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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.
Bilbo Baggins is gone, and already his memory is somewhat—well, not exactly forgotten. Perverted, maybe. Mythologized. Turned into the stuff of folk tales. His standing has both increased and decreased by his absence.
On the one hand, the mystery around him has grown. He seems an almost magical being. As the perverted quotation about Abraham Lincoln goes, he belongs to the ages. The neighbors he has left behind never could understand him, and now that they are no longer forced to see him on a daily basis, they have boxed him up and labeled him an oddity. They have set him in the dusty back corner of their memories: the place where one sends those questions that are not easily answered, which would gnaw at the waking mind if allowed their say.
There is one person who is keeping Bilbo very much at the front of his waking mind, and that is Frodo. Every year, he holds another birthday party for his cousin, provoking whispered questions among the other residents of Hobbiton. “What is he playing at?” they seem to ask. “Has no one told him? Doesn’t he know that Bilbo is dead?”
Frodo knows what the rest do not: that Bilbo is very much alive and probably off residing with the elves. As far as the rest of the hobbits are concerned, elves are practically a figment of the imagination. Yes, there is some sense of a wider world out there where such creatures exist, but it has nothing to do with them. Why Frodo should make it his business to wander abroad and seek out the conversation of others is a mystery to all.
Yet Frodo feels a need to do so. He cannot shake the sense that there is something more out there: something he is meant to find or experience. Perhaps there are truths both beautiful and grave that he needs to know. He wonders if he should have gone along with Bilbo.
Frodo began to feel restless, and the old paths seemed too well-trodden. He looked at maps, and wondered what lay beyond their edges: maps made in the Shire showed mostly white spaces beyond its borders. He took to wandering further afield and more often by himself; and Merry and his other friends watched him anxiously.[1]
Why does Frodo feel this ache of the soul when his compatriots do not? What exactly is calling to him? Or are the other hobbits right, and he’s quite simply “cracked”?
For those who are willing to read the signs, there are hints of trouble everywhere. Mere whispers they are more often than not, and yet to the wise they are warnings. “Elves, who seldom walked in the Shire, could now be seen passing westward through the woods in the evening, passing and not returning; but they were leaving Middle-earth and were no longer concerned with its troubles.”[2]
We know from Tolkien’s other writings that elves are the oldest creatures in Middle-earth, by which I mean properly the oldest of Ilúvatar’s children. They were born in the East under the stars and made great journeys to the light in the West. In long ages past, they experienced sorrow even in the land of those who do not die. They felt the wrath of the ancient foe and saw him confined to the outer darkness until the last day. They fought against evil in the First Age and the Second. Much that is fair in Middle-earth exists because of them, and yet it is not their forever home. The growing darkness makes them long for the land of contentment across the sea, for if there is any created place that can provide healing, it is surely the Undying Lands. (More on that to come later…) One by one, they are departing into the West—surrendering Middle-earth to its fate.
We are given no sense of this long history by Tolkien in the early chapters of The Lord of the Rings, and yet it is clear that elves are special creatures. As beings not subject to the natural decay of their bodies, they have long memories. They are the keepers of history: the bearers of ancient pains. They are leaving Middle-earth to those who do not remember and are therefore likely to fall into the traps of the past. This should give us pause.
But now Frodo often met strange dwarves of far countries, seeking refuge in the West. They were troubled, and some spoke in whispers of the Enemy and of the Land of Mordor. That name the hobbits only knew in legends of the dark past, like a shadow in the background of their memories; but it was ominous and disquieting.[3]
Here is our first sense of what we are up against: there is an Enemy and he lives in a particular place. We are told he was once in Mirkwood, back in the time of Bilbo’s great adventure. Now he has returned to his old fortress in Mordor, a land whose very name causes fear. The Latin stem mort- means death. Thus we have mortal, mortician, mortify, and even the name of another fantasy villain: Voldemort. We are told that the Enemy of The Lord of the Rings, as yet unnamed, lives in The Dark Tower in Mordor, which has been rebuilt.
All of this sounds very serious and properly terrifying, but the response of the hobbits leaves something to be desired. They have not formed a study committee or produced a white paper titled “A Strategic Analysis of the Threat Posed by Re-Armament in Mordor.” They have not submitted a budget proposal for a new wall around the outer confines of the Shire, magical or otherwise. They have not beaten their plowshares into swords. They have not even taken the rather sensible step of purchasing more insurance.
“How can they be so blind?” you ask. I believe the answer is partially that they long ago adopted what we would call in our world an “isolationist” policy. “Keep your head down, have no business with strangers, upset no giants, and no trouble will come to you,” they seem to say. “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” In cutting themselves off from the light of the outside world, they hope to also keep out the darkness. But life forces us to take the dark with the light, whether we want them or not.
There are some who are born with an abnormal ability to sense both light and dark. They see tales not merely as tales, but as clues pointing to a greater truth.
‘Queer things you do hear these days, to be sure,’ said Sam.
‘Ah,’ said Ted, ‘you do, if you listen. But I can hear fireside-tales and children’s stories at home, if I want to.’
‘No doubt you can,’ retorted Sam, ‘and I daresay there’s more truth in some of them than you reckon.’[4]
Sam Gamgee is different from most of the other hobbits. Like Frodo, he feels the call of the outside. He senses there are greater truths that cannot be found in the grass around Bag End or a pint of beer at The Green Dragon, his local tavern. “He believed he had once seen an Elf in the woods, and still hoped to see more one day. Of all the legends that he had heard in his early years such fragments of tales and half-remembered stories about the Elves as the hobbits knew, had always moved him most deeply.”[5]
The German Romantics had a word for this: sehnsucht, a kind of holy longing. Although it is never named, there is no doubt that sehnsucht exists in Tolkien’s world. We see it in the longing of the elves for the Undying Lands in the West, the longing of Frodo for adventure, and the longing of Sam to see the elves. There is a sense of something half-remembered—something whispered and obscure, but powerful and necessary. Most of the hobbits will never seek it out, for they fear it. Whatever sense of wonder exists in them has been buried deep inside where it will never see the light of day or cause them to question.
Unfortunately for the hobbits, reality is coming for them, whether they desire it or not. Just when even Frodo assumes that Gandalf will never return, the wizard re-enters the tale. It has been seventeen years in total since Bilbo’s departure, and almost a decade since Gandalf’s last uneventful visit.
Frodo welcomed his old friend with surprise and great delight. They looked hard at one another.
‘Ah well eh?’ said Gandalf. ‘You look the same as ever, Frodo!’
‘So do you,’ Frodo replied; but secretly he thought that Gandalf looked older and more careworn.[6]
Yes, there it is again: our warning that all is not well, for Gandalf is troubled. He was troubled when he first spoke to Frodo about the ring, and he is troubled again, only this time he is rather more forthcoming about the source of his concern.
Here follows a very long expository section: the kind of thing that makes editors cringe out of fear of the dreaded “info dump.” Yet we are never once bored by Gandalf’s explanations. Indeed, like Frodo, we hang upon his every word, for each revelation he provides is more fantastic than the last.
The evil of the ring is more terrible than poor Frodo could have imagined. Yes, we must use that word: evil. In our own modern world, there is much splitting hairs about the nature of good and evil. Some wonder if such things truly exist or are merely abstract concepts created by humans to punish those who fail to play by the societal rules. Yet there is real, objective evil in Tolkien’s books: evil that is never thought for a second to be anything but. This is a true gift, for where there is no real evil, there can be no real goodness.
The magic ring that Bilbo used chiefly to disappear from time to time is, in fact, the One Ring created by the Dark Lord Sauron to bend all the peoples of Middle-earth to his will. While the elves had begun the making of Rings of Power, Sauron took what they intended for good and perverted it, forging a ring of his own that would have power over theirs. There were seven rings given to the dwarves and nine to kings of men. All those who tried to use them after the creation of the One Ring fell under the power of Sauron.
Three Rings for the Elven-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.[7]
Notice the language chosen by Tolkien. There is a “Dark Lord” sitting on a “dark throne” who will bind them “in the darkness” in the land “where the Shadows lie.” There is no question who is the baddy here.
In Tolkien’s legendarium, the world was created in darkness, but there were two great lights. The ancient foe, Melkor, attacked these lights. Later there were two trees that contained within them a remnant of the light. Melkor attacked those as well. A set of jewels were made by the Elves that contained some of the light of the trees. Melkor also captured these jewels. The elves named him Morgoth, which in their language meant “Dark Enemy” or “Black Foe.” Thus, the battle between light and darkness is central to Tokien’s mythology. Sauron was Morgoth’s principal lieutenant, and with the exile of his old master from the world, he became the new Dark Lord: the one seeking to destroy the light.
As bright and shiny as it may appear to its bearer, the One Ring is therefore anything but. It causes all who wear it to slowly fall under the power of Sauron, even as it extends their life. It corrupts them, and if they wear it too often, they fade from sight until their existence is one with the darkness. Bilbo’s angry outburst upon being asked to leave his ring to Frodo is revealed to be relatively minor in comparison to what happened to previous owner Sméagol, who murdered his friend Déagol in order to gain the One Ring, then was transformed into the foul creature Gollum.
Gandalf speaks of the corrupting power of the Ring, which works upon the minds of mortals until they no longer have control of their own will. It causes them to lie, grow wrathful, and eventually turn to violence. It becomes more precious to them than anything truly precious.
But all of this is still not the worst. Gandalf tells us that Gollum was captured by the Dark Lord. Although Sauron was defeated in battle many centuries earlier, the man who claimed the Ring, Isildur, did not destroy it. The survival of the Ring allowed Sauron to survive, for he had poured much of his own power and cruelty into it. (One cannot help being reminded here of the horcruxes made by Voldemort in the Harry Potter series.) Gollum has now revealed to Sauron that the One Ring not only still exists, but belongs to a creature called a hobbit by the name of Baggins who lives in the Shire.
Here is the crux of the matter: Sauron needs the One Ring in order to fully succeed in conquering Middle-earth and covering it with darkness. He knows it is in the Shire, and he is seeking it with all his might. There is a sense in which he can call the Ring to himself, even as he draws in all evil things. There is a will of evil in the world which seeks to work all things to its own advantage. Upon receiving this news, poor Frodo feels very much as we all do when we realize that we live not in one of those bright and happy periods of history, but one of its darkest hours.
‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’[8]
This is a favorite Tolkien quote. I have recalled it to mind during many difficult periods in my life. It has a way of cheering me up, or at least granting me courage. Yet Gandalf was not simply offering Frodo a platitude. His very next words are, “And already, Frodo, our time is beginning to look black.” The only hope, in Gandalf’s estimation, is to keep the Enemy from getting the Ring, and that can only be finally done by destroying it.
Ok, then. So why not destroy it immediately?
Here we find part of Tolkien’s genius: something that feels entirely true to life. In order to defeat evil, we must first admit that it exists within ourselves.
The One Ring can only be destroyed in the same fires where it was made. “Ok, then,” you say. “Take the Ring to Mordor and destroy it.” Ah, but that is only half the problem! The Ring creates such a lust in the bearer that he must overcome his own will in order bring an end to its evil. Already, we can see that the battle our heroes face will be as much internal as external. It will force them to battle evil within their own minds and hearts.
The gold looked very fair and pure, and Frodo thought how rich and beautiful was its colour, how perfect was its roundness. It was an admirable thing and altogether precious. When he took it out he had intended to fling it from him into the very hottest part of the fire. But he found now that he could not do so, not without a great struggle.[9]
This is the way evil works on us. It changes our desires and overcomes our will, until we work to preserve the very thing we ought to destroy. It seems then that there is no hope for our heroes, except for something rather nebulous to which Gandalf alludes. It is not exactly fate or even destiny. It is something more active: a will of good to match the will of evil. If the Ring is trying to get back to the Dark Lord, and the Dark Lord is drawing all evil to himself, then there is something else that caused the Ring to fall into Bilbo’s hands rather than those of an evil creature. As Gandalf explains,
Behind that there is something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.[10]
This seems to be a theme of the
chapter: the pulling of people and events this way and that by something other
than their own will. The hobbits of the Shire had attempted to shut out the
forces of darkness by simply ignoring them or denying their existence. This was
not enough to protect them from a very real and present danger. Fortunately,
there is something of the light left in the world, and on behalf of that light
Frodo and even Sam will fight. It is the only way for them to defend all that
is good, including their own home.
A FEW NOTES ABOUT SOURCES:
- The articles in this series freely include references to material in other books by J.R.R. Tolkien that are part of the same narrative, particularly The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. Citations will only be provided in the case of direct quotations.
- Any citations that include merely a number are from J.R.R. Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings, Single volume movie tie-in edition (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994). - All biblical quotations are taken from The New American Standard Bible (1995 edition), copyright The Lockman Foundation.
[1] 42
[2] 42
[3] 42
[4] 43
[5] 44
[6] 45
[7] 49
[8] 50
[9] 59
[10] 54-55