The Ring in The Hobbit
Strider
I have almost finished The Hobbit, with 50 pages to go (out of 365). It is
very good reading, and very funny.
Smaug was just killed and the Lake-Men are coming after Thorin right now.
I have the impression (and so does my friend) that in The Hobbit Tolkien
didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his hearing
hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a theory
on this, and would appreciate your comments:
It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng doesn't
emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring made
people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
--
Stealth a.k.a. Strider
landsman at netvigator dot com
----------------------------------------------------------------
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those that wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
Adam Barnard
> I have almost finished The Hobbit, with 50 pages to go (out of 365). It is
> very good reading, and very funny.
>
> Smaug was just killed and the Lake-Men are coming after Thorin right now.
>
> I have the impression (and so does my friend) that in The Hobbit Tolkien
> didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his hearing
> hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a theory
> on this, and would appreciate your comments:
>
> It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng doesn't
> emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring made
> people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
Actually the improved hearing and sight factors I believe came from getting
closer to Mordor. Plus there's just the fact that Tolkien didn't know the ring
was evil when he wrote the Hobbit and he couldn't go back and make THAT many
changes.
Michael Martinez
<3737C8D5...@mail.utexas.edu> Adam did proclaim:
>
>Strider wrote:
>> I have the impression (and so does my friend) that in The Hobbit Tolkien
>> didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his hearing
>> hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a theory
>> on this, and would appreciate your comments:
>>
>> It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng doesn't
>> emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring made
>> people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
>
>Actually the improved hearing and sight factors I believe came from getting
>closer to Mordor. Plus there's just the fact that Tolkien didn't know the ring
>was evil when he wrote the Hobbit and he couldn't go back and make THAT many
>changes.
You're both forgetting that Tolkien revised THE HOBBIT so Bilbo didn't tell the
full story about the Ring when he was asked how he escaped from the Goblins.
The Ring was already having an influence on him then.
--
\\ // Worlds of Imagination on the Web in...@xenite.org
\\// RealName: Science Fiction and Fantasy Xenite.Org
//\\ Mic...@xenite.org [http://www.xenite.org/index.htm]
// \\ENITE.org..........................................................
Egbert Lenderink
>
> I have the impression (and so does my friend) that in The Hobbit Tolkien
> didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his hearing
> hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a theory
> on this, and would appreciate your comments:
>
> It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng doesn't
> emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring made
> people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
>
My impression was that the Ring was as dangerous in TH as it is in LotR,
but simply that Bilbo was not aware of it. Some uncanny effects of the
Ring, that hint at its deeper power, are well described: the maniacal
obsession of Gollum for his "precious", the reluctance of Bilbo (to his
own surprise) to tell his companions about his finding.
Sauron (=the Necromancer, in case you had not noticed) was certainly not
sleeping at the time of TH. Gandalf is constantly worrying about his
evil activities in Southern Mirkwood. But Sauron was not aware yet that
the Ring had been found, and that's why Bilbo did not get a pack of
Nazguul on his back while he wore the Ring.
Egbert.
--
This message reflects my personal opinions only, not necessarily those
of the company I work for.
Tribimat
that appears in bright sunlight. All right, so it doesn't matter much,
but it could at least have *been* there. Maybe, as the Ring grows in
power, it gets better at making people invisible. I don't know. Gah...
--
____________________________________________________
| Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow, |
|Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.|
|____________________________________________________|
bthompson
no intention of writing another book to follow up but he was constantly
pressed by readers to write more about Middle-Earth. He then took the idea
of the ring from The Hobbit and developed it. So effectively, it is right
to say that he didn't see it as so evil originally.
Nicholas Costa
years and so did Frodo with out any evil things happening. the Ring seems to
be opportunist, being lost in the orc caves being put on near the nine, Gol
had it for 100's of years. and used it all the time at first. Bilbo and
Frodo did not.
Just because the ring LET Bilbo use it for his own perposes it was still
wating. The ring may have know about the song and therefor about the futer
history of it's self.
Öjevind Lång
bthompson hath written:
had no idea that the ring in it was the One. And when he rwrote the book
after LotR was published, there was a limit to how many changes the book
could bear.
Öjevind Lång
>
Carl Blondin
Tribimat wrote:
> Note that nowhere in LOTR does it mention the thin and wavering shadow
> that appears in bright sunlight. All right, so it doesn't matter much,
> but it could at least have *been* there. Maybe, as the Ring grows in
> power, it gets better at making people invisible. I don't know. Gah...
If my memory serves me right, the Ring is mostly used when it's dark or
dim, except for the part where Frodo uses it to run away from Boromir (I
don't know what the lighting condition is like at this point). If I'm
right, that would mean that there isn't much to create a shadow for
anyone, therefore even less for the Ring Bearer.
Carl
Ron Barber
>
> On the day of Tue, 11 May 1999 01:06:13 -0500 in article
> <3737C8D5...@mail.utexas.edu> Adam did proclaim:
> >
> >> I have the impression (and so does my friend) that in The Hobbit Tolkien
> >> didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his hearing
> >> hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a theory
> >> on this, and would appreciate your comments:
> >>
> >> It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng doesn't
> >> emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring made
> >> people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
> >
> >closer to Mordor. Plus there's just the fact that Tolkien didn't know the ring
> >was evil when he wrote the Hobbit and he couldn't go back and make THAT many
> >changes.
>
> You're both forgetting that Tolkien revised THE HOBBIT so Bilbo didn't tell the
> full story about the Ring when he was asked how he escaped from the Goblins.
>
> The Ring was already having an influence on him then.
I understood the point of the original post here to be that the Ring
wasn't having it's evil effects ON TOLKIEN at the time he wrote The
Hobbit.
Obviously, don't you know, the Ring continues to have certain ill
effects. As for books about it... I just can't seem to put them down,
somehow, and they're always on my mind lately.
Ron B.
bthompson
bthompson
bthompson
bthompson
messages weren't posting.
Stephen Souter
<Mic...@xenite.org> wrote:
> On the day of Tue, 11 May 1999 01:06:13 -0500 in article
> <3737C8D5...@mail.utexas.edu> Adam did proclaim:
> >
> >Strider wrote:
> >> I have the impression (and so does my friend) that in The Hobbit Tolkien
> >> didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his hearing
> >> hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a
> >> theory on this, and would appreciate your comments:
> >>
> >> It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng doesn't
> >> emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring made
> >> people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
> >
> >Actually the improved hearing and sight factors I believe came from getting
> >closer to Mordor. Plus there's just the fact that Tolkien didn't know the
> >ring was evil when he wrote the Hobbit and he couldn't go back and make THAT
> >many changes.
>
> You're both forgetting that Tolkien revised THE HOBBIT so Bilbo didn't tell
> the full story about the Ring when he was asked how he escaped from the
> Goblins.
Um, well. Maybe. I don't know whether this has been mentioned before on
this newsgroups, but there's an inconsistency in that part of the tale.
Not internally within the Hobbit so much as between the Hobbit & the LotR.
In the LotR it is represented that Bilbo did not tell the Dwarves &
Gandalf the true story about the encounter with Gollum, either when they
meet up after escaping the Goblin tunnels or even later when the Dwarves
finally find out about the Ring. In fact, it is more or less stated that
Gloin at least--and presumably the other Dwarves as well--did not get to
hear the later "true" version until the Council of Elrond; and even
Gandalf did not get to hear it until (as he later tells Frodo in _Shadow
of the Past_) he managed to prise the truth out of Bilbo some years later.
Now if the version the Dwarves & Gandalf were told was the one he
originally put in his book (as the LotR also represents), it would
therefore seem to suggest that the version they were told as they were
resting after escaping the Goblin tunnels was the one related in the first
edition of the Hobbit. This is one where Bilbo tells them:
"So I asked for my present, and he went back to look for it and
couldn't find it. So I said 'very well, help me get out of this
nasty place!' and he showed me the passage to the door. 'Goodbye!'
I said,and I went on down [to the gate.]"
--The Annotated Hobbit, p327.
When Tolkien made the changes to the Gollum encounter, to be consistent
with the notion of there being two different stories, the story which
Bilbo told the Dwarves & Gandalf in the later editions as they were
resting after escaping the Goblin tunnels *should* have been the
*original* version (subtly modified perhaps to signal to the reader, even
if not to the Dwarves and Gandalf, that Bilbo was lying). That is to say,
the one where the Ring-as-a-birthday-present motif appears, and Gollum,
unaware that Bilbo has the Ring, shows him the way out at the end of the
Riddle game.
But that isn't what happens!
"So I [ie Bilbo] said: 'what about your promise? Show me the way out!'
But he came at me to kill me, and I ran, and I fell over, and he
missed me in the dark. Then I followed him, because I heard him
talking to himself. He thought I really knew the way out, and so was
making for it. And then he sat down by the entrance, and I could not
get by. So I jumped over him and escaped, and ran down to the gate."
Now plainly the story he purportedly tells the Dwarves & Gandalf this time
is markedly different from the one he purportedly told them in the first
edition. Though consistent with the changes made to the encounter with
Gollum in _Riddles in the Dark_, it is *not* consistent with the LotR
explanation for those changes of there being two *different* stories.
In fact, the changes made to _Out the Flying Pan Into the Fire_ chapter
(looked at from the perspective of the LotR's explanation for those
changes) make it appear as if Bilbo was trying to put yet another spin
into his tale! :)
--
Stephen Souter
s.so...@edfac.usyd.edu.au
http://www.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/
voravor
cave: the Ring was somehow aware of the chain of chance and influenced the
encounter. Because Sauron was weaving plans within plans in Dol Guldur.
I sometimes think the Valar had a hand in "allowing" the Ring to get into Bilbo's
possession. Sauron was (in JRRT's hindsight rationalizations)already cognizant of
the fact that the Ring had not been destroyed in the Last Battle, that it had gone
north with Isildur, etc. If he called to it, it would somehow find it's way out
from beneath the Misty Mountains and ultimately to Mordor, where it would be
strongest. In Gollum's possession, that was where it would go henceforth, but in
Bilbo's hand that whole process, though inevitable (because no one of mortal race
could withstand its dominance), would take longer, much longer, because he had not
had his will and spirit beaten down for centuries by the thing. In that interim,
wisdom could be attained, the guidance of Gandalf, etc.
One step further into rationalizing the discrepancies...
The Ring sensed Gollum to be a "safe holding" entity (i.e., safer than the court
of the Northern Numenoreans) until the "time came" and it could be reunited with
Sauron. The Valar somehow, through intuition, dreams, whatever, put into Gandalf
the passion of his convictions that the Dwarves should take Bilbo, etc. (see
Appendices and all that) or their ridiculous quest would fail. The Ring "saw" in
Bilbo a more direct route to Mordor, and allowed Gollum to drop it and lose it,
and Bilbo to randomly find it.
vee
Egbert Lenderink wrote:
> Strider wrote:
> >
> > I have the impression (and so does my friend) that in The Hobbit Tolkien
> > didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his hearing
> > hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a theory
> > on this, and would appreciate your comments:
> >
> > It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng doesn't
> > emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring made
> > people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
> >
>
dara...@my-deja.com
"Strider" <MeNO...@not.here> wrote:
>
> I have almost finished The Hobbit, with 50 pages to go (out of 365).
It is
> very good reading, and very funny.
>
> Smaug was just killed and the Lake-Men are coming after Thorin right
now.
>
Tolkien
> didn't really think the Ring to be evil. You also notice that his
hearing
> hasn't improved, and the sight worsened (In shades of Grey). I have a
theory
> on this, and would appreciate your comments:
>
> It was the quieter days and Sauron is still "sleeping" so the Rng
doesn't
> emmenate (sp?) any evil qualities, while as in the Dark Days the Ring
made
> people mad and all, if you wore it too often.
>
> Stealth a.k.a. Strider
>
> Sauron was not 'sleeping' at this time. He was in process of moving
from Dol-Guldor to Mordor. The reason why Bilbo was not experiencing
some of the One Ring's side effects at this time was that he had only
been exposed to it for a few months at most.
>
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