Reasons behind Frodo's leaving.

[Boromir88]

Something I have been wondering about, here for a couple days, was when Frodo claimed the ring as his own, did he feel like he failed. After the outcome of the ring finally being destroyed, but knowing that he couldn't drop it in himself, does he have a sense of failure?

As discussed a couple times in the CbC threads, that Frodo blames himself for things that necessarily aren't his fault. The stabbing on weathertop, for example, he feels as if he endangered the company himself, and blames himself for dragging in his friends.

We know that Frodo leaves, because it's similar to Celebrian's situation, where she was wounded, and she couldn't be fully healed on Middle-earth. Also, the quest of the ring was a huge burden on Frodo. But is there more too it then that? Does Frodo feel ashamed, because in a way he failed not the quest, but the personal test (ha I rhymed)? Seeing that he failed his own personal test of dropping in the ring, (and thanks to Eru the ring was destroyed), and that typical blame he puts on himself, does he feel ashamed as if he can't stay in Middle-earth anymore? Just something I'm wondering, it could really lead to nowhere.

[Lhunardawen]

I'm sure Frodo has accepted that what he has done is not of his own doing, if you follow me. Besides, what he has set out to do was done. I don't think he has ever blamed himself nor felt any shame for trying to keep the Ring for his own.

[Child of the 7th Age]

Boromir88 -

I think a copy of Tolkien's Letters would be helpful to you. In various letters, JRRT discussed at length Frodo's inability to discard the Ring, the Hobbit's feelings about that failure, and how the author regarded all this.

First, JRRT made it clear that no other character (presumably including Samwise) could successfully have completed the Quest. Tolkien baldly stated that Frodo was "doomed to failure". But it is Frodo as a character who places the blame on his own head, not the author. I'll quote scattered chunks of Letter 246 to try and convey a sense of this:

I do not think that Frodo's 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. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely....

....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 wouyld have been --say, by being strangled by Gollum, or crushed by a falling rock.

That appears to have been the judgement of Gandalf and Aragorn and of all who learned the full story of his journey. Certainly nothing would be concealed by Frodo! But what Frodo himself felt about the events was another matter.

He appears first to have had no sense of guilt (III, 224-25); he was restored to sanity and peace. But then he thought he had given his life in sacrifice: he expected to die very soon. But he did not, and one can observe the disquiet growing in him.....

I think it is clear on reflection to an attentive reader that when the dark times came upon him and he was conscious of being 'wounded by knife sting and tooth and a long burden' (III, 268), it was not only nightmare memories of past horrors that afflicted him but also unreasoning self-reproach: he saw himself and all that he had done as a broken failure.....That was actually a temptation out of the Dark, a last flicker of pride: desire to have returned as a 'hero', not content with being a mere instrument of good. And it was mixed with another temptation, blacker and yet (in a sense) more merited, for however that may be explained, he had not in fact cast the Ring by a voluntary act: he was tempted to regret its destruction and still to desire it.....

Frodo's journey to the West did not come about primarily or solely because of the the need for physical healing, but rather was a way for Frodo to try and come to terms with these feelings of guilt and despair.

There have also been a number of discussions that touched upon this question in passing: Frodo's Sacrifice, Why Did Frodo Feel He Had to Leave Middle-earth.... Frodo at Sammauth Naur, to mention a few.

~Child