Sorry for double-posting, but I have to run, and wanted to put this in here:
Tolkien incorporated numerous types of stories into LOTR, and many kinds of "heroes", or protagonists. Some who have read critical studies may have seen references to Northrop Frye's concept of fictional modes; for those who haven't, I'll quote it:
1. If superior in
kind both to other
men and to the environment of other men, the hero is a divine being, and the story about him will be a myth in the common sense of a story about a
god. Such stories have an important place in literature, but are as a rule found outside the normal literary categories.
2. If superior in
degree to other men and to his environment, the hero is the typical hero of romance, whose actions are marvellous but who is himself identified as a human being. The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted
weapons, talking
animals, terrifying
ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability once the postulates of romance have been established. Here we have moved from myth, properly so called, into legend, folk tale,
marchen, and their literary affiliates and derivatives.
3. If superior in degree to other men but not to his natural environment, the hero is a leader. He has authority, passions, and powers of expression far greater than ours, but what he does is subject both to social criticism and to the order of nature. This is the hero of the
high mimetic mode, of most epic and tragedy, and is primarily the kind of hero that Aristotle had in mind.
4. If superior neither to other men nor to his environment, the hero is one of us: we respond to a sense of his common humanity, and demand from the poet the same canons of probability that we find in our own experience. This gives us the hero of the
low mimetic mode, of most comedy and of realistic fiction. "High" and "low" have no connotations of comparative value, but are purely diagrammatic, as they are when they refer to Biblical critics or Anglicans. On this level the difficulty in retaining the word "hero," which has a more limited meaning among the preceding modes, occasionally strikes an author. Thackeray thus feels obliged to call Vanity Fair a novel without a hero.
5. If inferior in power or intelligence to ourselves, so that we have the sense of looking down on a scene of bondage, frustration, or absurdity, the hero belongs to the
ironic mode. This is still true when the reader feels that he is or might be in the same situation, as the situation is being judged by the norms of a greater freedom.
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If we look at the story from this standpoint, it's not difficult to see where different characters fit;
Boromir, for example, with his rise and fall, is the classic tragic hero;
Denethor is also one, if of a different sort.
Frye goes on to say that the modes can shift, as for instance when
Aragorn transitions from Romance-hero to High Mimetic king.
Gollum no doubt sees himself as the "hero" of his story, which is ironic in more senses than one. We could even see
Sauron as the Mythical "hero" in the story. So in terms of the formula above, I have to agree with everyone's choices here. 😁
