{"id":53839,"date":"2024-12-14T01:00:43","date_gmt":"2024-12-14T06:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=53839"},"modified":"2024-12-13T08:45:03","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T13:45:03","slug":"qotd-the-one-ring-in-lord-of-the-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/12\/14\/qotd-the-one-ring-in-lord-of-the-rings\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The One Ring in Lord of the Rings<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Arguably the most famous piece of jewellery in all of fiction, the Ring is not only a brilliant plot device, capable of linking events that take place centuries apart; it is also the focus of one of Tolkien’s most important themes: power.<\/p>\n

Unlike his friend C.S. Lewis, Tolkien was not fond of allegorical fiction. He had no time for the idea that the Ring \u2014 extremely dangerous but hard to get rid of \u2014 was an allegory of the atomic bomb. Rather, it was exactly what he said it was: an embodiment of power and the corrupting effects of power.<\/p>\n

Tolkien shows us that the only people who can be trusted with great power are those who don’t really want it \u2014 or who do, but have the moral strength to reject it. Even then, it’s touch-and-go, the burden of responsibility taking a terrible toll on the reluctant bearer.<\/p>\n

Numerous commentaries have been written on this aspect of the story \u2014 often summed up by the Lord Acton quote: “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Which is true enough. But Tolkien was onto a whole lot more than that …<\/p>\n

Let’s begin at the beginning. The Ring was made at great cost to Sauron, its creator. He poured much of his own strength into an external object \u2014 one from which he could be separated, which in due course he was. So why take the risk? Sauron, though evil, was possessed of great cunning \u2014 why did he expose himself to such a vulnerability? Did old JRR just not think it through? Does the Ring actually represent a massive hole in the plot?<\/p>\n

Not a bit of it. When you understand what Tolkien understood about the nature of power, it all makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n

In a letter, he once wrote that the Ring was a “mythological way of presenting the truth that potency … if it is to be exercised, and produce results, has to be externalised and so as it were passed, to a greater or less degree, out of one’s direct control”. This is a crucial insight into the way Tolkien understood power to work.<\/p>\n

Peter Franklin, “Tolkien’s guide to contemporary politics”, Unherd<\/em><\/a>, 2019-12-24.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arguably the most famous piece of jewellery in all of fiction, the Ring is not only a brilliant plot device, capable of linking events that take place centuries apart; it is also the focus of one of Tolkien’s most important themes: power. Unlike his friend C.S. Lewis, Tolkien was not fond of allegorical fiction. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,53,41],"tags":[868],"class_list":["post-53839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-jrrtolkien"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-e0n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53839"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92933,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53839\/revisions\/92933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}