lol another one

ok you have been warned. i am going to be posting non stop now, with annoyingly nagging questions like this one:

did frodo really succeed in his quest?

ive heard so many ppl say that he didn't, and that his sadness at the end is partly due to that.
now i don't think so myself, but it is true that the Ring conquered him in the end. countless people have told me that in reality he failed - i don't agree, but i can see their point. what do you think?
anustar who posts altogether too many things than is good for her

I used to say that Frodo ultimately failed, too, until I posted this on a newsgroup. I wish I remembered who said this, but someone pointed out to me another way of looking at it. I could be said that Frodo succeeded in the quest at the point where he showed mercy to Gollum and did not slay him, because, as we see in the end, Gollum is essential in achieving the ultimate goal of the quest. This is pointed out as early as the second chapter of FOTR, where Gandalf and Frodo have a discussion of whether Bilbo should have slain Gollum in The Hobbit.

i agree

I think Frodo was succesfull in his part of the quest, fulfilling as much as was possible for him. Gollum's part in destroying the ring was necessary, but Frodo did all he could ans succeeded.

Well said Eruve. It is the mercy that Frodo showed Gollum that caused him to succeed. Without Gollum, who knows how things would have turned out. Hmm...."What If Frodo Killed Gollum?" I think we could start a thread on that one.....

There are several letters on this topic in Letter by J.R.R. Tolkien I think. I don't really want to try to find them though (having attempted that before on a very similar topic, unsuccessfully). Last time I tried to find some specific topics, it took a month.

please? if i beg? or maybe someone else can? i don't have Letters..

My bet is MM finds it first

One letter on the topic is letter #246. It's several pages long so I am not quoting it here. Your local library should have a copy of Letters. (out of 4 local libraries here, 3 have good collections on Tolkien). Good luck finding it.

Good work Finduilas! I looked it up, it is a rather long entry! Here is but a part........

"Frodo indeed "failed" as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say "simple minds" with contempt: they often see with clairity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable...............I do not thinks that Frodo was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach it's maximum--impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (with which he began) and his suffereings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.

(source: letter #246 to Mrs. Eileen Elgar (draft), September 1963)

It appears that as long as you are true to yourself (and to the goal that you have set) and attempt your goal to the best of your ablitity, then you are never a failure....regardless of the obstacles that may or may not have prevented you from completing your task.

thanks! and as for my library having a copy, they don't even have the Two Towers...
anyway this is the way i think about it now: Frodo did not fail as he did as much as he could. things were not likely to go any other way, it would have been too much to hope. i mean Frodo couldn't even throw it into the fire at home when he had not possesed it long or been through such strain.

This has the aroma of astrophysics.

The Ring exhibited the gravitation of a celestial body which kept getting denser and denser. Ultimately, Frodo was unable to escape its Event Horizon. At the very center was a Singularity of Sauron's Will. But.. hmm.. Gollum, in the form of Hawking Radiation.. uh.. Jar Jar Binxed the Ring into the Crack of Doom, thus allowing the black hole of Frodo's destiny to explode into a thousand lesser evils that permeated to the corners of the Middle-Earth universe.

(Don't worry. I did this with the Sith, Force, Jedi and Vergence also.)

Jar Jar Binksed the ring?

"Mesa goin' to trow de bombad ring into the maxi big cracken now, okieday?"

Frodo Succeeded, he destroyed Sauron.

That explanation really doesn't work as well as the one Tolkien gave us. Are we sure he destroyed Sauron? No. Sauron could still be cowering in a little pit somewhere, waiting for the next age of the earth so he can screw everything up again.

I agree with Tater. He was just thrown into the darkness and shadows but it was never sure that was he totally destroyed.

Frodo wasn't the one who destroyed Sauron (assuming he was destroyed). It was Gollum. Two wrongs made a right.

i always thought Frodo's part in the whole mess was to be just the Ringbearer - not the Ringdestroyer. Frodo succeeded in bringing the Ring to Mt. Doom, and i think that that was his entire role & that he fulfilled it. It was Gollum's part to destroy it, and he did although he wouldn't have done so consciously.

also, frodo didn't destroy sauron. he just scared the pants off him when frodo put on the ring. (do Maiar know fear? is sauron still counted as a maiar? i'm halfway through Sil...) a lot of sauron's power was put in the Ring, but destroying it didn't destroy him, it just weakened him considerably.

*** SPOILERS AHEAD! ***

first time i read RotK, i was convinced frodo was going to die before the ring was destroyed.

aryne *

Just imagine hadn't the ring been destroyed.

Hummm... scary tought
Flying Nazgul instead of 747,
Orks would replace policeman (not so great lost
And, worst than all, world would always be at war, half of the earth's people would not eat enough, man would live in big cities without caring for his neighbours, lots of murders and stoooopid acts of mindless destruction...
What a terrible world it would be!

Hum... Sauron still lives for sure... I think he's taken the name of Clinton and now rules over his Kingdom in USA.

I don't know about that. I don't think that Clinton is smart enough to be Sauron in disguise

I think that Sauron essentially destroyed himself, it just took an age for him to do it, and he did it when he made the original decision to apply much of his own power to the Ring, thereby taking his power out of his own complete control.
By that reasoning, Frodo and Gollum just happen to be pawns, in the right (or wrong)place at the correct time.