A brick.

No, I won’t explain.

I see what you mean.

But I don’t think elevating Frodo does a disservice to anyone. Frodo was the first to voluntarily go out on this journey to, essentially, sacrifice himself for the Shire and the rest of the world. And he lost more than any living member of the Fellowship, everyone gains after the journey but Frodo loses his sense of self and his form of life. He does not return the same person, nor a stronger person, he returns a broken person. He deserves the recognition he receives and more.

While I love Sam and what he did was extremely important because he made it possible for the Ring to be destroyed, but what he did was basically support Frodo. Everyone in the Fellowship supported Frodo and no one contests it as being a lowly task, it is an all-important task. We know that what Frodo did no one else could have done because we are literally told that. Frodo carried an all-powerful, seducing demonic entity around his neck day in and day out while going through all sorts of OTHER trials and obstacles. When Sam temporarily held the Ring in Mordor, he was already being seduced by it. There is no way he could have carried it the way and duration that Frodo did. To my knowledge, despite it not being possible for Frodo to have gotten that far without Sam, it is never stated that no one else could have done what Sam did. In other words, that Sam could not be substituted for someone else to support Frodo on that journey. It’s possible to imagine that there is someone else in that world that could support Frodo all the way, the way Sam did, maybe even one of the other hobbits. But it’s not possible to imagine anyone else, including Sam or the other hobbits, doing what Frodo did.

This is not to put Sam down. Sam is a hero in his own right and I don’t actually think anyone could replace Sam because Sam is irreplaceable and incommensurable, the same way everyone in the story is unique and incommensurable. But Frodo is honestly at a different level of tragic, self-sacrificial humility and goodness that should be seen as the only thing that can bring the destruction of powerful evil. Everyone can be unique and valueable in their own way, while still acknowledging how particularly special and important one individual is. I think Tolkien makes Frodo so important and says that Frodo is the only person who could have done that, not because of the character of Frodo himself or the desire to make the main character necessarily the most important, but because he wants us to see that Frodo’s uniqueness lies in his extreme sense of goodness, humility, and self-sacrifice and only those things can bring evil to the brink of destruction.

Frodo is the most beautiful and tragic of the hobbits.

I can’t stand anyone who denigrates him to idolize Sam. I broke up with my ex girlfriend of many years who thought Frodo was lesser to Sam, not necessarily for that reason but it didn’t help her case. I love Sam too, but I don’t think Frodo needs to be taken down just to build up Sam. Sam was instrumental in what he did but Frodo was the only individual in the world that could do what he did.