OT - SPOILER - gollum discussion'

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
You think you know better than the author about his own character??

Ah well... you're no diffeent than the newsgroup posters.

Well, I caveated it by saying that as long as we are speaking from a point of view of what might happen if the books were a historical record of true events. JRRT spent a lot of time developing a universe and the characters that exsisted in it. He demonstrated time after time that noone was immune from the power of the ring. Even Gandalph, Elrond, and that tree elf queen (Sorry, don't remember her name) recognized that it would consume and control them. Even Sauron was not more powerful then the ring, and he made the ring himself. Only that Bombadil guy was immune, and he didn't seen very interested either way.

If after all that he says something like, "If Sam had only said nice things to Gollum the power the ring would be broken and Smeagol would have thrown the ring in the pit to please Frodo." that's inconsistant with everything else in the books. So, yeah, I can say I think that's wrong.

[ February 18, 2004, 20:58: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

my dad says 'sure, gollum had an extended life, but what kind of life was it?'.

[Narrew]

Hey Narf,

Ask your dad what he thought of Total Recall. Was it VR or RL, or was it VR inside of RL, or RL inside of VR inside of RL?

[Sabin]

I doubt Tom Badbil would have resisted the ring, if given time and the possesion of it. It seemed that even in his disregard, he had a slight dislike of it.

Now, I wish to pose a question: How was the ring created, and from what matierial? I am fairly sure a dwarf was responsible for the forging of the original rings, with help from Sauron.

However, how did Sauron go about empowering his own ring? Surely, if he made it by himself, it would have been weaker.(He created it in secret)

Therefore, I have an idea as to how it was made.
First, he prepared the other rings for the coming of this new ring, by making their construction weak in certain areas, somewhat like a computer hacker's back doors and trojans.

Then, upon creating the new ring, he placed his own powers(derived from being a former servant of Morgoth) into the ring, to achieve two critical effects: To increase it's power, and to make it "bond" to him, like a sort of DNA test to determine the owner. This being accomplished, it only responded positively to it's real owner.

However, I suspect even then, it was it's own Ring. If the powers of it were derived from Morgoth, then it's real loyalty was to Morgoth, not Sauron, thus how it seemed to allow it's being taken by Isildur, and to eventually travel a great distance from Sauron.

But why take such a course of action?

[ February 19, 2004, 00:16: Message edited by: Sabin ]

[geoschmo]

First of all, the ring had unatturally extended Gollums life. This may not have been made clear in the movies, but it was a key point in the books. It had the same affect on Bilbo, to a somewhat lesser degree. The books made a big point about the fact that Bilbo, while having not quite reached an age unheard of for Hobbits, certainly was not showing the effects of his age that you would expect. Once he gave the Ring to Frodo, his age started to "catch up to him", as could be seen at Rivendell. And once the ring was destroyed he began to age very fast. Compare his appearance at the begining of the FOTR with the end of ROTK. He appears to have aged decades in a span of less then two years.

Smeagol was of a race of creatures not very unlike Hobbits. And yet he had outlived his expected lifespan by who knows how long. Perhaps a century or two. Once the ring were destroyed he would have faded away very quickly indeed considering how much longer it had extended his life.

Secondly, Gollum was not totally free of the power of the ring at the end. He wasn't trying to get the ring away from Frodo to save Frodo. He wanted the ring for himself. In the struggle he fell into the pit with the ring, destroying both of them in the process. But saving Gollum would have meant that he didn't fall. And if he didn't fall he wouldn't have thrown the ring in, so the ring would have never been destroyed.

That was the point in the end. That no one had the strength to destroy the ring. Absolute power corrupts absolutly. But just as in real life in the effort to posess something, we often end up destroying it. The only way the ring could be destroyed was indirectly through the effort to posess it. In effect, the ring was destroyed by itself, because only the ring was strong enough to do so.

Gollum would not have had the power to throw the ring into the pit. The only other way that it could have ended, and the ring still be destroyed, would be for the ring to fall in the struggle but neither Gollum of Frodo to fall. But then Gollum would have been overcome by his desire to get the ring and would have jumped in after it regardless of the danger to himself. Frodo almost did that, you could see it on his face. And he was only under a fraction of the rings control that Gollum had been.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

well, i think the ring was looking for a weak, corruptable being that would take it back to sauron when he rose again. instead, it got gollum and even he knew not to take it to sauron. which is probably why it snared bilbo. why it didn't grab a goblin, i don't know.

if Tom really was a i think it starts with 'V', it would quite probable that the power balance between him and the ring was quite disparate - in his favor. remember, he was able to make the ring disapear while on his finger without disapearing himself, which it probably wasn't designed to and implies a great deal of control as someone pointed out.

i do think that any assosiation with it would be a risk for anyone who wasn't pure good.

[ February 19, 2004, 01:53: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Will]

Originally posted by Sabin:
I doubt Tom Badbil would have resisted the ring, if given time and the possesion of it. It seemed that even in his disregard, he had a slight dislike of it.

Now, I wish to pose a question: How was the ring created, and from what matierial? I am fairly sure a dwarf was responsible for the forging of the original rings, with help from Sauron.

However, how did Sauron go about empowering his own ring? Surely, if he made it by himself, it would have been weaker.(He created it in secret)

Therefore, I have an idea as to how it was made.
First, he prepared the other rings for the coming of this new ring, by making their construction weak in certain areas, somewhat like a computer hacker's back doors and trojans.

Then, upon creating the new ring, he placed his own powers(derived from being a former servant of Morgoth) into the ring, to achieve two critical effects: To increase it's power, and to make it "bond" to him, like a sort of DNA test to determine the owner. This being accomplished, it only responded positively to it's real owner.

However, I suspect even then, it was it's own Ring. If the powers of it were derived from Morgoth, then it's real loyalty was to Morgoth, not Sauron, thus how it seemed to allow it's being taken by Isildur, and to eventually travel a great distance from Sauron.

But why take such a course of action?

There is a thread elsewhere on the board (I don't really feel like looking for it), where it was proposed that Tom Bombadil was in fact the Vala Aulë. Aulë was concerned only with the act of creation for creation's sake, and didn't care for control over what he made. It would then fit that Bombadil was immune to the effects of the Ring because he didn't care to have power over the peoples of Middle Earth.

The 'original rings' were forged by the Elves. At the time of the forging of the magic rings and the Rings of Power -- there were more rings than the Nine for Men, Seven for Dwarves, the Three for Elves, and the One, it's just they weren't powerful or important enough to warrant mentioning -- the Elves in Middle Earth were at their height, having overthrown Morgoth/Melkor (with the help of a few Valar...). They were better smiths than even the Dwarves, and began making the magic rings. Sauron showed up, and started giving the Elves gifts and secrets of the Maiar, and had a hand in forging all the Rings of Power excepting the Three for the Elves, which were made by the master smith of the Elves (he is named somewhere in Tolkein's writings, I just cannot recall what the name is).

Sauron learned of the secrets of the Rings of Power from the Elves, and decieved them by creating the One Ring, with the purpose of controlling all the others. That is why he was known, among other names, as Sauron the Deciever. The Elves knew as soon as the One Ring was made what the purpose was, and hid the Three.

The One Ring can pretty much be thought of as Sauron putting half of his 'spirit' into it in the process of forging. It then became a seperate entity, but was still bound to him since it is like a part of him. So possession of the Ring is sort of analogous to having a little 'devil' on your shoulder whispering mean things to do in your ear, and there is no 'angel' to counteract the effects. And so all who possess it are eventually corrupted by a part of the spirit of Sauron.

As for Morgoth/Melkor, he was cast out into the Void long before the creation of the Rings of Power and had no direct affect on their creation. That was all the doing of Sauron.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
well, i think the ring was looking for a weak, corruptable being that would take it back to sauron when he rose again. instead, it got gollum and even he knew not to take it to sauron. which is probably why it snared bilbo. why it didn't grab a goblin, i don't know.

It was actually suggested by one of the characters (Gandalph IIRC) that the ring was hoping to snare a goblin, but Bilbo just happened along right when it was waiting for a goblin to find it.

Sauron's power is his own, not derived from Morgoth/Melkor. The Maiar are fairly powerful beings in their own rights. Not as strong as the Valar, but certainly strong.