clearest testament to the role of fate in The Lord of the Rings. Beyond Gandalf's words, the story is structured in such a way that past decisions have a critical influence on current events. For instance, because Bilbo and Frodo spared Gollum, Gollum was able to destroy the Ring by falling into the Cracks of Doom while Frodo failed to destroy it. Thus Frodo, who is overpowered by the evil Ring, is saved by what seems to be luck. The role of fate in The Lord of the Rings is contrasted sharply with the prominent role also given to personal choice and will. Frodo's voluntary choice to bear the Ring to Mordor is central to the plot of the whole story. Also important is Frodo's willing offer of the Ring to Gandalf, Aragorn, and Galadriel, and their willing refusal of it, not to mention Frodo's final inability to summon the will to destroy it. Thus, both will and fate play out throughout the story: from Sam's vision of old Gaffer Gamgee's wheelbarrow and the Scouring of the Shire in the Mirror of Galadriel, to Arwen Evenstar's choice of mortality. Peter Kreeft notes that divine providence, in the form of the will of the Valar, expressing the will of Eru Ilúvatar, can determine fate. Gandalf says, for example, that a hidden power was at work when Bilbo found the One Ring as it was attempting to return to its master. Gain and loss The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns notes in Mythlore that the book's "sense of inevitable disintegration" is borrowed from the Nordic world view which emphasises "imminent or threatening destruction". She writes that in Norse mythology, this process seemed to have started during the creation: in the realm of fire, Muspell, the jötunn Surt was even then awaiting the end of the world. Burns comments that "Here is a mythology where even the gods can die, and it leaves the reader with a vivid sense of life's cycles, with an awareness that everything comes to an end, that, though [the evil] Sauron may go, the elves will fade as well." Patrice Hannon, also in Mythlore, states that: In Hannon's view, Tolkien meant to show that beauty and joy fail and disappear before the passage of time and the onslaught of the powers of evil; victory is possible but only temporary. She gives multiple examples of elegiac moments in the book,