LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 9 - The Grey Havens

[Lalwendë]

'Poor Sam! It will feel like that, I am afraid,' said Frodo. 'But you will be healed. You were meant to be solid and whole, and you will be.'

It's interesting to consider the fates of the four Ringbearers. Gollum of course is dead. Bilbo on the other hand has had an unnaturally long life and remained relatively resistant to the Ring; at first I thought this might have something to do with his innocence regarding what the Ring was, but Gollum too has this innocence. Perhaps it has something to do with what each chose to do with the power of invisibility that the Ring gave them? Bilbo used it to hide from interfering relatives while Gollum used it to hunt and sneak.

Frodo has descended into illness and though he can cope day to day so long as he retreats from society, his trauma shows through especially during the anniversaries. Sam is the only bearer who has stayed relatively unscathed. He has mentally integrated his experiences and so is the one who copes the best; Bilbo also copes quite well, but he only achieves this by satisfying his restlessness and going into 'retreat' at Rivendell.

It makes me wonder if Frodo too could have gained something from a retreat to Rivendell, but this option was closed to him as Elrond was planning to leave.

It fascinates me that Tolkien was unable to kill off his Hobbits. As they are mortals then they will die eventually, but we are left with a sense of hope and longing as they leave for the Undying Lands.

'But,' said Sam, and tears started in his eyes, 'I thought you were going to enjoy the Shire, too, for years and years, after all you have done.'
'So I thought too, once. But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.

What Frodo tries to articulate here is the sense that he has given himself up for the sake of the Shire. He is not physically dead, but he might as well be; he was driven to take the Ring to Mordor by the threat of The Shire being destroyed and it has indeed been saved, but now he takes no pleasure in it.

Frodo's words remind me of Churchill's about the RAF: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Was Frodo a sacrifice or was he a martyr? It depends upon how willing he was to take on his task, on whether he truly understood what he was doing and what would happen to him. And on that final point, I don't actually think any of the great powers really did know what would happen to him, as the Ring seems to have had a different effect on all the Ringbearers, Isildur included.