>And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.
>From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.
How hard was he seething when he realized what was actually happening? That Aragorn didn't actually claim the Ring, and it was about to be destroyed.
what did the ring even do, why was it so important
i just remember it made the wearer invisible and everyone went crazy for it or some shit
From my understanding, knowing how to use it allows the wearer to enslave entire races and bend them to your will.
I could be wrong on that. Never read the books, just looked up a bunch on wikis.
I had always heard that it magnified the user's power. It made Hobbits invisible because of their meekness and cunning, but in the hands of a Wizard like Gandalf, it would amplify his strength beyond compare.
Might be wrong. Surprised the Tolkien Horde hasn't swarmed from the woodwork to correct you though, so I would just wait till they get here for a proper answer.
It turns people invisible because it realigns them with Sauron's native dimension, the spirit world. Spirits can only manifest physical bodies if they are powerful and exert tremendous force of will. The wringwraiths for example require special clothes to keep their physical forms coherent. Most humans and hobbits aren't especially powerful so they get sucked partway into the spirit world whenever they put it on; not far enough to fully dematerialize but far enough to become mostly invisible. A more powerful being like an elf lord or one of the five wizards or maybe Aragorn would have been able to resist this effect and remain visible. We're never told exactly what powers it would grant a person who could master it, but presumably it would make them like Sauron himself: supernaturally charismatic and lordly, supernaturally enhanced drive and ambition, able to pour their own willpower into other people like how Sauron poured his will into his orcs to make them driven and brave, etc. Sauron himself seems to have expected whoever wore it to become a charismatic warlord and challenge him by rallying mankind against Mordor, which is what he would do in their shoes, not by shooting lasers or suplexing him with enhanced strength.
Mostly right, but a bit off. The main purpose of the one ring was to subjugate the holders of the other rings of power, and through them their peoples, elves, men, dwarves. But it only worked as intended with the human rings.
The ring's power is simply domination. The ring has a will of its own, so who can control it gets a psychic two-person tag team to overwhelm his opponents. It doesn't make you smell better and it's of no use whatsoever to a fundamentally good and caring person, who isn't disposed to lord over others. Like Mr Bombadil, for example.
It's psychic, the ring give you pshychic powers, it's users can make others be unable to see them, create illusions, change other people and your own emotions.
This is the only correct answer
The Ring is Power, and it tempts and corrupts the wearer as powe inevitably does. The more you desire power, regardless of the nobility of your goals, the more it will bring you to ruin, because the desire for power is fundamentally a desire to live beyond God.
The particular abilities of the ring are not important, invisibility seems to be a consistent one which is presumably a reference (or a direct rip off) of the ring of Gyges from The Republic, which is a parable/thought experiment about how power corrupts. It's not a treasure in a d&d game and it's not a mcguffin, because Tolkien really didn't write fantasy novels in the way all of his imitators conceive them. LotR and the Silmarillion etc are myths (well, the Hobbit is a children's adventure story, just one with far more depth than most.)
It's interesting to think about the specific characters that are tempted by the Ring over the course of the series, the ones that fall under its sway:
>Boromir
>Saruman
>Grishnak the Orc
>Denethor
A lot of them don't even get particularly close to the Ring, it's the mere thought of it, and what it could do for them, that puts them under its spell and warps their souls.
Right, and the one who manages to resist it (mostly) don't actually want it (at first), and view it as a burden. And then there's Bombadil, a holy fool who completely masters it by not caring about it at all.
I read hobbit/lotr when I was about 10, it was the first "chapter book" I ever read, and it's hard to express what an impression it made on me. Rereading it doesn't have the same impact, obviously, but I find new ways to be impressed by it as I get older.
I'd imagine that if anyone in Middle-Earth could curse, Sauron would have let out a huge OH FRICK at that moment. He realizes he's been completely deceived and he misread literally everything about his enemy.
You can tell the Nazgul are all in a panic as they fly to Mount Doom, too.
How do I write with this quality
Read a shitload of books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and hope you have the talent to emulate their style.
Damn i hate that
Copywork Tolkien
If he was certain nobody would destroy the ring why was he panicking about it being in Mt. Doom?
>if you're certain I won't shoot you why are you panicking when I point my gun at you
Also he's not certain. He had no thoughts at all. The idea of them actually trying to destroy or never occurred to him. Thats his arrogance that is his undoing
>He is in great fear, not knowing what mighty one may suddenly appear, wielding the Ring, and assailing him with war, seeking to cast him down and take his place. That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream.
Because while he knew in his mind no one would have the willpower to destroy his Ring, he never would've expected someone to resist it all the way to the very fires of Mount Doom. Imagine being an immortal being who is practically a God, and you've finally started pushing the final pieces of your chest match, and you think the enemy has fallen for you game and brought your very Ring to you in some false sense of hope of victory (he believed Aragorn had claimed the Ring when he used to Palantir to challenge him), only for him to sense his ring after over 2000 years at the very last place he would ever expect/want it to be, the only place it can be destroyed. Sauron was a master manipulator and thought he was in full control of the situation. What he didn't expect was a race or halflings to be activley walking through his hellscape land to destroy his Ring, the source of his very power. Frodo did what he thought impossible, resisted his Ring until the very fricking end.
>Frodo did what he thought impossible, resisted his Ring until the very fricking end.
He didn't tho, Sam carried his ass. Literally.
Doesn't matter. Frodo had to bare the burden. Sam himself said Frodo had the worst pain of them all, but it doesn't matter. Everyone who's ever read the trilogy already respects how based Sam is for making sure Frodo made it through to the end. Sam is quite literally one of the best characters in all of fiction.
Sam saving frodo from the tower and the final home stretch to the mountain is some of the best shit I've ever read.
>There came at last a dreadful nightfall; and even as the Captains of the West drew near to the end of the living lands, the two wanderers came to an hour of blank despair. Four days had passed since they had escaped from the orcs, but the time lay behind them like an ever-darkening dream. All this last day Frodo had not spoken, but had walked half-bowed, often stumbling, as if his eyes no longer saw the way before his feet. Sam guessed that among all their pains he bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind. Anxiously Sam had noted how his master’s left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn.
Frodo's suffering in those final moments is so palpable. The movies just don't manage to capture exactly what hell he was being put through.
The final stretch across the plains of Mordor is amazing. Bleak, dark ruin, as Sam and Frodo crawl forward literally dying of thirst. It's astoundingly bleak. I can't imagine any modern fantasy, even the grimslop like ASOIAF, having such a grim, despairing feeling to it.
dropping all the armor and weapons was something very special to me too
I think it's because that happened to Tolkien while he was fighting in WW1 and his bagman Sam saved his life so the feelings were very real for him while he wrote the story.
>The Dark Lord was suddenly aware
>and his captains suddenly steerless
>suddenly
Ruined.
Out of 10!
Hah?!
The Eagles couldn't have flown the ring Sauron would've used his radar and supersonic nazgul missiles to intercept them!!!! is the biggest and most pathetic cope. Even Tolkien channels I like stridently take this line instead of gracefully acknowledging "yeah, he could've handled this better." Fricking ANYTHING. Make up some bullshit reason why Eru forbids the eagles for entering Mordor for a similar reason why Men can't sail over to Elf Land.
The Nazgul couldn't fricking detect the ring when Frodo was 10 FEET AWAY cowering in the Shire bushes. No one detected SHIT as he and Sam waltzed thru Mordor. But yeah, an eagle flies thru with the ring and Sauron's GPS would lock on bro. Also when the Fellowship first set out, they hadn't even seen the new Nazgul pterodactyls. And unless these frickers were literally circling around Mount Doom like the fricking VF-6 squadron circling the USS Enterprise at Midway, the eagles who "can surpass the wind" would be in there before these idiots even knew what was going on.
Shameful.
The point was to hide the prescence of the ring from Sauron so that he does not know where the frick it is because if the eagle gets shot down by the orcs or NazgBlack folk or Saruman's weather magic, it's instant game over. For the longest of time it was a mystery to Sauron that the one ring still existed.
The ring being near a hobbit is different from the ring being on one of manwes eagles. It would have been detected
A bunch of eagles leaving Rivendell would have been obvious