Bofur and Pigs and Frodo and Sam, etc.

[Pearly Di]

This issue has been discussed before but I find it frustrating when
posts are deleted. It implies that you think your opinion is not
worth listening to, when that is simply not the case.

Aplogies for any frustrations I might have caused, but what you say is indeed partly true.

I don't know why you would think that, SV - I enjoy your enthusiasm for the books and films and think you can easily hold your own against anyone else here.

I don't post with the same frequency and intensity that I used to - both here and elsewhere - so tend to dip in and out.

[narya]

Control outside of surrender to God's will in the traditional Christian context is illusory by definition. Thus the act of trying to take control is surrendering to the illusion, whereas the act of surrendering to God is to align oneself with the only real control there is.

Sounds awfully predestined from that angle. Not that I believe in that sort of thing, but I accept that Tolkien did.

I'm going to do exactly what I want and no one and no One can stop

[Frelga]

Ax, I have an issue not with your interpretation of the text but with your representation of it. I don't see Frodo surrendering agency - he is the decision maker in every situation where he has a choice. To name a few - to leave Shire without waiting for Gandalf, to take Strider into the company, to defy Nazgûl at the Ford, to take the Ring to Mordor, to leave the company, to force Gollum into his service... at all those points, Frodo is the one making choices that direct the subsequent course of the story. Aragorn, Gandalf and Gollum serve as his guides, but they only provide the means for him to act on the choices he made.

Nor does he (or Tolkien) make a single statement about the value of suffering itself. He endures the suffering not for its ennobling or redeeming properties but to protect people that he loves.

And ultimately, his choice to go forward every time giving up is the more appealing option is the reason why he is such a beloved character.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Tolkien himself says it very similarly: "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." However, Frodo's exercise of his Free Will is in service of Fate. As Tolkien says, "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 his quest could be achieved."

[Passdagas the Brown]

I also agree completely with axordil's interpretation of Frodo's role in the story on a conceptual level, but disagree with how he characterizes the way in which that role is fulfilled on the ground, so to speak. Frodo acts freely, and without the interference of gods (apart from Gandalf, though he encourages rather than compels...), and ultimately, Frodo's (and Bilbo's) choices assist in the fulfillment of "fate."

Where we disagree is on a more minor (and perhaps, pedantic) point about "agency" in the narrow narrative sense of the word. To me, "agency" simply means the ability to "act" within a world. And Frodo shows that in spades. He decides to leave his home (active), he gets his companions through the Old Forest and through the Barrow Downs (with a little help from Ben...) (active), volunteers his services to the Council (active), leaves the fellowship and embarks on his own for Mordor (very active), binds Gollum to him (active), and uses Gollum as a means of getting into Mt. Doom (active). He does these things as Tolkien says "out of love" and humility. A choice he makes. But whatever the case, he does these things himself. He is not being pushed around by the hand of fate. But through his free choices (and through choosing mercy and humility) he fulfills a certain fate that was written into the music of Arda. Yes, this makes him a "Christian hero" type. But that does not mean he does not have agency. Christian heroes simply choose mercy and humility. That is a type of agency, not an absence of it.

On the topic of "free will" and "fate," I repeat that I find it deeply puzzling that there are "camps." The two are not mutually exclusive, and Tolkien lays this out quite clearly (in both LOTR and in his commentaries). Perhaps this reflects my limited imagination, but why do so many people have difficulty reconciling free will with fate?

To belabor my previous analogy (because I like it): Free will sits in the realm of chaotic quantum mechanics - the small, microscopic realm that is highly unpredictable. Fate sits in the realm of gravity. The grand, universe-spanning realm, with spherical heavenly bodies and elliptical orbits, where things seem highly ordered and preordained by processes initiated by the Big Bang. But they co-exist, in the same universe.