IT WILL ALL END IN DOOM

GROND

GROND

GROND

GROND

GROND

GROND

GROND

GROND

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

TLOTR has some of the type of valorization of war that you find in the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature that JRRT loved and studied and taught because he loved that style and it’s deeply fitting for cultures like the Rohirrim, but it’s also full of the slog of war, the waste and tragedy, and the irrevocable damage that even victorious survivors carry for the rest of their lives. Frodo’s symbolic “death” is also resonant for survivors of what was called “shell-shock” then and PTSD now.

By human standards he's child-sized, which makes him unobtrusive and light on his feet. He can slip by unnoticed where bigger people can't.

He's good at playing games, and even cheats (successfully!) in a way that - let's face it - is not so different to how children try to cheat at games. He's polite in a way that's fully comprehensible to children (rather than, say, being able to perform courtly manners). He's quick-witted, but the trick of keeping the trolls talking is also one that would be achievable for a child.

Like one day Elrohir is just helping wrap bandages or some shit and offhandedly mentions a cave he found and Elrond just goes off on a mini tangent of a cave he slept in with Maedhros when he did CPR for the first time and ate an orc raw or some shit. Elrohir just looks at him like ?????? And Elrond never mentions it again.

IF YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT A SHIP IS, DNI

NO BOATS

Aragorn seems like a traditional King Arthur style hero— he has huge Main Character Energy because he’s supported by destiny, by bloodline, by all these magic artifacts and prophecies, and etc etc. Frodo and Sam are Just Some Guys. Aragorn recognizes that Sauron understandably thinks he’s the main hero of this story ….and he pretends to believe it too, spending the entire series using himself as a diversion to prevent Sauron from seeing Frodo and Sam.

Aragorn’s whole thing is that knows he seems like the Main Hero of this legend to people who don’t know better —- but he also knows that he isn’t, and that his role is just to keep Sauron’s eye on him in order to protect the people around him.

Silmarillion fans are like: "No your reasoning is completely incorrect because Tolkien wrote in his 293383782th version of the Lay of Leofingolfearielien that Folblorfindriel was NOT at Nargothrondiath during the 344th year of the First age so you are completely wrong."

And the other one replies with: "but in the earliest version, hobbit Blorbingus created light and hit Moringotto with a stick, and the man Berengornambar helped him. So that explains why I thought yhat Folblorfindriel was in fact at Nargothrondiath during the 344th year of the First age."