frodo was both the weakest and strongest person in the Trilogy?

[Mat_Heathertoes]

The great man himself had a great many letters in his lifetime about Frodos bearing and accomplishments and replied with interesting things to say about it

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 (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of the quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed.

We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure in either action or endurance. Moral failure can only be asserted, I think, when a man's effort or endurance falls short of his limits, and the blame decreases as that limit is closer approached.

the letter also goes on to say...

Frodo undertook the 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 September 1963

I tend to agree with the man himself on this thread. I don't see any discernible weaknesses in Frodo's character up to and including his actions at the Sammath Naur. He did more than any other individual in the mythology by bringing himself, fighting against every screaming fibre of being and will and at the nadir of the West's and the near zenith of the Enemy's power, to the very threshold of the Rings' doom and then the Other kindly took over ... Better late than never eh?

[ March 01, 2002: Message edited by: Mat_Heathertoes ]