I've been trying to get up my courage to approach this topic-- I'm just going to have to jump in. I completely agree about the applicability of shell shock and WWI. I thought that that article was good in its feeling for Frodo, but completely wrong in many respects. I think that the notion that Frodo was tormented by survivor guilt about failing to save Gollum is nonsense-- he knew very well that Gollum made his choice. We may know Gollum almost made it back in the scene where he touches Frodo's knee, but Frodo doesn't. Regardless, I think both protagonist and author knew Gollum had a chance he did not take by choice.
I also think that that author misread the significance of Frodo's reaction on the anniversaries. Here I'm going to have to bring in what I know about Catholicism (my husband's faith but not mine.) I'm not talking here about religious themes or the insights of faith, but in the mental model of the world a Catholic might develop under the influence of the rituals. The way a Catholic who was responsive to the rituals might begin to define 'time.' I'm trying to explain a way of thinking about time that is available to Catholics (thought not exclusively, of course, in fact it's one of the oldest mental models in religion). Think of this as anthropology rather than theology, ok?
There is the notion of ordinary time and whatever the other time is-- sorry-- my reference resource is asleep-- the time when the savior's on earth. The church does its best to make people feel at the service that the events of the New Testament are happening again, both then and now. The palm procession is happening both in Biblical time and now, today, in this aisle by your elbow. The resurection is happening today. This is not a matter of religious themes, this is a matter of mental modelling of time, a way of understanding the passing of the year in a way that is simultaneously ordinary and transcendent. You see why I've been scared to try and discuss this! Sorry if I'm unclear. On Holy Thursday, when by tradition Christ was taken away, they bundle up the altar cloth and leave the people standing, with no goodbye and no ending, to drift away feeling loss and absence. I keep associating that ritual with all this leaving, beginning with Frodo's withdrawal from Sam during his struggle with the ring.
From what I've read of the origins of religions, this is one of the oldest ways of thinking about time: in all sorts of ancient faiths, they killed the king in the time of legends when our land was founded, but they also killed him today-- you saw the sacrifice, you may even have seen a real sacrifice. So this is not an invention of any major religion. However, it is only available to a practicing member of a religion that uses this form of ritual & attitude. Tolkien was a practicing member of a church that was strong in this, having forged its rituals in a time when few of its members were literate enough to read their holy books for themselves. Making them live the events anew each year, weekly, was the only way to deliver any understanding.
Ok, end of anthropology -- sorry! I think that Frodo relived his dark moments in this ritual sense-- these dark events with such spiritual significance for him and the world happened again for him each year at the ritual time, and would continue to do so. Frodo being so much on the other side, they really, literally, happened again to him. In some way he was literally in danger again each time. Leaving middle earth for Tol Eressea was a way of exiting ordinary time and escaping this recurrance-- in the presence of Valinor, this ritually repeating story of the salvation of middle earth would be suspended. The whole place stands outside of that story. Rituals of transcendence don't apply once you have transcended. *sigh* That's the best I can do.
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