From Isolation to Community: Frodo's Incomplete Personal Quest in the Lord of the Rings (Character Overview)

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell describes a common protagonist found in the myths of all the world's cultures down through time. These universal heroes, under many different guises and many different names, all undertake a similar journey regardless of the time or place in which they appear. The protagonist begins at home in what may be described as an immature state, goes on some kind of quest, and in the final stage comes home changed. This journey involves a departure from a safe and familiar place, initiation into a larger unknown world where there are trials and testing, some form of death and rebirth, and then finally return and reinvigoration. Campbell argues that this story of the hero with a thousand faces is essential to a culture because it contains the fundamental truths about the growth and maturation that each individual must undergo. He points out that in all of these stories, the hero goes on a quest to save the kingdom, and in doing so he also saves himself (Campbell, Power 149). In The Hobbit, Bilbo's external quest is to help the dwarves regain their treasure, and in the process--by saying yes to the adventure--he also saves himself from a life which up until then has largely been bounded by a concern for his own safety and comfort in his snug little hobbit-hole. So what could we say is Frodo's personal quest in The Lord of the Rings? Frodo goes on a mission to destroy the ring and save Middle-earth, and in doing so, it can be argued, he saves himself from a life of seclusion. Frodo's external journey takes him from the Shire to Mount Doom and back. The personal journey that Frodo makes in The Lord of the Rings is the journey from isolation to community, a journey which is only partially complete at the end of the story.