This is going to seem like a strange question, but a friend and I were discussing the the Lord of the Rings movies, when a curious point about Frodo came up. Said friend commented that intentionally or not, Frodo in the movies was the only character among the main cast not to kill or defeat anyone. This seemed strange to me, as I remember the other Hobbits engaged in swordfights with the rest of the Fellowship; A battle in the Mines of Moria, Sam when rescuing Frodo, and of course Merry and Pippin in Pellenor Fields.
What say you dopers, is Frodo in the movies a damsel in distress?
Absolutely true. But that is not the point. Is Frodo’s journey in the movies in the vein of Jesus, who’s role is to take punishment like a man and ask for more? Or does he, at any point, kick butt and take names?
And, of course, he failed at the end, which means he wasn’t even the one to defeat Sauron.
You see, you ask very different questions and you might get very different answers. The archetypical damsel in distress is an almost completely passive figure, existing to be acted upon by the villain and the hero. Frodo agrees to take the Ring to Rivendell, he stands up to the Witch-King twice, he volunteers to take the Ring to Mordor, he sets out on his own when the Fellowship begins to fall apart, and he restrains Sam from killing or driving away Gollum. Those are just the crucial actions that I can think of off the top of my head, without which the quest would have never succeeded. I’m sure there were others.
Unfortunately, Peter Jackson, for all he got right in the films, made Frodo a more passive character until the climax of the trilogy, at which point he acts in such a way as to subvert Tolkien’s intent. But nobody’s perfect.
Well, failure is in the eye (or is that Eye?) of the beholder. Frodo was called the Ringbearer, never the Ringdestroyer. At no point do any of the Wise (Gandalf, Elrond, or Galadriel) charge Frodo with destroying the ring. In fact, they seem to doubt that anyone can willingly do that. And there’s no indication that anyone, save possibly Frodo himself, considers him a failure afterward. His mission was to do his utmost to get the Ring as far as he could, which is exactly what he did.
Is he a Christ figure? Well, he certainly suffers and sacrifices so that mankind can be redeemed. He is imprisoned and whipped, and there are death and resurrection metaphors. Carrying the Ring into Mordor can be seen as an allegory for taking on the world’s sins and descending into death (hell). But of course Frodo is mortal, and while he can be an instrument of the divine plan, redemption must ultimately come from a higher power.
I cant see how the ring could represents man’s sins. Its a magical artifact that represents power and its destruction defeats Sauron. Not everything is a Jesus allegory. Im not seeing a connection to the christian mythology of original sin and LOTR. If anything, these stories are extremely pagan: many gods conspiring against each other, mortals being used by gods, magical artifacts forged by gods, mortals with many gods, tolerance of a pantheistic system, etc.
While the Valar are called gods by men, they themselves (except for Morgoth, of course) never claim that title. They’re all just agents of the One, Illuvatar.
And Frodo played a far greater part than any other single character in defeating Sauron. Even the final casting of it into the fire was indirectly his doing: He had earlier commanded Gollum that if he should try to take the Ring, that he himself would be cast into the fire (and so it came to pass). I think that 95% credit for destroying Sauron counts as a much higher frag count than slaying a measly few hundred orcs.
He’s not a Christ figure but a Moses figure – a human being (hobbits are dimunitive Men, not Elves or Dwarves) acutely aware of his own shortcomings but willing to answer the Call, whose task was to trek across the wilderness to free his people from a pressing danger, but himself fail to share in the ‘salvation’ (in the broad sense). The Ring is Power; the hobbits are the relatively powerless who do not succumb to its temptations when greater, stronger individuals do.
And it’'s a tribute to Tolkien’s technique that we don’t see the Frodo of the book as a Casper Milquetoast but as the inoffensive brave individual holding up under spiritual strain and grave danger and opposition.
It is not Frodo’s job to kill anyone. It is everyone elses jobs to kill the servants to Sauron so as to prevent his victory while Frodo performs his task.
Frodo has the ball. Everyone else is just a blocker.
First, Tolkien’s damsel in distress, Luthien, rescued herself.
I don’t measure a character’s value by who or how many he or she defeats, and I don’t think Tolkien did either. If anything Tolkien seems to value resistance to corruption and the ability to recognize that which is evil or weak. He sets great store by pity, love, and personal loyalty.
The movie did a great disservice to Faramir. In the book, he resists temptation to take the ring and simply sees the hobbits on their way. This puts him in very good company: Galadriel, Gandalf, Aragorn. The movie puts him more in the category of Saruman.
Dissing Frodo for not defeating anyone is about as silly as Rosie Cotton saying Sam had abandoned Frodo at the first sign of trouble.
In the end, Tolkien’s world it is all about the everyday. Aragorn and his rangers quietly keep the dark forces at bay so the Hobbits can get on with their life, and after Sauron is defeated, Aragorn gets on with his life, as does the rest of the world. Even Eowyn who dreamed of glory in battle decides that she might as well settle down after the war. That is the whole point, living life. Sure we have the stories set in times of trouble, but that is because it is more interesting, but it is not the point. Frodo’s sacrifice is not enduring the ring or his dangerous trek, it is never being able to settle down and live life with his friends.
Remember the great deeds are not always defeating an opponent. Galadriel led the Noldor across the ice after they were betrayed. Luthien’s big deed was singing so that she touched the heart of fate himself and was rewarded with a bit of time to live life with her love and raise a son. Pippin may have defeated that troll in battle, but his big deed was in getting Gandalf to save Faramir.
Indeed, Frodo and Sam reminisce in the book about how it’s precisely those times that nobody wants to live through that everyone always wants to hear stories about afterwards.
In the books, IIRC, Frodo successfully wounds a troll in the brawl in Moria (and I think Boromir had actually tried to get the troll first but failed). Before that, he cut off the Barrow-wight’s hand or something when they were trapped in the Barrow. Frodo also fights off physical attacks by Gollum a couple of times, and he and Sam briefly get ready to fight Faramir when they mistakenly believe he will try to take the Ring. Frodo isn’t by any means totally passive in physical conflict, especially when he feels the Ring is threatened.
Remember also that the actual carrying of the Ring is physically and mentally very tiring for him, and becomes more and more distracting and burdensome as time goes on. You probably wouldn’t be able to muster up very much fighting spirit at a moment’s notice either if you were being constantly tortured by a terrible and wholly evil temptation that required a great deal of willpower to resist.
I agree with most of this: the whole point of Frodo was that his suffering and dedication brought the wisdom to refrain from killing and his courage allowed him to speak up for the wise but difficult choice of restraint and forgiveness. I think Tolkien is pretty clear that his lack of ass-kicking is a feature not a bug.
Beautiful work in calling Frodo a Moses figure. The relative lack of direct fighting on his part is another parallel to Moses. Though I think Tolkien would be surprised by that comparison, and am pretty sure he wasn’t allegorizing Frodo as Jesus or anyone else, even if the theme of the book is in many ways Christian.
Other actions that spring to mind are Frodo restraining hobbits from killing, both after the Battle of Bywater, and when Sauruman was rousted out of Bag End. These are critical because while Merry and Pippin show they’ve grown in physical capability, Frodo has gained moral wisdom and authority.
There was an interview with Jackson where he admits that he departed from the book there. His reasoning was that they had several scenes talking about how insidious and seductive the Ring was, how no one could withstand Its call and so on and to suddenly have Faramir go “The Ring? Oh, I don’t care about that and don’t want it.” would have some portion of the audience going “But… but… you just said it would corrupt and seduce anyone who had it! It just corrupted Borimir and…”
So, he had Faramir briefly corrupted but then be able to overcome it, showing the strength of Men to resist the corruption of Sauron in that way. It may not have “worked” for a lot of people but that was the reasoning he was using.
Interesting idea, but it has one big flaw. Frodo’s quest was not to free any slaves, certainly not his own people or even those of his allies.
It’s true that in earlier revisions, Frodo does take an active part in the Scouring of the Shire. But that’s not the original quest.
I don’t think Moses is a very good fit. Christ is a little better, but still not really good. You can see elements of both of them in Frodo, of course.
Don’t be talking about my little man Frodo. The biggest departure in the first movie. One of my favorite scenes from the Fellowship:
Suddenly the foremost Rider spurred his horse forward. It checked at the water and reared up. With a great effort Frodo sat upright and brandished his sword.
“Go back!” he cried. “Go back to the Land of Mordor, and follow me no more!” His voice sounded thin and shrill in his own ears. The Riders halted, but Frodo had not the power of Bombadil. His enemies laughed at him with a harsh and chilling laughter. “Come back! Come back!” they called. “To Mordor we will take you!”
"Go back! he whispered.
“The Ring! The Ring!” they cried with deadly voices; and immediately their leader urged his horse forward into the water, followed closely by two others.
“By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair,” said Frodo with a last effort, lifting up his sword, “you shall have neither the Ring nor me!”
Then the leader, who was now half across the Ford, stood up menacing in his stirrups, and raised up his hand. Frodo was stricken dumb. He felt his tongue cleave to his mouth, and his heart labouring. His sword broke and fell out of his shaking hand. The elf-horse reared and snorted. The foremost of the black horses had almost set foot upon the shore.
At that moment there came a roar …
Now I have heard that Jackson pumped up the role of Arwen to get women in the seats, but Frodo was alone at the Ford. Almost dead, but ready to go down fighting.
Come to that, maybe the Moses comparison isn’t that far off.
*"But Frodo said: ‘…I will not have him slain. It is useless to meet revenge with revenge: it will heal nothing. And in any case I do not wish him to be slain in this evil mood. He was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against. He is fallen and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it.’
Saruman rose to his feet, and stared at Frodo. There was a strange look in his eyes of mingled wonder and respect and hatred. ‘You have grown, Hafling,’ he said. ‘Yes, you have grown very much. You are wise, and cruel. You have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt of your mercy.’"*
I really think that Jackson made the right call with Faramir. In the books (LotR, at least) the Ring suffers a bit from the Worf Factor. It’s used too often to demonstrate how strong some other character is, with the result that the Ring itself ends up looking kind of weak. Bilbo gives it away. Frodo tries like mad to give it away to every powerful good guy he meets: Gandalf won’t touch it, Tom Bombadil plays with it like a trinket and hands it back, Galadriel turns it down. Faramir won’t even consider taking it. It’s not even a sweat for him to say no. The last straw is when Frodo is captured, and Sam - Sam, for God’s sake! - takes it, wears it, then hands it right back to Frodo. The only person is ever really corrupts is Gollum. It gets to Boromir once, but he comes to his senses just before he gets killed, so we never get to see if it would have set its hooks any deeper into him. Frodo does finally succumb to it, but only after trying to give it away no less than three times. The only other person it ever gets to is Isildur, and while not destroying the Ring when he had the chance was a bad decision, he never does anything overtly evil with it. Not that he had much of a chance to, of course, but still - that’s not much of a track record for an item we are told is the ultimate in seductive evil.