5 Thoughts on Failure and Grace from The Lord of the Rings

We are accustomed to our heroes succeeding. Luke hits the bullseye and blows up the Death Star in Star Wars. Harry (finally) defeats Voldemort. For those of you who have read or seen The Lord of the Rings (you probably want to stop here if you haven’t), you’ll know what a surprise it is to find that Frodo ultimately fails to deliver Sauron’s Ring to final destruction. In fact, the Ring’s destruction appears to be an accident. What are we to make of Frodo’s failure?

The first time you read The Lord of the Rings, it’s shocking when Frodo arrives “at the very Crack of Doom” and, rather than completing the mission he travelled hundreds of miles through innumerable hardships to accomplish, chooses to take the Ring for his own and puts it on in an attempt to flee. Of course, Gollum attacks, obtains the Ring, and accidentally plunges to his own death, and so the goal is accomplished anyway. Yet still, the episode is shocking, probably not what you were expecting. Why did Tolkien write the story so that Frodo would fail?

This question has troubled Tolkien’s readers from the very beginning. As he said in a 1956 letter to Michael Straight, editor of New Republic, one reader even wrote Tolkien, “crying out that [Frodo] should have been executed as a traitor, not honoured” (Letters 234). Yet Tolkien felt this was a critically important aspect of the story, and I believe there are at least five takeaways that are worth expounding:

1. Frodo Did Fail: Tolkien doesn’t mince any words here. Frodo did not live up to the grand idea of heroism. “He gave in, ratted,” Tolkien says (326). Yet, at the same time, Tolkien insists that there is a weakness in this perspective in that it forgets “Pity or Mercy” in favor of an absolute ideal. The bottom line is that Frodo delivered the Ring far further than anyone really expected him to, and he undertook his “Mission: Impossible” with the support and encouragement of the Wise. It is clear that Tolkien advocates a notion of heroism that goes far beyond commonly accepted ideals of it, and looks at the possibility of heroic failure as an even greater virtue.

2. The Morality of Failure: “I do not think that Frodo’s was a moral failure” (326). Instead, Tolkien compares the mind of Frodo at Mt. Doom to the body of one who has been crushed by a falling rock. Can the failure to complete their mission be blamed upon them? Of course not. So was the mind of Frodo after the “demonic pressure” of his journey (327).

3. Love Covers a Multitude of Sins: “Frodo undertook his quest out of love. . .” (327). When we reach a point where we are unable to continue because of the brokenness of our bodies or the feebleness of our minds, Tolkien claims, we should be judged by the motives upon which we started out (327). In Frodo’s case, he began out of a love of the world he knew. Additionally, he recognized his own inadequacy for the task, but was acknowledged in the end as the right person for the job by those present at the Council of Elrond.

4. Grace and Failure: Frodo was perhaps only given enough grace to fulfill an appointed role – the delivery of the Ring to Mt. Doom. All along the way, there are hints of other, mysterious forces at work, and as Sam’s part comes into greater focus, we are able to surmise that Frodo’s is a joint mission, with the number of additional players uncertain.

5. Triumph Over the Ring: What would triumph over the power of the Ring have meant for Frodo? It sounds as if Tolkien considered this possibility, but would that have truly been good for Frodo to have been able to claim for the rest of his life that he was the incredible hero who triumphed over the power of Sauron and the One Ring? Would it not have been an occasion to pride, an opportunity to view oneself as morally superior to all others? The wise among us might shudder at the prospect of having such accolades thrust upon us this side of heaven. Cf. Proverbs 16:18.

While we want to hope that we will always be successful in what we undertake, I find uncanny wisdom in Tolkien’s plotting of Frodo’s failure. In the end, after all, Frodo is only a failure in the limited vision of the ideal. In all reality, he completed his part of the mission, and the final act was left to another to complete. Likewise, it is easy to see our own shortcomings and limitations as failures, but on this side of heaven, only God knows the true effect of our everyday missions.

Do you agree with my assessment? What do you take away from Frodo’s failure?