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I definitely belong to those who thinks it was absolutely essential to have Frodo survive the destroyal of the Ring. There is a message in there, and I think it is (as was mentioned) due to Tolkien's wartime experiences.
How many men in our world have survived war physically, but not spiritually, psychologically, mentally? They come back to their normal lives and find that they no longer fit in, that their experiences have changed them too much for life to ever be normal again. Often, it also happens to men who have been prisoners of war, for example, that they come back and expect things to be as they were before, but life has moved on without them for too long, and they are no longer needed.
Remember how Lt. Dan wished he had not survived in "Forrest Gump"? He thought he should have died a noble, heroic death. Well, sometimes death is a convenient way out of coping with life. Frodo is the character who shows us all of this, with an ending more bittersweet than his death could have been.
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth.. .'
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