Frodo Baggins

Frodo Baggins (Westron: Maura Labingi) is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings and one of the protagonists in The Lord of the Rings.

Frodo is a hobbit of the Shire who inherits the One Ring from his cousin Bilbo Baggins, described familiarly as "uncle", and undertakes the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom in Mordor.

On his return to the Shire, he is unable to settle back into ordinary life; two years after the Ring's destruction, he is allowed to take ship to the earthly paradise of Valinor.

Commentators have written that he combines courage, selflessness, and fidelity and that as a good[1] character, he seems unexciting but grows through his quest, an unheroic person who reaches heroic stature.

[T 2] Realising that he is a danger to the Shire as long as he remains there, Frodo decides to take the Ring to Rivendell, home of Elrond, a mighty Elf-lord.

[T 8] At the Prancing Pony inn, Frodo receives a delayed letter from Gandalf and meets a man calling himself Strider, a Ranger; his real name is Aragorn.

The leader, the Witch-king of Angmar, stabs Frodo with a Morgul blade, the wound threatening to turn him into a wraith under the Nazgûl's control.

A Fellowship of nine companions is formed to assist him: the hobbits, Gandalf, Aragorn, the dwarf Gimli, the elf Legolas, and Boromir, a man of Gondor.

[T 19] The Fellowship travels by boat down the Anduin River and reaches the lawn of Parth Galen, just above the impassable falls of Rauros.

[T 21] Frodo and Sam make their way through the wilds, followed by the monster Gollum, who has been tracking them, seeking to reclaim the Ring, which he had lost to Bilbo (as portrayed in The Hobbit).

[T 22][T 23] They find the gate impassable; Gollum tells them of "another way" into Mordor,[T 24] and Frodo, over Sam's objections, lets him lead them south into Ithilien.

Tolkien suggests that this enigmatic narrative poem represents the despairing dreams that visited Frodo in the Shire in the years following the destruction of the Ring.

It relates the unnamed speaker's journey to a mysterious land across the sea, where he tries but fails to make contact with the people who dwell there.

[2] "Frodo the halfling" is mentioned briefly at the end of The Silmarillion, as "alone with his servant he passed through peril and darkness" and "cast the Great Ring of Power" into the fire.

[T 38] In the poem Bilbo's Last Song, Frodo is at the Grey Havens at the farthest west of Middle-earth, about to leave the mortal world on an elven-ship to Valinor.

[4] Accordingly, Tolkien's decision to include Frodo's family tree in Lord of the Rings gives the book, in Fisher's view, a strongly "hobbitish perspective".

Frodo did not appear until the third draft of A Long-Expected Party (the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings), when he was named Bingo, son of Bilbo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck.

[T 44] In drafts of the final chapters, published as Sauron Defeated, Gandalf names Frodo Bronwe athan Harthad ("Endurance Beyond Hope"), after the destruction of the Ring.

[T 47] Scholars including Peter Kreeft,[6] Paul E. Kerry,[7] and Joseph Pearce[8] state that there is no one complete, concrete, visible Christ figure in The Lord of the Rings, but Frodo serves as the priestly aspect of Christ, alongside Gandalf as prophet and Aragorn as King, together making up the threefold office of the Messiah.

He comes to the end of his story bereft of the Ring, denied in his home Shire the recognition he deserves, and unable to continue his life as it was before his terrible adventure.

"[13] Both medical and Tolkien scholars have suggested that Frodo, returning "irreparably wounded" from his quest, could be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, making him one of several characters in The Lord of the Rings with mental illnesses.

[17] In the 1980 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Return of the King, made for television, the character was voiced by Orson Bean, who had previously played Bilbo in the same company's adaptation of The Hobbit.

[22] In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003), Frodo is played by the American actor Elijah Wood.

[23] The film critic Roger Ebert writes that he missed the depth of characterisation he felt in the book, Frodo doing little but watching other characters decide his fate "and occasionally gazing significantly upon the Ring".

[24] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, however, wrote that Wood played the role with "soulful conviction", and that his portrayal matured as the story progressed.