When pressed privately, Tolkien made no bones about the fact that Frodo ultimately failed to accomplish his part of the Quest. But for Tolkien, this was not the same thing as moral failure, which, as he put it, only happens when we don't do the best we can. Frodo, he felt, did do the best that he could have under the circumstances—so while he claimed the Ring for himself at Mount Doom, this did not amount to a moral failure. There are some things, Tolkien believed, which are just beyond our fallen human nature, and God only allows enough grace for us to accomplish His purposes, not our own.

Last December in Los Angeles, I had the opportunity to sit in on a roundtable interview with Elijah Wood, and throw in a couple of my own questions about Frodo's struggle with the Ring and Wood's take on it.

The questions in the interview are posed by press from a variety of publications, and Wood's reponses are given verbatim. Where necessary, extraneous, unintelligible or profane remarks are indicated by bracketed ellipses, so: [...].

You've said in some of the publicity for [The Return of the King] that you believe that one of the stories of The Lord of the Rings is that you can do anything if you put your mind to it.

Yes, exactly. Actually, even the smallest person [...] can affect the course of the future.

That is a great theme in The Lord of the Rings. But for a lot of people that comes off as terribly optimistic. For a kid in the inner city, for instance, there just seems like there's no hope. How do you make that work—how do you get them to believe that that's true?

Well, it's not how I personally get them to believe it, it's how the film gets... I mean, it's a theme, one of the major themes of the film... I mean, the idea that this Hobbit from the Shire—this very, very unlikely person is able to accept the responsibility of destroying the most evil, powerful thing in all of Middle-earth that can threaten to completely obliterate everything that is good and pure—he takes it to Mount Doom and has it destroyed, and has the purity of heart to bear that evil is pretty extraordinary. And I think that gives people a lot of hope. And I hope it gives people a lot of hope. I don't think that it's overly optimistic, because I think that everyone—no matter how intelligent, how tall, short, it doesn't matter who you are—everyone has the ability to affect the world around them. And it doesn't necessarily mean in a grand way like destroying the Great Ring and saving the world. It's as simple as, you know, affecting the person next to you, and that person affecting the person next to them and so forth. You know, there's always hope and there's always a way to get out of any situation. We need to believe that. If you don't believe that then you've given up. And I think that's one of the main themes of the story, from my perspective and the Hobbits? perspective. And I know people that have seen [the film] that do take that away from it, which is wonderful—that cinema can offer those kinds of messages. Certainly, it's steeped in the literature, but it's wonderful that people can take that away from it.

But Frodo gives in at the end. And Peter told us that when ya'll were filming, that ya'll were discussing what your motivation was, and you said, "I think I want the Ring back."

Yeah.

So who destroys the Ring?

Well, it's interesting. It's a bit of a puzzle piece, because... It's an interesting puzzle that essentially it was Frodo's destiny to accept this Ring. Gollum, and the fact that Frodo had the wisdom to acknowledge Gollum's role in this, and Gollum's, you know... The fact that Gollum had some part to play in this, and kept him along to get to Mordor, made it so that Gollum would arrive at the mountain when he did. If he didn't have that foresight, he may have killed Gollum and he would have gotten to Mount Doom and kept the Ring for himself.

[...]

In the book, Tolkien himself said that ultimately it is Frodo's mercy and compassion—

It's Frodo's mercy that actually destroys the Ring. The Ring isn't actually destroyed by any person's will. It the will of Frodo that gets it to where it needs to go, but it's indeed the mercy [shown to] Gollum that allows Gollum to actually meet them at the Crack of Doom to stop Frodo from actually carrying out what would end up being his failure.

There's a wonderful line in the second film where you tell Sam that you need to have Gollum along because you need to think that it's possible for him to come back, or—

Yeah, there's that, as well. Frodo sees in Gollum what he could eventually become, that Gollum was once a Hobbit who, like Frodo, came upon the Ring and [who], unlike Frodo, became completely obsessed—and it was allowed to fester for years and years and years—and became this decrepit, addicted creature. And he sees that there's a kinship there because Frodo is a Ringbearer as well, and understands what he had to have gone through, certainly in the early stages, and he sees what the Ring is capable of doing.

The root of "compassion" is compassio, "to suffer with." Literally, Frodo is having compassion because he is suffering with Gollum because he knows exactly what Gollum is.

Exactly. [...] It's a brilliant observation. It's a very important part of Frodo's journey, and Gollum's journey.

So many times in the movie, Frodo is torn between good and evil, and resisting the power [of the Ring]. As an actor, what kind of motivations, or what are you thinking of most during that conflict? How did you bring that out? Was it mostly what Peter said, or...

I think the main reference that we used for what the Ring becomes to Frodo, and the best way that we found to dramatize what Frodo was going through in terms of the Ring, was simply addiction, you know? To play those moments like an addict, which was really something than Fran came up with...

Jeffrey Overstreet, at Looking Closer, offers a transcript from another interview with Elijah Wood, conducted on the same day.