What I get as the "point" of the One Ring is
A) backup / fallback plan in case Sauron is killed so he won't be completely destroyed (containing some of his soul / essence)
B) a trap to facilitate his control of the other races by tempting and corrupting them

And I think your take on the reason for the invisibility is correct according to the way Tolkien intended it. But it still doesn't sit real well with me. To me it feels better to imagine the whole ring story as a take on "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely".

The other rings of power are interesting. The three for the elves are largely free of the influence of the one, because Celebrimbor was already very suspicious of Sauron / Annatar when he made them. So the elves can and do continue to use them, though warily.

The seven for dwarves aren't discussed a lot, but hinted that they help corrupt the dwarves natural appreciation for gems and gold into a darker greed for those things. That dovetails into stuff in The Hobbit pretty well. So, while they don't corrupt dwarves in the same way they do men, they DO lead to isolation and and factionalization of the dwarves, which I suppose could have been Sauron's intent.

The nine for humans seem to work quite well as judged by Sauron's intent for them.


I guess that overall, I just feel like temptation and corruption of wearers of the one ring seems like a very elegant way to achieve Sauron's goals when he made it. A ring that grants the wearer the single ability that they most desire but also will be most tempted to abuse would be very difficult for people (and elves or dwarves or whoever) to resist. Gandalf and Galadriel are directly offered the ring but refuse only because they both *know* that they would be corrupted by it. I don't see invisibility as enough of a game-changing ability for either of them to be so confident that they couldn't handle it.

Yeah, that's a bit of a stretch... Funny, but a stretch.

The bit about "what does the ring DO?!" in the beginning was interesting to me because that is one thing that I also dislike about Tolkien's works (as a nerdy reader of the Silmarillion like Soren in the video). The three elven rings Narya, Nenya, and Vilya all grant enhanced "elemental" type powers (for example, Gandalf has Narya, which is why he's got the beefy fire magic). Invisibility seems like a pretty poor ultimate power for the *ONE* ring (yes, there are other features, but invisibility is the primary *active* power of the ring).

Personally, I think that it would be cooler if the mighty *one* ring granted the single ability that any individual user would be most tempted to use, and eventually ABuse -- to facilitate its corruption of the wearer. Smeagol/Gollum, Bilbo, and Frodo, being Hobbits, are already predisposed to stealthiness, so granting them invisibility on top of that makes sense and would tempt them to use the invisibility to do more morally ambiguous things and possibly eventually outright evil things. Isildur, being human, could/should have been granted a different power by the ring. Extreme combat prowess or something. Certainly overconfidence in that could just as easily have led to his death via the "betrayal" of the ring.

I agree about the over-reaction to the "white slavers" comment, which I think just got hyper-PC types riled up.

And he does seem pretty humble and wise, although if he was really going to practice what he's preaching he would just butt out and not say anything. To be fair, he probably got invited on the show and is just responding honestly to the questions -- which is a fair bit different than if he sought out a soapbox to complain from.

I think Lucas had a fantastic combination of Tolkien-esque level creativity AND knew how to adapt his specific creations to the broadly appealing "Hero of 1000 faces" fantasy prototype AND got lucky in many ways. He deserves a LOT of praise for all of that. ...BUT, for the original movies he knew how to delegate things that he doesn't do well -- dialog, directing, etc. He was reined in by internal and external constraints. When those largely went away, we got the prequels.

I love Star Wars and am very grateful to George Lucas for creating that universe. And I'm pretty much equally grateful that he isn't at the helm anymore.

Your video, Finally, Stephen's Tolkien Geekdom Pays Off, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

It brings me so much pleasure just to hear these names spoken on a popular tv show. His pronunciation though, of Gollum, Sauron and Edain - ugh - and the flame of Anor and the secret fire aren't the same thing. Come on, Stephen.

I demand crystal purity in my Tolkien geekdom. But I would like to hear him tell us about Beren and Luthien, it is a badass story; or, say, just devote the next twenty episodes of his show to reciting the Lay of Leithian in its entirety.

@artician
i hear ya man,
but tolkien set the bar where all other fantasy writers had to follow.

personally i found the "the chronicles of thomas covenant-the unbeliever" to be perhaps the best fantasy series to take what tolkien did to a much greater depth and scope and incorporating much of what C.S lewis laid down.

what a great series.the protagonist is such an anti-hero and you struggle for three books to even like him,nevermind identify with him.

but like you,i sometimes struggle when a writers influence is so blatant.

take Dean Koontz...really...take him..
i find him to be an utter hack,and while his prose is readable,his storylines and ideas are so obviously plucked from better writers and then mashed together so we wont notice.

i notice...and thats why any book of his given to me has a permanent place on my bathroom shelves.that man is pure crapper reading,since i get to play "recognize the plot" without any real exertion ....mentally.

but let us be honest.
while tolkien created a very diverse and detailed land with lore and history.painting a picture in our heads this fantastic world he created.the basic plotline is not that original.

it is your basic heroes quest with an extremely detailed backdrop.

so i will give this show a pass,just as i did brooks books.they were engaging and entertaining,and at the end of the day...what more do we wish out of our books?

ever read any of piers anthony's xanth novels?
they are puntastic and a fun ride (even if a bit cheeky),and nowhere near great literature.

but fun...and i can live with that.

I can't fathom the number of animals I've murdered in video games...

I believe I've killed at least 1000 boars in one sitting. We're digital mass murderers! But that's ok, I have also been digitally sentenced, imprisoned, digitally raped and murdered, and digitally risen from the grave to have my vengeance on the Tolkien universe --

The numbers of elves and dwarves and humans and gnomes that have met their untimely death at my undead hands, wrapped in leather, cloaked in shadows -- another very large number of killings.

You may refer to me as a High Warlord of Blackrock Mountain. Rawr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Death to ALL life! May the black dragonflight rise again! May they roast endless numbers of sheep.

I agree with you, but to me it would still be more interesting if the power of the one ring was manifested in some more concrete way.

I guess that in general Tolkien wasn't big on allegory, which is why he looked down on interpretations of his work where people assume that the ring is a symbol for "atomic energy", or "technology" or "industry" or whatever. So, from his point of view it is probably better to make the ring more abstract. But, I still think that personally, I get more out of viewing the one ring as sort of an allegory for "power" in general, and the corrupting influence of that power. So, even though I know that your interpretation is correct to what Tolkien had in mind, I like to read his books with my own spin on things in that way.

Invisibility isn't a power of the One Ring so much as a side-effect. It shifts mortal wearers a little into the spirit world, so they fade from view in the physical. Sauron doesn't disappear when he wears the ring because he already exists in both worlds and he can see other wearers for the same reason. It's not widely discussed, but this should also be true of other maiar; Gandalf, Saruman and Durin's Bane; and 'high' elves who've been to Valinor: Galadriel and Glorfindel would all also be unaffected by ringvisibility. It's this walking the threshold between worlds that's also responsible for the extended lifespan of mortal ringbearers and why Frodo can see the ringwraiths and they can see him.

The elemental character of the Three, I think, shouldn't be overstated. All of the rings, the One, the Three, the Seven and the Nine are very much alike. They were all made by or under the tutelage of the same creator to the same basic recipe, with independent elven flourishes rather than fundamental differences in the case of the Three. The One has to resonate (musical metaphors are always appropriate for Tolkien's magic) with the others in order to work on them, and that's Sauron's mistake: he is ultimately trapped and destroyed by his ring just as the dwarves and men were by theirs.

Imagine if Tolkien did the Hubbard thing. That would have turned out much more interesting.

The Silmarillion is strictly for Tolkien completionists. Most of it is incredibly dull history with name after name, who begat who and who they fought with.

It's like reading actual dull history, only fictional.

I admire Tolkien for writing it though. True devotion, even obsession with his world.

Never having read any of the Tolkien books, I made the questionable decision to read the Silmarillion before any of the other books (except the Hobbit). I gained one distinct advantage in reading through the LOTR books in that I already knew almost all of the stories that are only briefly told by the various characters. But was it worth it? Yes, though only the second half of the book was really captivating for me.

Sadly, some quick google searching indicates that the Silmarillion is still owned by the Tolkien estate who doesn't appreciate PJ's treatment of the LOTR/Hobbit. Maybe someday another studio/director might get the chance...

The Silmarillion reads very differently than Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, or any novel really... It has a sort of scripture / Biblical feel about it, even beyond the creation story that starts the book being a Tolkien-style Genesis.

But even beyond that, there is a lot of great material in there if you can get around the denseness of it. The story of the war that finishes off the first age is really, really good.

But before you give the book a shot, know that 1 page of Silmarillion takes longer to digest than 1 page of most texts. Very helpful to get the footnote annotated edition that has an appendix to refer to to help remind you when characters pop up that haven't been mentioned for a LONG time, etc.

I thought the whole point of the Hobbit was to integrate many parts of Tolkien's works into the main framework of the Hobbit. Honestly, even tho it dragged a bit here and there, I am loving these movies way more than LoTR, book or movie. The Hobbit is a good, relatively well written book. The LoTR is a dungeon master that's narcissistically held you captive in his basement while he shows you all his figurines.

I personally think that the first two hobbit movies were more entertaining than the LoTR movies, simply because they were creative in their story telling rather than glued to the rather subpar writing of Tolkien.