I am a Tolkien fan and have been one since I was probably eleven. The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, his lesser works, even his biography. And I greatly respect the world-building he did in creating Middle Earth; the history, geography, the various non-human races and the tribes of men, even the religious underpinnings of his world. I love his characters and their interplay with each other and the plot.
But I must be honest. I find Frodo thoroughly annoying. Sure, sure. He carried the One Ring for the better part of a year and didn’t fail until at the very edge of the abyss. And this after being poisoned by Shelob and frog-marched by orcs across the plains of Mordor. Maybe that effort was heroic to an extent that we are supposed to revere it as an herculean effort for making it 99.9% of the way. Maybe.
But that hobbit annoys the hell out of me. Surely, I’m not the only one who has wondered, what if Frodo had been left behind and the ring had been given to Samwise Gamgee? Maybe the whole thing could have been done in half the time. Maybe on Sam’s less refined but sturdier shoulders there wouldn’t have been as much angst about the burden of the ring. And one thing’s for sure. Gollum would have been toast. Sam would have put Sting through that homicidal proto-hobbit without further ado. And that alone would have made the story shorter and less annoying. Now you might say that without Gollum they wouldn’t have found their way in. Well, in that case they hadn’t provided Frodo with enough information to get in. So, put Aragorn and Sam together as the team. Or Legolas and Sam together as the team. Basically, anyone but Frodo. I’ve heard that the dream team is Gandalf and an eagle but if we’re afraid that Gandalf would be too tempted by the Ring then just go with Sam and an eagle.
And if Sam had succeeded in destroying the ring he wouldn’t have needed to go across the sea to heal. He would’ve gone right back to work clipping hedges at Bag End. No fuss, no muss. Sure, if Frodo had been left behind, Sam wouldn’t be inheriting Bag End because Frodo wouldn’t have to go to the Grey Havens. Sam and Rosie would need to buy a starter-hole somewhere on Bagshot Row. But the Gaffer surely had something socked away for Sam and the Cotton clan look like they take care of their own.
Now of course Tolkien had in mind that Frodo was the suffering servant of the Lord and Sam was sort of the batman or orderly for the more aristocratic Frodo. This sort of synchs with Tolkien’s service in the First World War where an upper-class officer had a commoner for a batman. And all of that is fine but I just wish Frodo had displayed a lot more pluck and grit than he did.
Would it have killed him to take down Shelob? At least go down swinging. Okay rant over.
I wonder if Peter Jackson had similar thoughts for the movies. And how about
Tom Bombadil as the Ring-bearer with Beorn as his Robinlike assistant.
Tom Bombadil and Beorn! Wow, I never would have come up with that combination. But Bombadil must be a Maia. He surely had great power. But Beorn was so independent. He even sassed Gandalf who was also a Maia. Well they both were very attuned to the land. Maybe they could have stolen into Mordor without ever being spotted. I always wished for a separate chapter where Aragorn and Boromir formed a team for some mission, perhaps a reconnaissance.
“… the dream team is Gandalf and an eagle …”
When you came up with the above, my mind was somehow released.
It is nice to have some fun with the world that Tolkien built. It’s well built.