One of Tolkien´s letters: 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 think that Frodos was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum-impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted....We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers our soul-body structure in either action or endurance. Moral failure can only be asserted, I think, when a mans effort or endurance falls short of his limits, and the blame decreases as that limit is closer approached....Frodo undertook his quest out of love-to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense, if he could; and also in complete humility, acknowledging that he was wholly inadequate to the task. His real contract was only to do what he could, to try and find a way, and to go as far on the road as his strength of mind and body allowed. He did that. I do not myself see that the breaking of his 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. [Letter 246]
Posted on: Sun, 04 May 2014 10:40:50 +0000
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