From the Vin Suprynowicz article, "His Noblest Fantasy Had Little To Do With Elves and Wizards":
...[M]ost great English literature has been about restoring proper government power (always favoring the legitimacy of the ancestors of whatever patrons were footing the bill) – read the thanes of Shakespeare’s "MacBeth" arguing that any foible can be forgiven in a king so long as he can rule with a strong hand, preserving the land from anarchy.
But The Lord of the Rings is not about restoring the metaphoric Ring of Power to the rightful king. Rather, we see Frodo the ringbearer – an open-faced hobbit in homespun making the most seemingly unlikely champion, except for the fact that hobbits are the creatures in all Middle Earth least likely to be seduced by the promise of power – offer the ring to each of the good wizards and elf queens and royal heirs of his world, in turn.
Those who succumb to temptation come to bad ends. The test of goodness and worth – in this film as in the book – is the ability to say "No" to the offer of unlimited power, to declare, as does Gandalf the Gray (Ian McKellen), "Oh, I would use this ring in an attempt to do good. But through me, it would wield a terrible power. ..."
Frodo’s quest is not to deliver the One Ring to the right king, but rather to haul it back to the mountain of fire where it was forged in darkness, and destroy it.
The world is sadly short of Bagginses.
