My interest is not merely to trace the appearance of the wound motif
throughout Jackson’s trilogy, but also to make an argument about Frodo as a
particular kind of disabled hero whose essence is to remain open to others, by
contrast to Sauron. My central concern is disability, in particular the question
of being, or how the disabled body of Frodo signals a more ethical way of being.
More specifically, I am interested in Jackson’s films as a way of thinking through
how disability affects the interpretive and narratival nets that we use to orient
ourselves in the world and in order to begin to formulate an ethics grounded in
disability. . . . Sauron without his wound amounts
to the illusory self-sufficient individual. Frodo and his wound,
as I will describe in detail, represents another way of being, a way of living in
the world that recognizes dependence (as metaphorically embodied in and
through the wound), on others and the world.