himself. If he hadn't done so, he'd have failed. Frodo's (Gollum's too) sacrifices would depend on their Free Will. By the end of the book Frodo did not have Free Will, what makes you think Gollum would?
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To exactly quote the letter:
Frodo in this tale actually takes the Ring and claims it, and certainly he too would have had a clear vision - but he was not given any time: he was immediately attacked by Gollum. When Sauron was aware of the seizure of the Ring his one hope was in its power: that the claimant would be unable to relinquish it until Sauron had time to deal with him. Frodo too would then probably, if not attacked, have had to take the same way: cast himself with the Ring into the abyss. If not he would of course have completely failed.
So what Professor Tolkien is saying here is that had Gollum not attacked, Frodo would have come to this realisation: he could either go forth and confront Sauron (impossible - he had claimed the Ring, but had to no degree mastered it: in such a confrontation Frodo would be "utterly overthrown") or throw himself into the Fire and so deny Sauron the Ring while simultaneously not having to live without it. We can see here that in this case destroying the Ring has a
selfish aspect to it: not destroying the Ring to save the people of Middle-earth, but purely to spite Sauron and serve one's own (corrupt) self-interest. That's why I can see this option as being entirely possible within the Ring-corrupted mindset. Professor Tolkien of course states that it is not definite: the claimant might become sufficiently arrogantly deluded to exit the Sammath Naur with the encouragement of the Nazgūl and be destroyed by Sauron, but the point is that
either choice (trying to wield the Ring or destroying it) was possible within the Ring-corrupted mindset because of the selfish and non-righteous motivations which would be behind destroying the Ring in this scenario.