Was the ring origonally supposed to be evil?
 

I know the Hobbit book came out before Lord of the Rings. In it, Bilbo finds the ring (swipes it from that moron Gollum) and uses its invisible powers. In no way does it seem that he is effected by the evil powers of the ring. At the end, it becomes a souvenier and he doesn't carry it around at all. In LORT, it seems that the evil powers effect the person soon after coming in contact with it. They don't want to let it out of their sight.

Now the question is, when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, was the story behind the ring thought of and was it evil then? It seems more that it was just some magic ring. When Tolkien sat down to write the LOTR, he changed the ring and the ring now was evil and turned people evil.

Hobbits are more immune to the power of the ring. notice how it took frodo a while before he started feeling the wieght of the ring. Hell, for the majority of the first movie frodo didn't seem all that effected while the rest of the fellowship started getting hit hard by it.

Yes, and since The Lord of the Rings takes place many years after The Hobbit, it would make sense that for a long time, Bilbo would only consider it a trinket.

Considering how Tolkien spent so much time writing down the entire history of Middle Earth, I'm willing to bet he intended the ring to be evil before he put it in The Hobbit.

I think the Ring became more evil as Sauron grew in power, because Sauron and the ring were linked.

i'd actually be willing to believe that tolkien intended the ring just to be magical, but as Hobbit grew popular changed it to evil to fit the LOTR purposes.

Tolkien had not foreseen the power of the Ring when he wrote The Hobbit. That came out during the plotting of LOTR. In fact, Tolkien rewrote the critical chapter of TH for the book's reissue in the late forties. In the original, Gollum surrenders the Ring willingly. In LOTR, Tolkien pulls this earlier version into the story by representing it as Bilbo's lie--i.e. the Ring's was already affecting him. The rewritten Hobbit represents "what really happened."

Quite interesting.

If you have the EE's they actually talk about this. Tolkein had written the Hobbit as a kids story, and the publishing house wanted a sequel. Neither Tolkein nor the publisher had any idea what would result from that request, The Lord Of The Rings. The Ring was just a simple magic ring that turned into something much more when Tolkein wrote LOTR.

I have not read the TH yet, but was Gollum not "evil" in it? Had the ring not turned him already, showing it's evil?

As far as Gollum being "evil" in The Hobbit, this is kind of a grey issue. He simply wanted a tasty morsel (bilbo) for dinner, whom he hoped to trick with his riddles and his magic ring. BTW, he cared so much about the ring that Gollum had dropped it on the shore, remembered that he had dropped it there, yet he felt nothing of leaving it there (where Bilbo found it) for later. So I guess the ring didnt have that strong a hold on him in the original.

"The ring is altogether evil." ---Gandalf

Sauron created the ring, and Sauron is the epitome of evil. Ergo, the One Ring is evil. Don't forget what it did to Gollum.

It took 60 years for it to finally begin affecting Bilbo because he only used it during Sauron's 'sleep' before he began rebuilding Barad-Dur, in the course of the Hobbit story. After the quest of Erebor chronicled in that book, he put it on the shelf and used it seldom...but as you saw in the first film, it was beginning to get a powerful hold on him. If Gandalf had not seen the changes in Bilbo and done his research, all would have been lost--Bilbo would have been intercepted on the road by the Nazgul for certain.

Yep, and IIRC that research took 17 years. So in the movie when Gandalf leaves Frodo to find out about the ring and then returns to ask if he still has the Ring it looked like Gandalf was only gone a few days but he was gone much longer. During that time Gandalf and Strider/Aragorn were also seaching high and lo for Gollum. This is when Sauron's army captures him and finds out the ring is in the Shire.

Of course this is from LOTR where the ring is considered evil.


I also remember the whole Gollum didn't keep the ring on him like he wants to do in LOTR. He left it on the shore where Bilbo finds it. Golumn just wanted to use it to sneak up on Bilbo to eat him. I am not even sure that Gollum was supposed to be a former Hobbit in the Hobbit book. Another change made in writing LOTR.

He was never a Hobbit but he was from a Hobbit like line of people.

I read that the Ring didnt want to be with Gollum anymore (bc he was just sulking in a cave for hundreds of years, not committing war or genocide) so it willfully slipped off his finger (as we've seen it change sizes many times) hoping that someone else would find it and take it out of the mountains.

also wasn't gollum supposed to be blind and that was why he couldn't find the ring when he lost it? I thought I read that somewhere....

I'm just curious as to why/how the Ring is such a powerful thing. I realise that if Sauron were to get a hold of it, it would give him the power to take a physical/"human" form since it's his ring, etc.

What I wanna know is, why is it that all the Ring does to Frodo (and the others that have tried it on) is turn them invisible? I dunno, I just don't see why everyone is so tempted by this ring if all they get is some invisibility, and from the look of Gollum, deformity. Is it possible that if say, Aragorn were to wear the Ring for a extended period of time, he'd be able to become a Sauronesque being?

No. The ring amplifies the power of the individual commensurate with what they are. Aragorn is a mortal man and can only be corrupted, his power over other men would only be affected as an external result and eventually the ring would have found its way back to Sauron or been taken by force.

If Gandalf, Saruman or Galadriel had obtained the One Ring, they could have supplanted Sauron because they are immortal beings with great power.

The Ring was invested with Sauron's psychic, magical and spiritual power. Gandalf explained this very well in FOTR (I thought).

Having just finished "The Hobbit" it's obvious that Tolkein had no designs on the importance of the ring in TH, but later when he considered a sequel must have remembered the ring and thought of more he could do with it.

If anything, consider the Hobbit a warm-up exercise for the LOTR.

For the record, once and for all: GOLLUM was indeed a Hobbit. Tolkien confirms this in his other writings. I refer one to Letter 214 in the Letters of JRR Tolkien. People play semantic games because of the way Gandalf phrased it but that was only Gandalf's manner of speech. The Wizards only appeared soon before the first appearance of Hobbits in any of the records and by that time they had already divided into 3 branches. He stated that he "guessed" they were of Hobbit-kind because he had not directly observed it. Tolkien says in modern language he might have said "deduce"; anyway, Gandalf then says that he knows he's right because he had studied it.

yeah, should be no surprise that Bilbo was hardly affected by the ring when he first obtained it... we are talking about the only being in the history of middle earth that has possessed and wore the ring and was able to give it up willingly. So basically, Bilbo kicks azz. ;)

j