Yes, author, I'll take a hero, but can you add a side of weakness?
Call me nuts, but I don't like it when heroes have no vulnerabilities. Take Beowulf, for example. Of course he's able to kill Grendel. He's stronger, taller, more handsome, more proud, and more clever than any other man. It becomes predictable when he commits so many successful deeds; he was built to be a hero.
How heroic can a hero be when he or she does not have any weaknesses to overcome? This is the problem behind The Odyssey and Beowulf. Because the heroes are built to be heroes, they are not heroic.
In order for a hero to truly stand out to me, they must be able to overcome weaknesses, as long as they don't have more weaknesses than strengths. Jane Eyre, for example, is a good hero because she deals well with her weakness of being a woman of the 1800s. Life was tough back then, especially for women, and Eyre rises above that.
Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the Rye, on the other hand, is not a good hero because I fail to find any strength in him. He spends the entire novel criticizing every conceivable thing about his life, using a vocabulary that is as offensive as it is repetitive.
Now that I've introduced my topic, I would like to move on to the subject of this post--Frodo Baggins and why he is a true hero.
He is a true hero because he overcomes his weaknesses, but he admits to his weaknesses at the same time.
His strength is truly inspiring. He has to cope with a terrible thing that torments and attempts to corrupt him at every waking moment of his life. (Once Frodo and Sam reach Mordor, the Ring even torments Frodo in his sleep!) And he fights it. With all the will he has, even when he is at rock bottom with despair, he fights it. He does not fall until the very end.
Beyond that, he has remarkable loyalty and courage. His loyalty is just a different type from Sam's. Frodo is loyal because he wants to spare Sam of suffering. He does not want Sam to bear the Ring partly because Frodo is more than aware of all the torment that he is suffering, and he does not want Sam to deal with that.
Also, the fact that he volunteered himself to go to Mordor on a seemingly hopeless quest to destroy the Ring demonstrates courage at its truest form.
Frodo is a Hobbit. They are the smallest in size of all of Middle-Earth's races. They are not known for battle skills, nor are they known for being good strategists. But despite that huge barrier, Frodo commits the deed that the whole trilogy was ultimately about.
Size aside, Frodo also copes with his own fear and doubt. In fact, he openly admits his fears. He openly admits to his vulnerability, and he does not give himself any credit for his accomplishments. That humility really stands out to me, and it seems to be something that many classic heroes lack. (Beowulf and Odysseus, in fact, were both very proud people.)
It's his sacrifice more than anything else that makes him truly stand out. The quest, as Galadriel puts it, "claim[s] his life." None of his wounds ever fully heal, and I'm not just talking about the physical ones. Sure, you cannot replace a lost finger, and nor could his stab wound and spider sting fully heal, but the mental scars truly stand out. Following his return to the Shire, Frodo lives in seclusion. He is in a state of constant, unbreakable sadness, and he likely feels guilty for not truly succeeding in destroying the Ring.
But I've been thinking about that last thing. Was his succumbing to the Ring's power truly his fault? After all, even when all the memories of his past life were completely gone, even when it took all the strength he had to crawl a few yards, Frodo was still fighting the Ring's corruption. In both the books and the movies, the desire to claim the Ring for himself really did not appear until Gollum attacked him. Because I have so much faith in Frodo, I believe that had Gollum not attacked him, Frodo would have gone into the Cracks of Doom and destroyed the Ring.
Frodo is truly the textbook definition of a hero. He is not the strongest. He is not the most clever or the tallest. He is certainly not the most proud, and although I consider him the most handsome, not everyone would agree to that. No, Frodo is heroic because of his weaknesses. He is extremely fragile and vulnerable, and he sacrifices his life for millions of people who don't even know him. That's what makes him heroic.
