The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)
“A retired Oxford professor invented an entire world, two complete languages, and a mythology older than Greek — and then buried it all inside the most beloved adventure story of the twentieth century.”
Character Analysis
Frodo is not the conventional hero of the epic tradition — he is not the strongest, the wisest, or the most skilled. He is chosen, as Gandalf explains, precisely because he is ordinary enough that the Ring cannot use his ambitions against him as easily as it could use Boromir's, or Gandalf's, or Galadriel's. His courage is not dramatic but sustained — he keeps going when there is no reason to believe going will help. His failure at Mount Doom is the most honest moment in the novel: he is the hero who could not finish the job, and the job got finished anyway.
Educated but warm, capable of both Shire informality and formal elvish courtesy — his speech expands as the novel progresses, and contracts as the Ring weighs more heavily