overthinkinglotr:

Another Lord of the Rings Hot Take: the reason Frodo starts starving  himself isn’t *just* because of the horrific emotional toll of the  journey. It’s also because the only food Frodo and Sam have is Lembas  bread, which the Ring takes away your ability to eat.

When Frodo  tries to share the Lembas bread with Gollum, Gollum is physically unable  to eat it. He wants to eat it, but Can’t. Because it’s elvish bread, it  burns Gollum’s throat and “chokes” him.

I mentioned in a previous post that Frodo isn’t just afraid of becoming like Gollum– he’s afraid of becoming like Gollum because he knows that Sam despises Gollum, and he’s paranoid that he’s becoming someone who Sam can no longer love.  

When Gollum says that he can’t eat Lembas bread, Sam coldly responds that he’ll have to “starve then, and good riddance.”

And  then Sam repeatedly worries that Frodo isn’t eating enough, that he  worries Frodo is starving himself. (”You haven’t eating anything all  day, and you’re not sleeping neither– don’t think I haven’t noticed!”  “I’ve seen you– you’re not eating, you barely sleep.”)

I feel  like the reason Frodo is eating less isn’t the horrible emotional  strain of the journey– it’s also because he’s physically losing the  ability to eat. As the Ring takes over his mind eating elvish food is  starting to become painful for him, the way it’s painful for Gollum.  Frodo saying ”I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass” on Mount Doom is a direct callback to Gollum saying that “we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind” in the beginning of the film.

One  thing I think is really compelling about the Ring is that….there is  no clear line between “the emotional toll the journey takes on the  characters” and “the actual physical damage the Ring does to their  minds.” There’s no clear separation between the times when Frodo is not  eating because he’s traumatized and afraid, and the times when Frodo is  not eating because the Ring is warping his mind and making it harder for  him to eat. It’s like the Ring is parasitic, feeding off the guilt and  trauma it creates in people.

Frodo tries to hide how little  he’s eating because he doesn’t want Sam to worry about his emotional  state…… but also because he doesn’t want Sam to realize that he’s  gradually becoming corrupted like Gollum, that he’s gradually becoming  the kind of person he’s afraid that Sam can no longer empathize with.