LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 3 - Mount Doom

[davem]

My feeling is that if Frodo did not choose to claim the Ring then he is merely a passive victim of circumstances beyond his control. What makes him a tragic hero is that he does choose, & like Feanor, Turin (& even Sauron & Saruman), he brings his doom on himself by his giving in to desire.

It would not be shocking (it would not hurt so much either) if Frodo's mind & will was overwhellmed by the Ring & by his sufferings & effectively turned into an automaton. What hit me from my first reading, & still does to this day, was a sense of deep shock &, dare I say it, betrayal. I'd struggled along with Frodo, willed him to get to the Fire & cast in the Ring & he let me down. In the end he took it for himself. He broke my heart!

Sorry Fordim, but your version takes all that away, makes him into a pathetic figure, someone to feel sad about. Not a master of his fate, a captain of his soul, a heroic failure. Frodo is a hero for our time, he speaks to us so profoundly, precisely because he failed, because he surrendered, because, in the end, just when he was about to win through, he threw it all away, took the easy way out.

And the point is, he knew he'd done that - Tolkien states that in his final days in the Shire he felt like a 'broken failure'. In the end he wanted that Ring & took it - & that's why we feel so close to him - because if we were in his position we'd have done the same & we know it, dammit!

I love Frodo because he's Everyman. He's both a heroic failure & a tragic hero at the same time. We watch him at that moment when he claims the Ring & we think 'You bloody fool!!!' & we weep for him & for ourselves.

'Heroic failure', 'tragic hero', or, in short, Everyman.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by davem

'Heroic failure', 'tragic hero', or, in short, Everyman.

To add to Davem's excellent thesis here, and to go slightly away from the chapter at hand, this makes the Lord of the Rings a much more moving and powerful book in that it offers the hope of FORGIVENESS, the idea that even those who ultimately succumb to wrongdoing have a hope of redemption, a hope of regaining a happy, fulfilled life. The parting at the end of the story is a good deal more hopeful if we realise that it means that Frodo has a chance at finding peace again, at finding redemption, instead of just a trip to the doctor/psychiatrist from which he will not return.

[Kuruharan]

This would be another problem with a 'sentient' Ring. At this point, the interests of the Ring would be in going with Gollum

Not necessarily. I think that by this point the Ring wanted to get inside Mount Doom because that would be where the Ring would think it would be safest. Gollum would certainly not take the Ring in the mountain.

so surely if this was any 'evil will' of the Ring taking effect or making its presence felt then it would not have allowed Frodo to act in this way.

I believe there can be some reasonable questions about this...

[davem]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

this makes the Lord of the Rings a much more moving and powerful book in that it offers the hope of FORGIVENESS, the idea that even those who ultimately succumb to wrongdoing have a hope of redemption, a hope of regaining a happy, fulfilled life.

'Forgive us our tresspasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us.'

('And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil')

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by davem

My feeling is that if Frodo did not choose to claim the Ring then he is merely a passive victim of circumstances beyond his control. What makes him a tragic hero is that he does choose, & like Feanor, Turin (& even Sauron & Saruman), he brings his doom on himself by his giving in to desire.

Hmm... but if you're going to cite Tolkien's intention, you have to go the whole nine yards:

I do not myself see that the breaking of [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.

[...] I think it is clear on reflection to an attentive reader that when his dark times came upon him and he was conscious of being 'wounded by knife sting and tooth and a long burden' (III 268) it was not only nightmare memories of past horrors that afflicted him, but also unreasoning self-reproach: he saw himself and all that he done as a broken failure. 'Though I may come to the Shire, it will not seem the same, for I shall not be the same.' That was actually a temptation out of the Dark, a last flicker of pride: desire to have returned as a 'hero', not content with being a mere instrument of good.

--the oft-quoted Letter #246

I don't think Tolkien blames Frodo for breaking, and in fact cites Frodo's self-reproach for his failure as unreasonable and, in fact, prideful. In a sense, he implies that it is not Frodo's actions that need to be healed in the West, but his reaction to his actions, if you see what I mean.

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

I think that by this point the Ring wanted to get inside Mount Doom because that would be where the Ring would think it would be safest.

Safest. In the one place in Middle-earth where it could be destroyed. Okay. All I know is that if the Ring was sentient, it was one dumb Ring.

[davem]

Fordim I'll see your 'Letter 246' & raise you CT (again)

Frodo's words 'But I cannot do what I have come to do' were changed subsequently on the B text to 'But I do not choose now to do what I have come to do.' I do not think that the difference is very significant, since it was already a central element in the outlines that Frodo would choose to keep the Ring himself; the change in his words does no more than emphasize that he fully willed his act.( Sauron Defeated)

[Kuruharan]

Safest. In the one place in Middle-earth where it could be destroyed. Okay. All I know is that if the Ring was sentient, it was one dumb Ring.

It may have been the one place where it could have been destoryed, but it was also the one place where somebody would be the least capable of acting to do so (as I believe everyone is in the process of repeatedly establishing).

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

I think, as is so often the case around here, that the difference is one of semantics: davem says "constrained choice" I say "no choice" but it all adds up to the same thing. It's an established fact that nobody can withstand torture -- Hollywood's vision of the man strong enough to resist torture is a myth: this is why CIA agents always have cyanide pills: because their political masters (who are masters in the art of torture themselves) know that there is no one who can't be broken. Sometimes, if the torturer is sloppy, the subject dies before he or she breaks, but that's the only way the victim can 'win'.

This is what happens to Frodo: he is broken by the Ring after enduring torture far beyond what anyone could have expected of him: the only way to have avoided taking the Ring would have been to die on the way to Mount Doom. His decision to take the Ring is no more a "free" or "willed" choice than is the "choice" of a torture victim to reveal what he or she knows. Yeah, sure, the person being burnt by a blowtorch chooses to talk, but that's not really what I would call a failure of their will or of their moral fibre. What that moment is about is the violence and evil of the torturer, not the supposed weakness of the victim.

The purpose of torture is not to force the person to talk ("tell us what we want to know and the pain will stop") -- it's not a bargain. The purpose of torture is to remove the victim's ability to think or decide rationally, in which case the choice is not 'really' his or hers at all.

As to the supposed lack of heroism for Frodo looked at this way, well, I look at him this way and he's a hero to me. Am I wrong? It seems to me an odd argument: Frodo is heroic because he chose evil. It seems even odder to me to argue that a Catholic writer would not portray as heroic someone who is "a passive victim"....I've read the Bible and I don't recall Christ leaping from the cross and smiting folk with thunderbolts! And as far as I can remember, Mary cried for her son, but didn't exactly storm the castle of Pontius Pilate!

davem, flattering as it may be for me to be confused with Mister Underhill, it was he, not I, who cited letter 246....although I would have.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Fordim Hedgethistle

As to the supposed lack of heroism for Frodo looked at this way, well, I look at him this way and he's a hero to me. Am I wrong? It seems to me an odd argument: Frodo is heroic because he chose evil. It seems even odder to me to argue that a Catholic writer would not portray as heroic someone who is "a passive victim"....I've read the Bible and I don't recall Christ leaping from the cross and smiting folk with thunderbolts! And as far as I can remember, Mary cried for her son, but didn't exactly storm the castle of Pontius Pilate!

Ah, but to waken that old monster that is "Allegory", Tolkien says that he did NOT write the Lord of the Rings as an allegory, and so Frodo is NOT intended to be a Christ figure.