Talk:One Ring

Ring Realm Question???

Not to be a gigantic dork but can someone pull out two towers and read the section at the end where Sam first puts on the ring. Doesn't it describe him as being thrust into a world that was not like his own where orcs are shadows or blahdy blah. I can't remember clearly right now and am not anywhere near the book.

Wouldn't that make this paragraph incorrect or at the least require some rephrasing?

"In Peter Jackson's movie trilogy, the wearer of the Ring is portrayed as moving to a shadowy realm where everything is distorted, but this cannot have been Tolkien's intention, or Bilbo Baggins or Frodo Baggins would surely have reported it. For cinematic purposes it was necessary to use a dramatic visual effect for the shadow world, but in the books Bilbo especially is clearly able to function perfectly normally while wearing the Ring."

HELP! The Ring and One Ring are redirecting to each other! -- Zoe

Uhoh... what's happened to the original text? I placed the article on the One Ring and was contemplating moving it to One Ring only I didn't get to before the software update... presumably someone else decided to make the move, only the article seems to have disappeared into oblivion along the path of a circular redirect! ~KJ

Circular redirects seem to make for confused editing. I think the script forgets to do redirect=no on one of the edit links, and you end up editing an article different from the one you thought you were editing. -- Anon.

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Sorry, it was probably my fault. Half a mo' and I'll fix it. Ed Poor 16:18 Jul 23, 2002 (PDT)

Is it secret? Is it safe? Yes, Gandalf! The Ring that was lost is now found: slippery devil, isn't it? Ed Poor

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The Ring used to redirect to here - I've changed it to redirect to the disambiguation page at Ring because Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen sequence of operas is often shortened to "The Ring." [Forget what I wrote here before about redir The Ring straight to the Wagner entry - it's best left as it is] --Camembert

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What is this "physically painful" bit? Is there a reference for this statement in the canon? --Tb 01:32 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I think so, yeah, somewhere. Not sure if it's all elves though.

Err, since these are now real events, couldn't this use some links?

"Three Rings for the ELF-kings under the sky,

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, 
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, 
 One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne 
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. 
 One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, 
 One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, 
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

And lie and lie and lie. You get the picture.

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I added some stuff about interpretations of the Ring. I think it should be pretty uncontroversial (e.g., that it can be compared to addiction, without suggesting that it was meant to be a symbol for addiction). Modify or revert it if you think it's bad.

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I added that the ring was inspired by the Andvarinaut. That is something scholars seem to agree on.--Wiglaf 19:20, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I stuck in a "possibly" because I don't think we can say with such authority that anyway one specific thing inspired Tolkien. --[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 19:53, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's alright by me. You should read the Saga of the Völsungs, if you haven't. I think some people are right in considering it *the* source of inspiration behind LOTR. --Wiglaf 19:58, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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In the interpretations section, I suggest adding something like this:

The Ring also has parallels to the Christian worldview by portraying a situation where "what is evil may not be used for good purposes". Tolkien acknowledged that there were elements of Christianity in the Lord of the Rings, and this is one of the big places it shows up. (Absent Tolkien's statement we might not connect this with Christian thought; but a lot of non-Christian religions and secular worldviews do not contain the idea that certain things are "evil" and absolutely cannot be used for good, even by people with good intentions.)

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Destruction

There's no mention made at all of the Destruction of The One Ring here...shouldn't that be included? I think it's important and relevant and all that. Does it have a separate article? If so, it should be linked to from here somewhere. Cookiecaper 20:29, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Picture added

Hi everybody.

I just added a picture of the 'One Ring'. It's GNU FDL as I did it myself. Any feedback would be appreciated. Geraldstiehler 23:22, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

List of when used

It would be nice to have a complete list of every time the ring was worn in The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings, I added the ones I could remember from LotR, I think theres others. Astrokey44 03:58, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

There's nothing from the Hobbit right now. Off the top of my head, I can think of: 1) Bilbo in the cave, resulting in his escape from Gollumn & the goblins. 2) Bilbo entering the dwarves' camp afterwards 3) During the battle with the Giant Spiders 4) Hiding in the Thraunduil's castle & the escape to Lake Town 5) When he sneaks into Smaug's lair 6) When he sneaks off the dwarves' fortification to deliver the Arkenstone to Thranduil.

-[User:PK9|PK9]] 01:23, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

yeah, I agree that the times the ring is used in the Hobbbit should be added. This is an article about all aspects of the One Ring, not just within the LOTR trilogy. - Dan

What does it do?

So it's the great badass ring but what does it do anyway? Aside from granting invisibility (that Gandalf states is quite common in the magic world) why does everyone want to use "its power" and what is "its power" anyway?

• One might assume you haven't read Tolkien's LOTR books, but if you have and would like additional information, Stan Brown has a very good FAQ here on the One Ring and its powers. He quotes Tolkien extensively.--Dunedan 02:37, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Sam in Mordor

"This is the only time that this is mentioned in the books and could be attributed to Sauron's power increasing, and because Sam is within the borders of Mordor at the time he uses the Ring. Sam never wore the Ring in Jackson's movie."

I removed this part because in the book Sam dosen't use the ring in Mordor. He is still among the moutains which act as a border, not a realm (unless one lives there, like the dwarves. Techincally speaking I'm pretty sure he was in Cirith Ungol). Sam even is convinced that if he puts the ring on in Mordor Sauron will know despite the ring's temptations over him. This is the reason he dosen't put it on at the tower of Cirith Ungol to save Frodo. Check around the 5th page of "The Tower of Cirith Ungol" in The Return of the King. Ted87 01:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

"Purer in heart"

"It appears that hobbits, being purer of heart than Men and far less powerful than Elves, are the ideal vessels to resist its seductive power." Where did this come from? I don't recall anything to suggest that Hobbits are "pure in heart". My impulse is to rewrite it, but I'll leave it alone if there's a cite somewhere. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:36, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

just how much mind control does the ring grant?

“ A general wearing the Ring could stand alone before a rival army and convince them to fall on their own swords. He could cow his greatest enemies into taking up arms for his cause. The hearts and minds of whole nations could be turned to his adoration. The Ring-bearer could build an empire of slaves if he so wanted. In short, the Ring grants the ability of mind-control. ”

Is this mere speculation or do any of Tolkiens works actually suggest that the ring grants this level of mind-control to its wearer? I mean, surely none in the Last Alliance were of greater stature than Sauron. That taken in stride with the text around the above paragraph would seem to suggest that Sauron could have just willed everyone in the Last Alliance to kill themselves. Which seems to me to be rather farfetched. TerraFrost 23:18, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

It looks as if someone has confused the temptations offered by the Ring with the Ring's actual power. Nearly everyone tempted by the Ring had visions of instant victory, with armies flocking to his banner. It was indeed a tool for the domination of hearts and minds, but it doesn't work instantaneously. It took Sauron several years to thoroughly corrupt the Numenoreans, and that was when they were already headed to the bad. Even then there were some who were resistant, and it was precisely these who escaped to Middle-earth to fight Sauron when he re-arose after Eru destroyed Numenor. Whether that has anything to do with it I don't know, nor do I know if Tolkien himself ever worked it out. TCC (talk) (contribs) 04:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, I think Sauron could have probably tricked the Numenoreans into invading Valinor without the ring since it was his appearing as the fair Annatar and giving seemingly wise council that let him position himself into a position of influence.

Anyway, any objection to my deleting that line? If whomever added it can justify it then it can be readded, but right now, it seems to me to be inaccurate. TerraFrost 07:21, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I added that line. If it is indeed inaccurate, then feel free to change it. --24.130.125.164 14:59, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

He might have been able to take on a fair appearance, but they knew who he was. He'd surrendered after a Numenorean invasion, after all. That he used the Ring to achieve his ends is confirmed by Tolkien in Letters 211: "Sauron's peronsal 'surrender' was voluntary and cunning: he got free transport to Númenor! He naturally had the One Ring, and so very soon dominated the minds and wills of most of the Númenóreans." The Ring's main purpose was domination: to dominate the users of the other Great Rings. Sauron might have been able to do this in a general way before he made the Ring, as suggested in the same letter, "...I do not think we need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended." Emphasis mine; the suggestion seems to be that Sauron was once able to exert this kind of domination on his own, but no longer since he poured his power into the Ring. I suppose the purpose of the Ring as such was to give him a connection to the other rings.

Whether he could have accomplished the Numenorean invasion of Valinor without the Ring and by cunning alone is an interesting field for speculation, but to say so in the article would be OR since we have a cite that this was not, in fact, what was done. TCC (talk) (contribs) 08:04, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Tricking the Numenoreans into invading Valinor would be one thing... converting them from the worship of Eru to that of Morgoth and getting them to commit human sacrifices on a massive scale was quite another. There can be no question that the Ring was very effective in its intended purpose, but the sentence about commanding rival armies is obviously untrue... otherwise, as noted, Sauron would simply have done so against the Last Alliance of Elves and Men... rather than being defeated by them and losing the Ring for three millenia. --CBD 12:08, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Weight of the ring

Certainly from a metaphorical standpoint the ring is a great burden, but it seems to be physically a significant burden also. In the extended version of the return of the king frodo refers to the ring weighing so much that he's physically burdened by it. That is supported by material in the fellowship of the ring in the way that the ring falls. The ring does not bounce the way a normal ring would, implying that it is much more massive than it's size would suggest. I'm no expert on the LOTR but if someone that is finds merit in my argument, it should be included in the article. Vicarious 07:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Factoids from the movie aren't really relevant. The book is fairly clear anyway. The bearer feels the weight as if it were physically weighing him down. This apparent weight increases the more the Ring wears down the bearer's will, and the closer it approaches Sauron's immediate presence and the further it penetrates into the sphere of his will's influence. However, when Frodo cannot continue and Sam is forced to carry him, Frodo is surprisingly light. Sam knew well how heavy the ring should have been since he'd borne it himself a short time before, but when he wasn't bearing it directly he didn't feel its weight at all. TCC (talk) (contribs) 08:23, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Hatnote

I modified it to be more relevant, but do we really need it? TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

More expansion

I do not agree these changes are reasonable. The issue is not whether or not some longer articles exist, but whether this subject is worth a longer article. An encyclopedia article should be a starting place for research; it should not contain every niggling detail its enthusiastic editors can conceive of adding. The entire range of LoTR-related articles is far from concise and fall very short of the FA standard met in J. R. R. Tolkien itself. They are of poor quality, and expanding them does not make them any better. By and large they need to be shorter, with less detail and less nuance and more summary, than they now have. TCC (talk) (contribs) 03:18, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not agree with your assumptions. In general the LotR articles are good, by the rather low standards of the Wikipedia circa today. Have you seen the articles about the various provinces of Vietnam? Its a real country unlike the fictional Middle Earth yet the articles are the barest of bones. As to your position that the articles need to be shorter... why? You say an "encyclopedia should be a starting place for research". Wikipedia is not a conventional encyclopedia. On many topics if you can't find the information here, you won't find it. Examples: pop-culture, comic-book characters, and so on. Why? The books have gone out of print, the magazine were thrown away, etc. So the idea that these articles should all be jump off points for further research. I disagree. In many cases this is it. If its not here, you won't find it. What other encyclopedia would even have an article on "Gil-galad" or "Cirdan" or "Ar-Pharazon"? I really see no point in shortening wikipedia articles which are smaller than 90 kbytes (i.e. about 10 pages of text). Feel free to make a summary section, re-organize, improve the text. But throwing away thoughtful, accurate additions just because you think the article is too long? I strongly suggest that you are wrong. Cglassey 03:57, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

If its not here, you won't find it. That's simply not true. There are dedicated websites on these subjects. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of trivia. But there are stylistic problems too. From the previous version:

Sauron surrenders to Ar-Pharazôn as a ruse to gain access to Númenor.

Yes, it should have been in the past tense. That whole section should have been. But what's there now?

Sauron surrendered to Ar-Pharazôn and was taken back to Numenor as a prisoner. Tolkien, in a letter writen in 1958 (#211) wrote that the surrender was both "voluntary and cunning" so he could gain access to Númenor.

The second version is three times as long and contains no new information. Sure, citing the source is great. We have the <ref> tags for that kind of thing; we don't quote sources inline. (In fact, we use a standard citation style and don't include the quote even in a footnote.) It's this volubility where we should see conciseness, this endless parade of minutae that can be interesting only to the dedicated fan, to which I object and which makes these articles of very poor quality. That you seem to believe that I object to these edits (and I don't mean to single you out; this is just the straw that broke the camel's back) solely because of length shows you've missed the point. They are longer than they need to be, which is a very different thing. TCC (talk) (contribs) 05:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

First, I am not a straw, I am a contibutor of more than a few articles who made a modification to an article. Second, allow me to quote from the Wikipedia policy regarding size Wiki_is_not_paper#No_size_limits:

The most obvious difference is that there are, in principle, no size limits in the Wikipedia universe. It is quite possible, for example, that when you finish typing in everything you want to say about poker, there might well be over 100 pages, and enough text for a full-length book by itself. This would certainly never be tolerated in a paper encyclopedia, which is why Encyclopedia Britannica has such limited information on the topic (and on most other topics). But there is no reason at all why Wikipedia should not grow into something beyond what could ever possibly be put on paper.

In my opinion your stated desire for "conciseness" is at odds with the stated policy of the Wikipedia. To quote again from the same article "The purpose of a normal encyclopedia is to provide the reader a brief overview of the subject, while a reference book or text book can explain the details. Wikipedia can do both."

I added reasonable, verifiable statements about the One Ring and Sauron and you reverted the articles saying, in effect, "the articles are too big already". I make no claim that my additions were perfect, or could not benefit from additional editing but you didn't do that. You deleted the information.

I rest my case.Cglassey 22:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

"Resting your case" means you're not going to say anything more on the subject. Don't worry; I won't hold you to it.

You're confusing two separate criticisms here. The addition of excessive detail is one of them. Yes, Wikipedia can cover a subject in more depth than is available in a print encyclopedia. That doesn't mean that every single facet of every single subject should be covered in minute detail. (Especially when some of that detail is wrong, or at least ambiguous.) For example, do we really need to cover material here that is already covered in other articles that are more relevant to it? I think the answer is clearly no. A reader who is researching the entire breadth of the subject via Wikipedia will soon become very tired of reading the same things over and over again while straining to discover something new that's of importance.

Conciseness is a different issue. That has to do with writing style. Again, it's a matter of courtesy to the reader who might not want to wade through an array of quotes and dramatic phrases in order to discover the information he is looking for. That's not how an encyclopedia is written.

Taken together, to introduce both these things into the article is a discourtesy to the readers and lowers its quality. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:29, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Vows sworn on the ring?

Did anyone else realize that the reason Golum fell to his death in Mt. Doom is because he swore not to betray Frodo- and swore it on the ring? I don't have the book before me, but I know that Frodo warned Golum against swearing on the ring because "it will twist your words against you." (not an exact quote) It also seems to me that if the ring does indeed have this power, then it may also have been imbued with the power to control fate to a minor degree. What do you think? Worth a mention?Mr Nemo 02:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Powers of the ring

Why does the article mention the obvious power of invisibility?

Cleanup work

Hello everyone! I've spent a little time in an attempt to do some rewriting to make this article flow a little better. I corrected some grammar problems, fixed (and in a few places, replaced) some awkward sentence structures and removed some redundancies. I also took a stab at tense correction (since the Ring was destroyed, its descriptions should be in past tense) and tried to make capitalization consistent (the article mixes ring and Ring throughout). My sole intent was to make the article feel a little more like a coherent whole. I've tried not to modify or add to the source material too much - I'm new at this, so any commentary on methods or errors will be greatly appreciated. -- Fijahh, 11/10/06

Merge with Ring-inscription

Anyone agree? Wiki-newbie 20:57, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd say to merge Ring-inscription to this article rather than the other way around, but yes. TCC (talk) (contribs) 05:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment: I don't care either way, but I fixed the {{merge}} to {{mergeto}}/{{mergefrom}}. — RevRagnarok ^{Talk Contrib} 14:11, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely! The ring:inscription article is quite redundant. In fact, i think i'd like to do it myself in a few days time. --WoodElf 11:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Lesser rings

I re-corrected this and added some clarification. "Lesser rings" here does not mean the Three, the Seven, and the Nine, but the many other rings forged by the Noldor as they discovered the principles of ring-making. None of these had a gem. This is why the One was not immediately recognized as something important by Gandalf when Bilbo found it, and why the messengers from Sauron could tell the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain that he was only seeking a "trifle that Sauron fancies" and expect to be believed. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Powers

In the "powers" section it says "The Ring also had the ability to render one who wore it effectively invisible, except to Sauron and a select few of his lieutenants.". However, if I remmember correctly, the book said that the ring made all mortals invisible. What is correct? =>FzT<=Sevis[Rus] 15:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You're not remembering correctly. Gandalf explains this to Frodo when he wakes up in Rivendell, that he actually becomes more visible to the Ringwraiths when he wears the Ring. And of course the Ring has no power over what Sauron himself can see, even moreso than Bombadil. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:53, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Contradiction

There is a contradiction in the article where it first states Sauron left the ring behind in Mordor when he went to Numenor and then later states he took it back to Middle Earth with him. I do not believe pointing out this contradiction deserves to be met with a revert of "an incompetent edit" Dhimwit