In the world of fantasy and science fiction, we expect our protagonists to be men and women of action; people who make hard and risky choices with potentially dire consequences. And while we love heroic characters that can accomplish great feats of strength and agility, sometimes the best characters are ordinary people who find a way to overcome extraordinary circumstances. But if these characters become too ordinary—too inactive, flawed or encumbered by their plight—there is also a potential for us as readers to resent them for being so damn ordinary. Alas, I give you Frodo Baggins. Simply put, things happen to Frodo; Frodo doesn’t make things happen. He needs significant assistance or an outright bailout in virtually every situation. This, coupled with his increasingly whiny temperament, serves to remind us about how ordinary he truly is.
Firstly, let me say that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is without a doubt one of my favorite pieces of fantasy literature. The world is rich and immersive; the characters are dynamic and engaging; the story is epic and multi-layered; the action is…well, the characters are great. Accordingly, we get off to a great start with our protagonist, Frodo Baggins, who initially comes off as intelligent, witty, and good-natured. During the early stages of the saga, Frodo shows himself to be an unusual hobbit—one of strong initiative. Not only does he willingly choose to go on the journey to Rivendell, in part to protect the Shire from the Nazgul, but he quickly saves his whole party through sheer force of will when they are captured in the lair of the barrow-wights. Here, though, we already begin to see some foreshadowing of Frodo needing a savior in virtually every situation. Tolkien creates the God-man Tom Bombadil to get Frodo and his companions out of this predicament, just as he does earlier on the journey when the party is seduced and attacked by the tree sorcerer, Old Man Willow.
Not long after the encounter with the barrow-wights, Frodo finds himself a new savior in Strider. It is through Strider’s efforts, and his alone, that Frodo is saved from certain death at the hands of the Nazgul when they are attacked at Amon Sul. At this point, because of the wound Frodo receives from the Witch King’s Morgul-blade, he finds himself in the need of a different kind of a savior—a healer. As the party continues to risk their own necks against the Nazgul to get the dying Frodo to Rivendell, it requires the further intervention of the elf Glorfindel, coupled with Elrond’s magic flooding river, to get him there. But, in fairness to Frodo, his finest hour is still to come.
At the council of Elrond, Frodo shows great strength of character when he volunteers to bear the ring to Mordor and destroy it in the furnace of Mount Doom. This is a particularly bold choice because, by now, Frodo has some appreciation for how perilous the journey is and how taxing the ring can be. Frodo is becoming the character we want him to be… or is he? While he is certainly due credit here, it still takes the subsequent self-sacrifice of Gandalf at Moria, the death of Boromir, and the selfless efforts of his companions to just get him through the first book. Even Frodo’s indestructible mithril coat single-handedly saves him on several occasions. In short, by the end of the Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo is already proving himself to be more of an observer than a participant.
Through the Two Towers we begin to see Frodo develop into a moody, inactive, and fatalistic character. While Frodo has some high points, such as when he subdues Gollum with Sting and then spares his life, his lethargy begins to wear on us, just as the ring wears on him. After flexing his whiny authority over his companion, Samwise Gamgee, he lets Gollum lead the party to Ithilien, where they get captured and find themselves at the mercy of Faramir and company. Fortunately for them (and entirely through luck), Faramir is a good man who provides them with provisions and sends them on their way. By the time the three adventurers close in on Minas Morgul, Frodo has become annoyingly sluggish. Meanwhile, Samwise starts to become the hobbit we want Frodo to be. No one in the series is as ordinary as Sam, but through his love, devotion and selflessness, we begin to see a character we are happy to call our hero. Accordingly, the Two Towers ends with Sam (who was also right not to trust Gollum) saving Frodo from the giant spider, Shelob, and choosing to take on the ring himself to complete the quest. Sam has, in effect, become the primary protagonist.
By the third and final book, we don’t even encounter Frodo until a third of the way through, and the first time he does appear, it is in the context of Sam saving him from the two factions of orcs who wipe each other out over Frodo’s mithril coat (yet another save from the mithril coat). By the time the reunited hobbits escape Minas Morgul, Frodo has become impossibly lackluster and moody, and is literally being dragged along by Sam who has sacrificed everything to get Frodo to, and through, Mordor. By now Frodo has ceased to be a character and has effectively become a character device—merely an obstacle for Sam to deal with. When the hobbits finally do arrive at Mount Doom, Frodo gets the ultimate chance to redeem himself from his inactivity—he can finally cast the ring info the fires of Mount Doom and end the reign of Sauron. But instead of destroying the ring, he claims it for himself! As with most everything else Frodo does, it takes the action of someone else—in this case Gollum biting his finger off—to get him to take action. Frodo’s great chance for redemption as an inactive character falls flat; he’s just kind of there.
A Victim of Expectations?
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Frodo isn’t the depth or activeness of his character, but who he is being compared to. For readers familiar with the predecessor to the Lord of the Rings series, The Hobbit, we have every reason to believe that Frodo is just like his uncle and guardian, Bilbo Baggins. They’re both hobbits named “Baggins;” they both have an unusually high level of initiative—a result of their shared Took blood; heck, they even share the same birthday—September 22nd. Unfortunately for Frodo (and for the reader who is trying to like him), this inevitable comparison sets a level of expectation too high for his character to overcome because these perceived similarities quickly break down as the saga unfolds. Where Bilbo is reluctantly forced into a great and perilous journey and grows into a hero—a man…er…hobbit of action—along the way, Frodo’s arc seems to go the opposite direction. He willingly takes on the journey to Rivendell and, subsequently, on to Mordor, but by the end of the series, and because of the burden of the ring, Frodo has become brooding and fatalistic. Bilbo, on the other hand, never loses his sense of humor, even though he is faced with similarly perilous circumstances. However, the biggest difference between the two is that Bilbo proves to be a hobbit of action; one capable of saving his entire group from a TPK (total party kill) as with the forest spiders, while Frodo increasingly becomes a liability to his group, requiring someone or something to bail him out time and time again. In short, Bilbo is an ordinary hobbit that proves to be extraordinary, while with Frodo, we assume he is extraordinary and disappointedly learn that he is annoyingly ordinary.
Meh…
So, by the end of the Lord of the Rings series, pretty much everyone in the book has become a hero in some way or another with the exception of its main protagonist, Frodo Baggins. Frodo essentially stumbles his way across the finish line and provides us with numerous and constant reminders that he’s no more exceptional than the guy down the street. And while we love common and ordinary characters that rise above their circumstances, Frodo’s just not that guy.
Michael Witwer is the author of Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, available from Bloomsbury. Find him on Twitter @mikewitwer.
So nevermind that the reason he isn’t able to become the hero we apparently all expect him to is because he is slowly taken over by the object of highest evil. The fact that he actually GOT it to where it was to be destroyed is certainly a miracle enough, but he never gets enough credit. At least from readers. Obviously the Wise of Middle-earth accorded him the honors he deserved. I think he’s a much more realistic character than all of the others who rise to become someone so much more than they first were. It’s kind of boring that everyone nowadays becomes the big hero we expect them to.
I am afraid I must disagree.
Your description of Frodo being indecisive and whiny is the Frodo I saw in the films and I agree that I wouldn’t trust that dude to throw a Ring into a hoop.
But the Frodo of the books that I know is thoughtful. This alone makes me like him better than many action heroes (“You can read lines on paper? Die, foul wizard!”). He considers the moral consequences of his actions. He is trying to understand the “big picture.”
What you see as “being bailed out by the mithril coat” I see as “the bad guys being defeated by their own nature,” which is a core theme in Tolkein. But unlike Asimov’s Foundation series, where the dead hand of psychohistory takes over, Frodo or Sam or someone must act on the opportunity given them.
You could argue that Frodo becoming a witness rather than a prime mover is not a lot different from Gandalf saying “You hobbits have grown, you are capable of managing your own affairs” rather than punching out Saruman for them; or on a larger scale the Powers of the World saying “we know what’s going on and we will provide you opportunities, but you have to take advantage of them yourselves.” Frodo is doing his part and is letting others do their part. And the changes that take place in Frodo during the course of his journey are critical to the end-play, both at Mount Doom and at home in the Shire.
Your thesis that “we want our heroes to be normal” seems to be subverted when you say that Sam becomes the decisive action-taking person that we want Frodo to be; it seems to me that we can’t have it both ways…
I don’t mean to sound oppositional, but I have such a different take on this topic that I wanted to get this out…
What you describe as a bug, I call a feature. The book is very explicit about its ethos being the opposite of The Hobbit: Frodo lampshades this in “The Shadow of the Past,” noting to Gandalf that his job is to lose a treasure whereas Bilbo’s was to gain it. Since that’s the case, Frodo can’t replicate Bilbo’s arc: his self has to be degraded, not enhanced; worn down, not built up. And that’s something the book does masterfully.
Yes, what Taurendil says above. Your article briefly alludes to the corrosive effect of the Ring (once, by my count), but, as Tom Shippey argues in J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, Frodo’s increasing passivity and failure to act is much of Tolkien’s point. Shippey points out that, at the Cracks of Doom, Frodo’s precise words are “I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” The Ring has robbed Frodo of his ability to choose moral action; as Shippey says, “It is also interesting that Frodo does not say , ‘I choose not to do” , but ‘I do not choose to do’. Maybe (and Tolkien was a profesor of language) the choice of words is absolutely accurate. Frodo does not choose; the choice is made for him.”
I also don’t agree that Bilbo is an extraordinary hobbit. Is he an extraordinary character? Yes. But what he discovers is that there is more in him than he himself realized. Bilbo isn’t a hero because there is anything inherently special in him that isn’t in any other hobbit (or human, for that matter) – he simply had to discover it. (And even then, at the close of The Hobbit, Gandalf tells Bilbo, “You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all.”
Both Bilbo and Frodo are “no more exceptional than the guy down the street” – that’s the beauty of Tolkien’s story. I think you’re onto something, comparing and contrasting the two; but I don’t think dismissing Frodo as somehow inferior to Bilbo quite works. There but for the grace of Illuvatar go we!
“pretty much everyone in the book has become a hero in some way or another with the exception of its main protagonist”
Well, excluding Frodo and the rest of the hobbits, pretty much everyone else had trained and/or grown in a culture that helped them survive the journey. We’ve got an elf with decades of experience killing orcs, a dwarf with war-lust, a warrior from Gondor, a ranger that survived on his own for years, a freaking Maia helping them along… basically the only thing that was out of their normal experience was the Balrog, and they all ran away when they saw it coming. The hobbits did all that, without any training at all, being smaller and weaker, and Frodo even did it with an Artifact of Ultimate Evil hanging from his neck sapping away at his will every minute of the way. That’s why even Aragorn, King of Gondor, bowed down to them.
As a minor sidenote, I don’t get the point of writing TPK and then explaining the acronym instead of just, y’know, writing “total party kill” in the first place.
A post from a few years ago on Tor.com, on PTSD in fiction, which highlights Frodo as suffering from it.
http://www.tor.com/2009/08/31/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-in-fiction-part-2/
Well said, rwb.
Also, it’s absolutely true that Frodo couldn’t have done it alone. That’s obvious, sure, but it was a pretty massive group effort, of which Frodo is a key component.
Frodo, Sam, and Gollum are the most obvious “local” group to have won the quest, with the rest of the Fellowship and their allies helping to keep the forces of Mordor off their backs; to pave the way, as it were. Gollum was the one to actually topple it over in the end, yes, but he did so because of the curse Frodo placed on him when he made him swear by the Precious. (With The Silmarillion fresh in my mind these days, I’ve come to understand that curses have power in Tolkien’s world!) Frodo first warned Gollum: “You will never get it back. In the last need, Smeagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command.”
Then, outside the Cracks of Doom, he brings back the cursed warning: “Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again”—and he DOES!—”you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.” This is all done by Frodo consciously, almost like a failsafe. I don’t think Gollum would have fallen in and become so reckless on the precipice without this very active deed on Frodo’s part.
I also think that of all the hobbit characters, Frodo is one of the least common. He comes into the story better educated than most ill-informed protagonists, relatively speaking, being Bilbo’s nephew. Pick any other hobbit and Gandalf would have a lot more explaining to do in “Shadow of the Past.” Instead, we benefit as if we, as he is the point of view character at this stage, as if from having read The Hobbit, in the very least. He also speaks a great deal of Elvish, which helps inform the reader at various points of the saga.
To me Frodo is not the everyman. If anyone, I think Pippin and Merry are, but this story shows how some ordinary people can transcend their ordinariness, and then they BECOME exception by stepping up, as it were. Which I think everyday people can do from time to time in real life. Heroes aren’t born heroes.
The fact that you personally would prefer Frodo to be a more active hero, while completely understandable, doesn’t mitigate the fact that such a change in the narrative would completely undermine the story Tolkien was trying to tell. If you love, or even like the narrative that Tolkien is trying to tell, you can certainly still find a single ingredient that tastes foul to you when consumed out of context.
For instance, I don’t generally like mustard. I hate it, but it is a key ingredient in many dishes I like. Changing Frodo to the type of hero you like best would not improve The Lord of the Rings, it would impoverish it. It would undercut the very nature of the story Tolkien is telling; one in which nobody was capable of destroying the Ring without the help of fate, or perhaps a higher power. Frodo certainly played his part; so did Sam. But without seeing the visible effects the ring was having on Frodo, the weakest of heroes, would we have believed that the powerful like Galadriel, or Gandalf would have succumbed? If we had not seen Frodo’s descent to the dark side, to helplessness, to powerlessness, would we have believed his betrayal at the end, when he decided to keep the Ring for himself?
I don’t think so. The payoff of The Lord of the Rings is not found in great deeds, but in small ones; faithful friendship (Sam), and most importantly, mercy (from Bilbo, to Gandalf, to Frodo). The single most important act to the plot of The Lord of The Rings was Frodo sparing Gollum.
The epic nature of Aragorn’s plot has been played out over, and over, and over in fantasy for the past 60 years. But its the heart of The Lord of the Rings, the story of Frodo, Sam and Gollum, that sets this story apart from all its descendants. While lifted out of context, that heart may not be the most exciting, and may even be downright distasteful to some people, its the essential ingredient that makes The Lord of the Rings transcend both it’s genre and it’s time.
I think the Lord of the Rings is a story that can be redefined depending on whom the reader wants to be the main viewpoint. Were the viewpoint Gandalf then it would be about preservation, were the viewpoint Sam it would be about loyalty, and so forth. I think in choosing Frodo as the viewpoint, Tolkien is stressing that LOTR is a fantasy epic about cultivation. Frodo is representative of the hundreds of thousands/millions of folks in Middle-earth who deserve the peace to grow into their lives, free of the back and forth between kings, elves, Ishtari, and angels. As that representative, it makes sense for Frodo to be continually saved and doomed by the larger forces in play. The story isn’t really a war over the Ring, it’s a war over Frodo.
I just can’t…Really? I must concur with the post above and can only conclude that the author only saw the movies and never went anywhere near the books.
While I concur that Frodo is certainly not my favourite character from LOTR, I don’t agree with this harsh statement. Maybe the other characters have shown more growth but they didn’t have to deal with the effects of the ring.
The effect of the ring gets stronger when they get closer to mount doom. Look at Isildur, he had the exact same reaction to the ring when faced with the possible destruction of it. I think there aren’t a lot of people in Middle-Earth who could defy the rings power at that point. Everyone in the books points to the fault of men but I’m not sure Elrond or another elf could have cast the ring down into the flames.
Frodo’s more like his uncle than you would think. Both Bagginses show Gollum mercy, enabling him to act out his final role which destroys the ring. Would Aragorn or Gimli have shown Gollum mercy? I’m not so sure.
So … are you commenting on the Frodo of Tolkien’s books, or on the Frodo of Peter Jackson’s movie, as portrayed by Elijah Wood, because, well, very different. The lackluster victim of the books is due primarily to the weight of the ring, and I believe Tolkien’s message is that even the purest of heart can be weighted down by the despair of evil. Sam was able to be the savior since he didn’t have to carry the burden of the ring for as long. Frodo never claimed to be anything other than what he was, which made him the only one who could take on the quest. The fact that he constantly needed saving was a known given from the start, hence the party that set out from Rivendell to accompany and protect him.
The Frodo from the movies – yeah, a different story, but please, let’s not confuse a condensed version of a classic with the real thing.
@9 TorChris,
Fascinating point about Frodo’s POV. I would however note that Gandalf, Saruman, et al take issue with being called Ishtari, They have already retained the services of Gothmog, Gothmog, Shelob, Angmar, and Gothmog (a Personal Injury Firm, Injuring Persons Since the First Age) and you will be hearing from them…
Yeas, I have been here. First time I read the book, I loved Frodo. Partly I think it was because he was the obvious hero, so I gave him part credit for all the cool shit that happened. By the way, at this point I had very little time for Sam, he was so boring.
Then, I realised how little Frodo actually does. God it was boring to read about him being dragged all over the world. The story was still awesome, I just focused on the stuff happening elsewhere. I even skipped the Frodo sections in the later books a time or two. Aragorn was the hero, Gimli, Legolas, Merry and Pippin were the cool ones.
Then I discovered how cool Sam was. He practically carried Frodo from Rivendell to Mt Doom! That guy is amazing, and such loyalty to stick with it.
And then I saw what Sam sees, and what Aragorn and Galadriel and all the others see. Frodo is the guy who sacrifices so that the others don’t have to. Literally, in fact. Not one of the others in the party loses a single thing, but they gain beyond belief, in experiences and in wealth both. Don’t get me wrong, they time and again show how willing they are to sacrifice, but in the end the only sad things that happen to them is that friends are met and lost along the way, like Boromir and Theoden. But ask Pippin and Merry if they would rather have never known them at all.
They all get to face simple, straight forward evil and fight through with sword in hand, because Frodo stands between them and all the really horrible effects of evil. He faces temptation and degredation and the slow slicing away of his strenght, his resolve, all that he can trust in. And he carries all that to the very end. Thus, at the end of the book, he also carries all the consequences and has one less finger to carry with. He is wounded in body and spirit, to the point where he cannot endure Middle Earth any more.
Sam comes home and becomes the mayor.
There.
A thank you to the author of this piece, it has been a long time since anyone managed to provoke me with Tolkien. This was nice.
Also, @1: I think you misjudge most readers. The shirefolk may not know the whole picture, but the rest of us still cry when Frodo sails away. Every time.
I’ve always read Frodo (possibly because of the ridiculous number of times we studied WWI at school) as the idealistic young public school boy signing up in the summer of 1914 to go and fight on the front line, only to arrive in the trenches to find a group of other young men looking to him for guidance as their officer while High Command use increasingly moronic and out of date tactics to get them all killed; as his men die around him the weight on his soul grows. In the end he escapes the trenches when the armistice is signed just as he has given up all hope (ohai, Gwaihir!) and he returns home only to discover that because of everything he has seen he doesn’t fit in there any more.
Sam on the other hand is his batman; the loyal man of good yeoman stock (limbs made in England etc) who knows his officer is inclined to dangerous levels of introspection and is a crutch to him when the shells are falling or they’re readying themselves to climb over the top into No Man’s Land; his familiar and reliable presence enables the young officer to get through with his body (if not his mind) intact. The batman goes home and doesn’t speak about the War but, through supporting the officer and their men through the war, has sufficient wisdom to become a pillar of the community.
Merry & Pippin are also junior officers, but not as introspective as Frodo and not fighting trench warfare. They’re more the WWII type, accidentally seconded to foreign Allied units and seeing it all as a bit of an adventure apart from the occasions where things go monumentally pear-shaped.
anthonypero and sotnomen, above, said it best. In a word, Frodo is a different kind of hero, and LOTR has many heroes of different types. Frodo exemplifies self-sacrifice, which is no small thing considering Tolkien’s intent to provide a mirror of his own Catholic worldview. Michael Witwer obviously has no taste for self-sacrificial heroes, preferring the cliche trope of the “self-made man” which is demanded by consumers of fiction in our culture these days. Frodo is not in control of his fate, and none of us are, which is close to Tolkien’s point. Witwer loses the point of the books when he declares weirdly that Frodo isn’t a hero; indeed, that he alone is somehow excluded from the heroic. I suppose in a war story all the folks who sacrificed their lives on the battlefield aren’t heroic either, in his view, since they might be “moody, inactive, and fatalistic” in their final moments as they protected the rest of us from harm. Not all heroes are cut from the cloth of D&D and superhero comics. Tolkien could have given Frodo a chipper, optimistic spirit through Mordor and had him toss Gollum over the edge of Mount Doom. Thankfully he did not!
Is the article’s title meant to be self-referential? Surely the most banal thing here is the plot-summary analysis pretending to be a literary critique. It’s a sad state of affairs when the commenters use more textual evidence than the article (which uses none). Have to agree with the poster who questioned the writer’s actual knowledge of the text. A piece of criticism (positive, negative, or neutral) based on nothing more than the general impression of memory will lead you nowhere every time.
I know this piece is probably just part of a blog tour to help promote the author’s new book (which sounds interesting, at least), but c’mon. You can do better.
Appears to be a consensus: one of the most ignorant and pseudo-analytical articles on Lord of the Rings I have ever read. I wonder if the author feels the same about Dave Arneson.
Frodo lives
Hello, all–everyone should feel free to disagree with the post, but let’s try to keep the comment thread civil and constructive; there’s no need to be rude or dismissive. Thanks.
I am afraid that I don’t see the problem with Frodo being an everyman, and someone who could never have accomplished what he did without the help of his friends. To me, this is one of the great strengths of LOTR. The tale not only has great warriors, and cunning leaders, sturdy companions, and powerful wizards. It has human beings, who have strengths and weaknesses that we all have.
I would far rather read about a Frodo than a Mary Sue, good at everything all by themselves, smart, skilled in combat, fiercely brave without thinking of the consequences, the object of desire for every other character in the story.
I have met many heroes in my life, and most of them are more like Frodo than the kind of hero that Mr. Witwer wants to see.
So we’re totally going to ignore The Cleansing of the Shire? Just like all the movies choose to ignore it, so why not right?
But if you don’t ignore it you get to see the active Frodo you want don’t you?
You say that Lord of the Rings is one of your favorite books, but I think you have missed the point Tolkien is trying to get across. anthonypero says it very beautifully. I am also reminded of one of the letters Tolkien wrote about fans who were angered by Frodo’s ‘betrayal’ and felt he should have been punished instead of honored. If you get the chance to read his letters, Letters 181 and 246 are especially interesting and have lots of other musings about the nature of Gollum, etc (and also notes that Sam is in some small way culpable for Gollum’s final fall). But the main point is that making these types of arguments totally miss what he is trying to get across in the story, which is (in part) a meditation on the Lord’s Prayer and grace – ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’ and ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us’. He says, “By a situation created by his forgiveness, he was saved himself, and relieved of his burden. He was very justly accorded the highest honors” in Letter 181, and in Letter 246 “Frodo had done what the could and spent himself completly (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honor; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.”
I suppose I can understand why this is not an attractive hero; self sacrifice and humility aren’t flashy. The concept of redemptive suffering, or that suffering can be meaningful in any way is a hard one to get across nowadays. But they are absolutely noble and heroic.
I will not accuse you of only having seen the movies, because you mention that Faramir is a good guy ;) (Honestly, I didn’t have a problem with Frodo in the movies, but we shall not speak of Faramir!)
@22 – interesting that you bring that up! I just finished the History of Middle Earth series, and one of the books has Tolkien’s original drafts of the end of Return of the King. Frodo had a MUCH more active role in the Scouring, but he went back and revised it all because it didn’t fit. He wanted to show that Frodo was withdrawing and that ‘victory is not for the victors’, etc.
Edited – here are some pretty good summaries of the letters if you can’t get your hands on the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (which I highly recommend!)
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_181
http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Letter_246
@14: “The shirefolk may not know the whole picture, but the rest of us still cry when Frodo sails away. Every time.”
Absolutely right. Frodo’s failure is the thematic core of the novel. As Michael Swanwick put it, Frodo was “tested to destruction”. He wasn’t a passive character, he was in way over his head, and his survival is a testament to his fundamental strength and decency. Nevertheless, he was too battered by his experience to ever be able to go home again.
Personally, I’ve always (even before I became an adult) taken Frodo’s story to be a metaphor for the loss of growing up. I don’t think that is in fact what Tolkien intended, but I like to think he would have been sympathetic towards my reading of the text, my interpretation just one of many possible “varied applicabilit[ies] to the thought and experience of readers”.
And speading of the “varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers”, @15. Muswell wrote:
I don’t think that’s what Tolkien intended (I take him at his word, that he merely wanted to tell a really long story), but this is a brilliantly plausible reading.
The whole point of Frodo is that he does “rise above” himself; he just doesn’t do it in a way that fits Michael Witwer’s notion of heroism — turning into some kind of Fearless Leader waving a sword. It’s Frodo’s thoughtful, kind, and foresighted nature and his generosity and mercy that make it possible to achieve the Quest in the face of his own weakness and trauma. You’ll notice that afterwards, from the Field of Cormallen to the farewell at the Grey Havens, Frodo never expresses any feeling of guilt for having tried to take the Ring — for his “failure” — and there is indeed no reason for him to feel any. Breaking under pressure too great to bear is not a moral failure. I’m not a Catholic or even a Christian, but I appreciate that Tolkien was trying to express his profound belief in the Christian teaching about humility and self-surrender. Which is why The Lord of the Rings is a great book and not a jolly forgettable adventure yarn.
Another point regarding the differences between The Lord of the Rings and nearly every other fantasy novel I have read is that while most fantasy is geared towards the wish-fulfillment of self-empowerment, The Lord of the Rings is most assuredly not. Its more about how we are not sufficient on our own, how we need our friends, our connections, and a good deal of luck, or fate to accomplish what we set out to do. Certainly, making Frodo more heroic would undercut the power of such a message. It strikes me that this message might be severely antiquated to a modern, Western audience, and that is a shame on multiple levels.
I will riff yet again on the repeated statements concerning Frodo’s “failure.” I don’t get this; I never have and doubt I ever will.
He failed to accomplish the task he was assigned by Elrond: to drop-kick the Ring into Sauron’s Giant Pizza Oven.
BUT
He accomplished the task that was set out for him (by the invisible hand Gandalf referred to when he said “you were meant to have the Ring”): he got the Ring to the right place at the right time so that Smeagol could grab it, slip on the Banana Peal of Doom, and take the Ring with him into the Fire, therefore vindicating Bilbo’s act of pity that started the whole chain of events.
Frodo didn’t fail; he just didn’t understand what his task was…
I couldn’t disagree more with this article. The whole point of Lord of the Rings is that Frodo was not a Hero. He was an everyman, along with his friends, called to be heroes against their own inclinations. The hobbits, literally half the size of the Men and the Elves, represent the average Joe, while Men and Elves are larger than life heroes straight out of medieval literature.
Look at the writing for the books about Frodo vs. the rest of the Company. Sam and Frodo are written as people with feelings, doubts, and hopes, writ small. Frodo knows that he probably isn’t a match for the Ring, but offers to take it, even though he “doesn’t know the way.” I don’t think Tolkien could be much clearer than that. Here’s a little guy doing more than he thinks he can, because it is necessary. I’m not sure there’s a much better definition of courage, or heroism, than that.
The further away the rest of the Company gets from Frodo, the more formal Tolkien’s language becomes, the more their deeds ring as heroic. They are meant to be large, exceptional figures against a background right out of saga. They are Heroes, called by heritage and destiny. But in the end, their mighty struggles were just a backdrop to provide a distraction so a humble hobbit could save it all, the hero no one expected or looked for.
Of course Frodo was burnt out and not up to much after his ordeal. He had given more than he really had, and was permanently scarred and changed because of it. Much like many who have come back from war, despite the invincible Hero stereotype we have for those who have served.
This article boils down to: Don’t praise the running back for scoring a touchdown. All he did was carry the ball while everyone else was blocking and distracting and getting knocked down.
(27) above has it right, I think, and more eloquently than I was going to put it. What this article (and the responses as well) has served to shine a light on is how very passive a character Frodo is. Generally speaking, that is now viewed as a writing flaw and will not get a manuscript out of the slush pile today.
I am not sure I’d describe Frodo as passive though; it’s just that his action (resisting the Ring) is a more internal sort and doesn’t have as many external signs. But there are certainly choices he made that ultimately drive the plot – he isn’t just somebody the plot ‘happens to’.
Frodo also kept his feet moving until the very end, when he got a little help from his friend. In the context presented, and as others have set, with the backdrop of WWI playing heavily into Tolkien’s thoughts, this feat alone is heroic.
Who is this weak and whiny Frodo that I keep hearing about?
Is he the one who tried to convince his friends he was fine when he was slowly dying from his wound after Weathertop?
Is he the one who offered to take the Ring to Mordor when all he wanted to do was go home?
Is he the one who kept on walking toward Mordor – when he could have given up at any time – even as he became increasingly convinced that the quest would fail and that he himself wouldn’t survive it?
Is he the one who, when the Ring grew too heavy for him to walk, started crawling toward Mount Doom instead?
I don’t know what book this weak whiny character shows up in, but it’s not the book I read.
I think it’s also important to consider what would have happened if Frodo had been a different character. If he had been more like Aragorn, the quest would have failed. There’s a reason Aragorn knew better than to take the Ring himself. If he had been more like Sam… I’m convinced the quest would have failed then, too. Sam is one of my favorite characters, but during the short time he had the Ring, he proved himself to be a terrible Ringbearer. He turned back just to keep the orcs away from Frodo’s body (not to save Frodo’s life – he didn’t know at this point that Frodo was still alive), fully accepting that this would mean the quest would fail. His loyalty was not to the quest itself, but to Frodo. Without him, Frodo would never have gotten as far as he did – but without Frodo, Sam would never have left the Shire.
The Ring was only destroyed because Frodo was who he was. Because he was a hobbit, uninterested in power and the shaping of kingdoms. Because he was an extraordinary hobbit, who loved adventures and legends as much as he loved prosaic hobbity things. And because he had a moral sensibility that told him to spare Gollum’s life. That part can’t be overlooked. The power of the Ring was such that no one would have had the strength to resist it at the end. The Ring was destroyed at the end because of a decision Frodo made – to let Gollum live. A decision a more action-hero-like protagonist likely wouldn’t have made.
Unfortunately, Real Life is often that way… Tolkien was a past-master at dealing with the very ugly reality of a world gone completely insane. One of the things I find most inspiring about the trilogy ia the concept of endurance… just plain, old, stubborn stick-to-it-iveness.
Someone find out they have cancer – they need a “healer” – and help – to endure what comes next. Someone dies – those remaining need support to make it through to their next iteration of life – and perserverance…
Many of the real-life “heroes” I’ve met have that quality in spades. They’re eveyday people faced with extraordinary, sometimes impossible situations… And they just keep on keepin’ on.
I should like, civilly and respectfully, to second every one of the comments above. Mr Witwer is mistaken.
Unlike most of the other characters in the novels, Frodo’s primary conflict is internal not external. Gandalf would not willing touch the ring, Galadriel turned down the opportunity to accept the ring? Why, because the Ring would corrupt them. Indeed it would corrupt them more totally and quickly than it corrupted Frodo. Indeed the power of the Ring was such that it corrupted anyone who even coveted the ring; the falls of Boromir and Saruman were rooted in their desire for the Ring. Of all the ring bearers, only Sam was able to let go of it freely and without aid. In part it was probably due to the short time he bore the ring, but also because Sam, at his root was the most humble of ring bearers.
First, as others have said above, Frodo is not passive. He is actively engaged in an internal struggle against corruption, one which is so powerful it prevents him from even acting. That is why acting is left to Sam. Tolkien’s choice not to describe this in more detail seems to be because Tolkien wants to leave us to form our own picture of how awful this struggle is.
Second, though, it’s true that Tolkien, in part due to his religious views, wanted to write the story in such a way that in the end, the hero was inadequate, and only a miracle could save the day. He called the ensuing resolution an ‘eucatastrophe,’ a ‘good catastrophe.’ So, Frodo failing to destroy the ring was most likely a result of Tolkien’s philosophy here. I don’t share Tolkien’s world-view, so I don’t see such a resolution as the most satisfying option, but that is, I think, why he used it.
As others have so eloquently put, this article misses the mark by a wide margin. I wonder how many of us would be able to do what Frodo did. How long would we endure the weight of the Ring, the evil it encompassed and the trials of the road. I like the analogy of the running back from Mr. Power’s comment (#30). It takes a team or a Fellowship to get to the end zone (or Mt. Doom). Both Frodo and Samwise show incredible strength to make it through. Personally, I would have turned around at Shelob – spiders creep me out and giant ones are more than I can stomach.
:/ Ordinariness is not bad, especially in our heroes. Personally I don’t have a lot of issue with how he was portrayed in the movies. (I agree with an above poster I took much bigger issue with Faramir. :P )
Also, calling Frodo and Sam whiny for extreme emotional reactions when under incredible malicious duress, nice. And by nice, I mean really not.
I have to disagree with the view that Frodo is whinny and banal, because he is not a man (hobbit) of action. The power of the ring is to impose one’s will onto others, that is to command them against their will. The reason Frodo is the ideal person to carry the ring, is that he doesn’t really want to command anyone.
Boromir is an excellent example of a typical heroic man of action. His primary goal in life is to be a hero for his people, and to lead them. The ring tempts Boromir with visions of leading his people to a new era of glory, and drives him to attempt to take the ring by force. This is why Gandalf and Galadriel refuse to accept the ring when Frodo freely offers it to them. They are people of action, and usually act by commanding. Being wise, Gandalf and Galadriel know that possessing the ring would be too tempting, because it would truly give them the absolute power of command.
I strongly disagree that “The Taming of Smeagol” marks one of Frodo’s high points, as it actually marks the beginning of Frodo’s downfall. By allowing Gollum to swear by the ring, Frodo unintentionally invokes the power of the ring beginning his slow decent until the ring takes control of him when he claims it at the Crack of Doom. The moment is noted by Sam:
“For a moment it appeared to Sam that his master had grown and Gollum had shrunk: a tall stern shadow, a mighty lord who hid his brightness in grey cloud, and at his feet a little whining dog.” Lord of the Rings, Book Four, The Taming of Smeagol
Ironically, it was Gollum’s oath, that he swore on the ring, to throw himself into the Crack of Doom if he broke the oath, that saved the day.
In Middle Earth, Tolkien shows that absolute power to command is the true evil. I think that Frodo is the perfect character to show cost of possessing that absolute power, even if you refuse to use it.
On a final note, much of my negative reaction to Michael Witwer’s article is that I perceive his argument to be that a proper hero must fit the Hollywood action hero stereotype. This may not be fair or accurate, but it is my perception.
This is precisely this trait of character that makes me love Frodo much more than Biblo, who fits the “hero” case much more. This supposedly passivity of Frodo is what makes him accomplish what no other hero would have done : the Ring in the end had barely any power over him (as compared to the others, it only took over Frodon at Mount Doom and not before) because precisely he was the only one devoid of any desire of action or activity. It’s a sort of unvoluntary/instinctive wisdom that made him a anti-hero, but the one who in the end made the difference (with Sam of course, in the way of “friendship saves the day”).
I can understand how readers can reach a conclusion similar to that of the blog writer. Many would say Frodo failed, and that he simply allowed himself to be swept along by those more powerful than himself. That he was a weak character. But as a few others here have noted, Tolkien was exploring Christian themes, just not as overtly as his friend CS Lewis did in his famous fantasy work.
Of course, Frodo could not throw the ring into the fire. He and no one else can overcome the greatest evil in the world (sin). He was destined to fail, in that sense, and he may seem in the story to simply be plodding along toward his doom. Frodo’s amazing heroic success was his ability on his long, dark journey to have, again and again, sympathy, compassion and forgiveness for Gollum. And his faith. So many would have ran their swords through Gollum. The nasty, backstabbing, murderous creature certainly asked for it. But understanding the evil that corrupted Gollum, Frodo exhibits an amazing capacity for sympathy, forgiveness.
That is taking action! And that is incredibly difficult, more so than swinging swords and lopping off heads. And look what happens in the end. If Gollum had been killed, he would not have been there to wrestle the ring away from Frodo and inadvertently fall with it to its destruction. Gandalf knows Frodo will not be able to cast the ring into the fire, but he has faith that somehow good will prevail if someone like Frodo carries the ring.
Sam, by the way, exhibits the wonderful trait of serving, of being a servant. Another Christian theme. And certainly the others in the fellowship are heroes for their struggles against evil. But only Frodo could carry the ring as far as he did.
Many were confused when Jesus walked the land. How can this man be the savior? He is not leading an army, overthrowing the occupying Roman soldiers, etc. We want our heroes, whether in fiction or on the football field or in business or politics, to be mighty and strong, waving their arms in the air, to wield swords and lead armies, take strong action, give speeches, and cast evil into the fire. But can any mortal cast evil into the fire, truly? Love, forgiveness, sympathy, servitude … it’s so difficult for us to see characters, and people, like Frodo as heroes. It saddens Gandalf that Frodo must carry the burden of evil, he knows it will destroy his mortal body, but he has faith that good will prevail thanks to Frodo’s character and that the Gray Havens and Valinor await Frodo. Hopefully, that’s true for anyone who can show the character of Frodo.
Frodo is a typical person: he needs help, he asks for help, he endures… and endures… and endures… and gets the job done with a few hiccups along the way. And when he falls from grace and claims the Ring, there is a sacrifice to make it right: he is maimed and will forever know that he is weak.
I disagree.
I was worried that there would be lots of agreement with Mr. Witwer, that society has lost the ability to see and feel. I love so that many people do really get it. Frodo’s is an internal struggle as others mentioned previously – where the greatest battles of this world occur.
I love LOTR because somehow it portrays all of the ordinariness of life – all of us that eat and breathe, work, sleep, laugh, love, struggle, serve and endure through life – in the way it deserves. It is the ordinary that make up this world. Someday when all is said and done we will see that it wasn’t the great battles and leaders that shaped the world, it was the actions of “little people”, mothers and fathers, families, around kitchen tables and cribs, that brought about the most good and made this world what it was. The glory goes to the ordinary, the humble.
I could not disagree more with an article. This is not book Frodo.