The Lord of the Rings trilogy is an anarcho-nihilist text, in which the righteousness of resistance is not measured by the success of that resistance but rather by how exhaustively those resisting do so. Frodo fails; he falls to the ring's influence and at the last moment of his journey he succumbs to the forces of authoritarianism. But he is none the less a hero, because he did all that he could: we know that he failed not because he balked, but because he had no more to give. Tolkien's ultimate answer is that in some cases only divine providence might carry the day, but the heroes of his story do not carry out resistance with the knowledge that divine providence will come or with the knowledge that there is certain hope for the future, they can only struggle even in the face of doom.
