Frodo Baggins

Frodo Baggins (September 22, 2968 T.A. – ?) is the main character of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Biography

Early life

Frodo, a Hobbit (or halfling, as other peoples tended to call them), was born to Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck on September 22 in the year of 2968 of the Third Age. In 2980, Frodo lost both his parents in a boating accident. Then aged twelve, he was taken in by his mother's family, the Brandybucks. In 2989, Frodo came under the guardianship of Bilbo Baggins, whom he thought of as his uncle (though Frodo was actually his first and second cousin once removed, since his mother was Bilbo's first cousin, and his father was Bilbo's second cousin). Frodo was 21 years old at the time, still far short of his coming of adult age at 33. The childless Bilbo chose Frodo as his adoptive heir, and brought him to live at Bag End.

Frodo, as described by the Wizard Gandalf, was a "stout little fellow with red cheeks were most Hobbits... taller than some and fairer than most, ^* a cleft in his chin: perky chap with a bright eye." (The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter 10, "Strider".) He probably had brown hair like most other hobbits. He had Fallohide ancestry due to his Brandybuck mother.

War of the Ring

Bilbo and Frodo shared a common birthday on September 22, but Bilbo was 78 years Frodo's senior. At the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo and Bilbo were celebrating their Thirty-Third and Eleventy-First (111th) birthdays, respectively, on September 22, T.A. 3001.

Frodo was entrusted with the keeping of Bilbo's magic ring when Bilbo left for Rivendell after the celebration. Gandalf warned Frodo that the Ring must never be used and should be kept secret. (At the time, he was not yet certain that it was Sauron's One Ring.) Frodo kept the Ring hidden for 17 years, until T.A. 3018, when Gandalf returned to confirm that it was indeed the One Ring. Gandalf sent Frodo away with Sam Gamgee, Frodo's gardener and eventually his dearest friend. Together with his cousins Peregrin "Pippin" Took and Meriadoc "Merry" Brandybuck, and later, a Ranger named Strider, they made it to House of Elrond. There, at the Elven Lord's Council, it was decided that the Ring must be destroyed by casting it into the Crack of Doom. A Fellowship was formed to protect Frodo as the Ring-bearer. His quest to destroy the Ring forms the main story of The Lord of the Rings.

After leaving Rivendell Frodo carried a small Elven sword (actually a dagger, the weapon is the comparative size of a short sword to a Hobbit) called Sting and wore a coat of Dwarven chainmail made of mithril under his clothes, both given to him by Bilbo. At Lothlórien, Galadriel gave him an Elven cloak and a phial carrying the light of Eärendil to aid him on his quest.

While waiting for Gandalf at the disused watchtower Weathertop, Frodo was stabbed by the Witch-king of Angmar, the chief of the Nazgûl, with a Morgul blade. Without the assistance of Elrond, the wound would have turned him into a wraith under the control of the Nazgûl and Sauron. Even though he was saved from that fate, however, the wound troubled him for years to come, never healing completely.

Among the Fellowship, Frodo was most affected by Gandalf's apparent death in Moria, having grown up with the old wizard as a kind of grandfather-figure. He was also the most relieved when Gandalf returned, seemingly from the dead.

The Fellowship separated at Amon Hen after one of its members, Boromir, was killed by Uruk-hais while defending Pippin and Merry, an attempt at redemption after he tried to take the Ring for himself. Frodo and Sam headed toward Mount Doom, followed by the creature Gollum, who was seeking to reclaim the Ring he had possessed for centuries. Frodo eventually captured and "tamed" Gollum, using him as their guide to Mordor. The two formed a sort of bond, as they both knew all too well what a heavy, seductive burden the Ring was.

Gollum eventually betrayed them, however, leading them to Cirith Ungol, the lair of Shelob, where he planned to take the Ring after the giant spider had eaten them. Shelob bit Frodo and put him into paralysis but he was saved from death when Sam fought her off. Sam could not save him from a pack of Orcs, however, who carried him off to their dungeon. Thankfully, Sam had pocketed the Ring before the Orcs arrived.

Sam rescued Frodo from the Orcs, and the two set off for Mount Doom. By this time, however, Frodo was considerably weakened by the Ring's strengthening influence; when they reached the volcano, Frodo finally gave in to its power and took it for himself. Moments later, however, Gollum attacked him and bit off his finger, finally taking back the Ring. In his subsequent ecstasy, Gollum then lost his balance and fell into the waiting lava, taking the Ring with him and finally destroying it. Frodo and Sam were saved by the Eagles of Manwë as the volcano erupted and collapsed.

Upon his return to the Shire, Frodo helped clear out the criminal mob, led by his cousin, Lotho Sackville-Baggins, and the fallen wizard Saruman, that had taken over the region during his absence. He refused however, to carry a sword or any weapon. He saw to it that any enemies captured were not killed. He never recovered from the physical, emotional and psychological wounds he suffered during the War of the Ring, and was in particular taken ill on the anniversaries of the days of his wounding on Weathertop and his poisoning by Shelob. He briefly served as Deputy Mayor of the Shire, but later resigned. Two years after the Ring was destroyed, Frodo as the Ring-bearer and Bilbo as the Ring-finder were given the right to travel to Tol Eressëa where, while remaining mortal, they might be healed and find peace, together with Gandalf, Elrond and Galadriel, the Keepers of the Three. They boarded a ship from the Grey Havens and passed over the sea on September 29, T.A. 3021. Having no children of his own, Frodo left his estate and passed on the Red Book of Westmarch to Sam, who, according to Hobbit legend, followed Frodo across the sea 61 years later, following the death of his wife Rose (nee) Cotton.

Portrayal in adaptations

Frodo (left, with Sam and Gandalf's hand), from the 1978 cartoon adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.Frodo keeps the Ring, from the 1980 cartoon adaptation of The Return of the King.Elijah Wood as Frodo, holding Sting, in the 2001-3 The Lord of the Rings films.

In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo was voiced by Christopher Guard. Billy Barty was the model for Frodo, as well as Bilbo and Sam, in the live-action recordings Bakshi used for rotoscoping.

In the 1980 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Return of the King, made for television, the character was voiced by Orson Bean, who had previously played Bilbo in the same company's adaptation of The Hobbit.

In the 1981 BBC radio serial of The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is played by Ian Holm, who later played Bilbo in Peter Jackson's film adaptation The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In the films The Fellowship of the Ring (film) (2001), The Two Towers (film) (2002) and The Return of the King (film) (2003), Frodo is played by American actor Elijah Wood.

A matter of debate among both viewers of the films and readers of the book is the concern that Elijah Wood was physically too young to play Frodo, as he was 18 and then 19 at the time of principal photography. In the book, when setting out on his quest, Frodo is, like Bilbo before him, fifty years of age. However, hobbits are described by Tolkien to live longer than men, their average age of death being roughly about one hundred. They also reach their coming of age — full maturity and adulthood — at thirty-three. In Chapter II of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Shadow of the Past, Frodo is described as not ageing due to the influence of the Ring. "A robust, energetic hobbit just out of his tweens (twenties akin to teenage years)". This therefore makes Woods' portrayal, give or take a few years, accurate to the book.

On stage, Frodo was portrayed by James Loye in the 3-hour long Toronto, Canada stage production of The Lord of the Rings, which opened in 2006. In the United States, Frodo was portrayed by Joe Sofranko in the Cincinnati productions of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002), and The Return of the King (2003) for Clear Stage Cincinnati. In Chicago, Patrick Blashill played Frodo in the Lifeline Theatre production of The Two Towers in 1999.

Trivia

Some Tolkien fans celebrate September 22nd as Hobbit Day, in honour of both Bilbo's and Frodo's birthdays.
Frodo's real name was not Frodo. Going by the fiction that Tolkien's Middle-earth works were translated from the Red Book of Westmarch, Frodo Baggins is merely an English rendering of his real Westron name Maura Labingi. The name Maura has the element maur- (wise, experienced), which Tolkien equated to the Germanic element frod- of the same meaning. Frodo's name in Sindarin was Taur ("great") or Iorhael ("old-wise").
In the German translation he is called Frodo Beutlin, in Spanish Frodo Bolsón, in French Frodon Sacquet, in Norwegian Frodo Lommelun, in Danish Frodo Sækker, in Faroese Fróði Pjøkin, in Finnish Frodo Reppuli, in Swedish Frodo Bagger, in Estonian Frodo Paunaste, in Dutch Frodo Balings, in Portuguese Frodo Bolseiro, and in Japanese Baginsu Furodo. In one of three Polish translations he is called Frodo Bagosz, but he keeps his original name in the other two.

External links