Did Frodo fail?

[Lomadia]

On Mount Doom, Frodo says to Sam, "... the Quest is achieved, and now all is over." At the Field of Cormallen, Frodo is hailed as the saviour of Middle-Earth after the Ring is destroyed.
But is he really responsible for saving Middle-Earth? Some critics say that, because Frodo did not actually carry out the Ring's destruction, he failed in his quest. Others say that Frodo succeeded because without him, the Ring would never have arrived at Mount Doom.
Do you think Frodo's quest was a success or failure? How do you define the success of the quest? If it was a failure, could someone else have been capable of success (Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, etc.)?

[Lomadia]

I believe that Frodo fails in his quest, and that's the beauty of the story. Tolkien tells us time and again that Frodo is the one person virtuous and determined enough to destroy the Ring. And when even Frodo at the last succumbs to the power of the Ring, Tolkien is showing us that evil is something to be taken very seriously (a departure from the traditional heroic quest in which evil is defeated with little psychological anguish on the hero's part). In The Lord of the Rings, you can't just lop off a monster's head and thereby eradicate evil forever; it is something that exists in everyone, even in the purest, most moral person alive. Tolkien makes Frodo fail in order to show that we cannot wholly destroy evil; this can only be achieved when evil reaches its extremity and, blinded to goodness, destroys itself.

[Beren Erchamion]

great. i wrote a long and protracted post about doom, and its role in the framework of the quest, and it was lucid and explained my POV, and then my connection loses the server. sigh. another time....