By literal interference from God. He thought (correctly I might add) that there was no ducking way the most pathetic form of sentient life in Middle Earth could resist his ring and it would only be a matter of time before he got it back.
And again, he was RIGHT. But as Eru told Melkor, he would weave such chords from his disruption the Beaty of which he was incapable of understanding.
God’s divine plan but not outright intervention, the good natured hobbits got the ring all the way to mount doom where none else could have without being corrupted, Bilbo and Frodos mercy also preserved Gollum who swore on the ring to protect Frodo. Upon breaking his oath his and the ring fate were intertwined leading to its destruction in the end. It’s not like Eru tripped Gollum but he was working through the Hobbits and it is he that is the origin of the magic power of oaths and oath breaking and he is the ultimate source of the power within the ring.
>God’s divine plan but not outright intervention, the good natured hobbits got the ring all the way to mount doom where none else could have without being corrupted, Bilbo and Frodos mercy also preserved Gollum who swore on the ring to protect Frodo. Upon breaking his oath his and the ring fate were intertwined leading to its destruction in the end. It’s not like Eru tripped Gollum but he was working through the Hobbits and it is he that is the origin of the magic power of oaths and oath breaking and he is the ultimate source of the power within the ring.
accurate
That would be a bad ending both for the book or the movie. What is the point of following what thee characters do if they end up failing and is Eru (God) the one that does the work?
I haven't read the book but I'm just saying that is a bad ending in my opinion. Imagine reading hundreds of pages caring about what the characters do to reach the ending, see how they fail and then it's God that uses his allpowerful nature to defeat the bad guy...
He loses because good prevails over evil. Bilbo refuses to murder Gollum in the cave, and instead spares him in pity, by which the ring came to him. He then gives the ring to Frodo, who attempts to take the ring for himself because it is so powerful, but Gollum attacks Frodo leading to the destruction of the ring. If Bilbo had no spared Gollum, then the world would have been doomed.
If Gollum hadn't killed his friend by the river, stolen the ring and fled to that exact cave to kill and eat goblins, then the world would have been doomed. That's not good helping the world, it's cherrypicking the specific moment of larger causality that can be interpreted as "good".
But the forces by which Smeagol killed Deagol were evil. The forces by which Bilbo spared Gollum were good. That's still good prevailing over evil. If some loner gets bullied and decides he wants to shoot up a place, but someone else shows him some kind of kindness which prevents that from happening, then good prevailed over evil.
I'm sure Deagol will agree with you that good really won the day, everyday, while his corpse is being raped by maggots and eaten by bears.
"Good" is one single action in a large chain of events that led to a magic ring being destroyed, and many of those actions required to destroy the ring were evil. If Gollum weren't evil then Frodo would've lost. It's dumb to surmise the entire moral of Lotr should be defined by a smaller spinoff novel about a character barely in Lotr.
3 months ago
Anonymous
the ring was acting its power on Deagol too, as soon as he picked it up he would have not wanted to let it go, as Gandalf explains. It's not like if Deagol kept the ring he would have been unchanged and used it for good or something. He would have turned into Gollum himself.
And you presume too much. If Gollum had never gotten the ring, who is to say what would have happened? Perhaps the forces of good that Gandalf explains are able to influence the world could have done something else to get the ring into Mount Doom. We cannot say for sure that if there were no Gollum that the world would be doomed. We don't have enough information.
3 months ago
Anonymous
The only "forces of good" that can influence the world is Eru, and if he influenced the world to force everything to happen then your logic is self-defeating because it was not good free willed nature triumphing over evil, it was Eru doing everything.
3 months ago
Anonymous
As another anon explained, it's an orchestra arranged by Eru, but not directly forced. Like real life Catholicism. God is the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of the universe, and He can afford us free will but also indirectly influence circumstances to produce a certain outcome--that outcome being that evil will not prevail over Him.
Seems like an irrelevant discussion anyway, because Gandalf TELLS Frodo this very plainly, that the forces of good MEANT for Bilbo to have the ring, and that's why it seemed so lucky that Bilbo would happen to land his hand down on the ring in the dark of a cave. The chances of that are astronomical, and that he happens to survive and keep the ring. It was not simple luck, but otherworldly forces that wanted to put the ring into Bilbo's hand.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>but also indirectly influence circumstances to produce a certain outcome
No he can't. It doesn't work like "oh it doesn't count as interference when I don't want it to count teehee". Either they have to interfere to make everything turn out nice and wholesome, or they don't and it does that on its own. If you had to interfere to make it that way, then that is not the way of the world, it is the way of your interference.
Meaning Good does not win over Evil in Lotr, the unintelligent god made by an unintelligent author obtusely sticks his fingers into the earthly cookie jar then tries to pretend they all just floated into his mouth
3 months ago
Anonymous
>No he can't.
But He can, and He does. Gandalf tells us this. You aren't smarter than Gandalf. The forces of good meant for Bilbo to have the ring, and Bilbo's goodness spared Gollum's life; then the forces of good also meant for Frodo to have the ring, and Frodo also pitied Gollum. Gandalf says that Gollum has a part to play yet in the fate of the ring, for good or ill, and he was right. It was Gollum's greed for the ring which destroyed it, and that only possible because of Bilbo and Frodo's kindness. The ring is like a stand-in for Human sin, and our complex relationship with it, where we love it and also hate it. But, without the ring, without sin, we are good creatures with the same kindness Bilbo and Frodo had.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Gandalf is not a real person he's a shallow children's book character parroting the platitudes of his cowardly deserting writer. I'm way smarter than Gandalf and way smarter than (YOU).
If the "forces of good" manipulated physical events to make Bilbo land his hand on the ring in a specific cave he fell down in, then "good creatures with kindness" did not save the day, god forcing things to conveniently line up exactly how he wants saved the day, and Evil nature would have won if not for god pushing things to an unnatural outcome
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Evil nature would have won if not for god pushing things to an unnatural outcome
But why is it that when Evil does something to influence the world (such as the power of the ring, which corrupts the minds of people) you consider it "natural" but when Good indirectly gives someone access to that same corrupting ring, you consider it "unnatural"?
Both the forces of Good and Evil are testing to souls of man, of hobbit, of elves, of dwarves. Sauroncels are just upset that people generally have more good in their heart than evil, and that's why evil will never win.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Because you use "Good" as merely a pseudonym for Eru. They didn't win because a tolkien manbaby on the internet said "people generally have more good in their heart than evil", they won because Eru won it for them.
3 months ago
Anonymous
But Eru did not put the ring into Gollum's hand, the forces of evil did that, and Gollum's black heart accepted it. Like I said, free will won the day. Frodo and Bilbo's goodness, and the goodness of all the other characters, is what won the day. Eru could put the ring into any number of people's hands... but if those people were evil, then Eru would be defeated. That is the nature of free will.
3 months ago
Anonymous
no force of evil did that, Gollum did that of his own free will after it was found by change. Eru forced the ring into Bilbo's hand without free will. You've literally got it completely backwards.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Gandalf tells us that evil works its forces on the world. "There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil." He also tells us that good works its forces on the world too. The ring corrupts, and it has a will of its own, wanting to return to its master. That is the evil force at work. You're right that Gollum chose to take the ring of his own free will. I don't meant to say he was forced to. But that's the nature of free will, good and bad people both have it.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Bro Sauron's just a guy. If he did the shit Eru is doing then he could just force Bilbo not to find the ring in the cave then say "haha that means men have more evil in their hearts than good, because I stopped him finding the ring"
3 months ago
Anonymous
The ring is doing that though. Forces of both good and evil play on the ring, push and pull for influence. Evil put the ring into Gollum's hand, and Good put the ring into Bilbo's hand. Gandalf mentions that Bilbo is the only one he knows of who voluntarily chose to give up the ring (with some prompting from Gandalf himself). It isn't an easy thing to give it up, because evil is constantly vying for control of your heart and your mind, but he does give it up, and that's a show of his character and his willpower.
3 months ago
Anonymous
all Deagol did was pick up a ring he found in a river, and he got murdered for it. So much for "good winning the day", evil killed him and nobody on earth or heaven cared.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I sense an Atheistic bitterness from (you). This is a similar argument you hear when people discuss real life good and evil. And the simple truth is that man is mortal. Hobbits are mortal too. If Deagol did not die there, he would have died some place else. Battles occur in Middle Earth, and plagues, and famine, and death. Are those things necessarily evil? Is it evil to die? Or is the TRUE EVIL something in the heart? And if you die with good in your heart, then that is good? Where if you live in sin and die with evil in your heart, then it is bad?
Gandalf mentions in the book that there is a sliver of light shining in Gollum's mind, where there is some good left in him, even after hundreds of years of living in evil. Even Gollum was not beyond saving. There was a chance, though the evil in him defeated the good, and that was his choice, which led to his death.
3 months ago
Anonymous
"evil in your heart" has to be the gayest cope I have ever heard from a tolkienbrainlet. Congratulations on being the new record-holder.
What is "living in sin" IF NOT murdering and torturing and causing pain and the suffering of life.
Inflicting that on others is the definition of evil within your own babyshit setting, as you yourself define Gollum as evil for doing these things. And Deagol suffered and died at and for Evil's hand, completely without "good" somehow protecting him or granting him a good life.
3 months ago
Anonymous
You see, you have a very earthly and material understanding of good and evil. To you, good and evil is not something you possess, but something you DO. It is a temporary thing that waxes and wanes depending on how you're feeling in the moment. Evil lies in the heart, and it's always there, in all of us. Even Gandalf admits he could do terrible evil with the ring, although it would begin as his desire to do good with it--and Galadriel too. But, remove the ring, and the capacity for evil is gone. I think Frodo's final choice to try to keep the ring is an important one in the books and movies. It's an evil action, but he is saved by his overall goodness (which directly results in him being saved, because he spares Gollum, and Gollum steals the ring from him and dies with it). So even if we fail and fall into sin, which we inevitably will, we can still be saved by the goodness of our overall character. The same with Boromir actually: He tries to take the ring in an act of evil, but he repents for this deed and redeems himself, because he was overall a good person.
3 months ago
Anonymous
What a gay, verbose and ultimately vacuous essay you just wrote out anon, you should write your own Lotr too.
Because you simply ignored the very point that being of a "good" nature does not mean you win, for others like Deagol it means you lose and die horribly.
3 months ago
Anonymous
As I said, death is not evil. Theodan dies. His son dies. Boromir dies. Plenty of people die, and they will keep dying, sometimes in good ways, other times in bad ways. What matters is that you die well, with goodness in your heart. I am not sure whether Deagol would qualify, regardless. Was he overall "good"? Or was he overall "bad"? We really don't have enough information.
3 months ago
Anonymous
No, as you hypocritically contradicted yourself, evil is something you do "Even Gandalf admits he could do terrible evil with the ring". "the capacity for evil" "t's an evil action" "He tries to take the ring in an act of evil"
Murdering your friend unprovoked is an act of evil. Gollum's action was evil. And deagol suffered for it and was not stopped or saved by any "force of good"/
3 months ago
Anonymous
>you hypocritically contradicted yourself
This is elementary school semantics. You believe that good and evil is not inside your heart, and that it is just some random action you choose whenever you want for no reason. I do not mean that evil actions cannot be performed, but that they are performed because of evil inside the heart--just as good actions are performed because of good inside the heart. You're the one who said "evil in your heart" was a gay cope, indicating you do not believe good and evil exists in the heart.
3 months ago
Anonymous
an Evil Action committed by someone with an "Evil Heart" or in a non-babyish way of putting it Evil Intention, murdered Deagol and cut his life short.
Good did not win for him, Evil won and he suffered pointlessly.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Good did not win for him, Evil won and he suffered pointlessly.
You continue with your willful ignorance of what good and evil truly means. So I will engage only once more with you, if you continue to ignore this simple truth: Death is not evil. You believe that because Deagol was killed, that Eru or "goodness" lost and failed him. For one matter, we don't even know if Deagol could be described as "Good" or "Evil". For another, death is inevitable, and simply being killed is not evidence of evil defeating good--evil only defeats good when you yourself choose evil over good. So it would be more correct to say that Smeagol suffered pointlessly, because evil won in his heart against good (but then again, that resulted in him indirectly saving the world through his greed). So stop with this notion that "if you have good in your heart God should give you an invisible shield that protects you from all forms of death and make you immortal forever" it's such a babyish understanding of theology and metaphysics.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Murder is evil. You can’t simultaneously pretend it is proven that “good won over evil” by a physical action in managing to destroy the ring, when it was actually an evil action and an interfering god that led to the ring’s destruction.
Deagol got murdered and his only life cut short (an act of evil and an act of suffering) without goodness having anything to do with it, the ring was destroyed because of random chance, factors completely unrelated to “good triumphs over evil”, examples of evil triumphing over good and an interfering deity. Good doesn’t triumph over evil in tolkien babyshit, Tolkienms favourites win because he manipulates the plot in contrived artifical ways to make his cardboard cutouts win and /r/edditors clap.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>act of suffering
Death is not true suffering. You fundamentally misunderstand Tolkien and Catholicism. Pain and anguish are terrible, and those who are able to endure them are very strong individuals, but it is not evil to suffer. Jesus suffered physical torment, but it did not waiver his faith. I say "true suffering" or "true evil" would be if Jesus were to forsake God on the cross, blame Him for his death, to let the physical torment change his character for the worse. He died well, and He ascended to Heaven, along with the others who died with goodness in their hearts. Like I said, you are too materialistic, as an Atheist; you cannot comprehend that death is itself not an evil, but the act of torturing or murdering is evidence of the evil in the torturer's or murderer's soul (the evil in Gollum, which resulted in his ultimate defeat and the defeat of the ring and Sauron). You believe that our mortality is evil, and that apparently God should make us immortal if we believe in Him. Your concept of theology and metaphysics is juvenile, and as I said, there's no point in continuing with you. Good day.
Not all Maiar are equal in power or rank, Sauron was one of if not the mightiest of the Maiar, shadowing Melkor as the mightiest of the Valar. Gandalf in his wizard form had a physical body and had his original power capped but even in full Maiar form was still ‘weaker’ atleast in martial ability and sorcery that Sauron. His powers were in wisdom and sympathy for the mortals of middle earth.
The Balrogs were lesser Maiar associated with fire who were swayed to Melkors cause in the earliest era when the Ainu sung the world into existence. They were corrupted in spirit before they even manifested physically on Arda so they ended up fiery demons in the first instance.
Wasnt what? One of the mightiest of the Maiar? Im pretty certain there is a line in the silmarillion that states he was one of the most powerful if not the most powerful among them.
no
while they are same type of being its like asking: could average anon beat [some professional fighting champion] because they are both human?
sauron was the strongest maiar and the wizard were some the weaker ones
So Sauron through cheating created The Ring that somehow subjigated all other rings. After loosing that ring, why can't he make The New Super Ring that will subjigate all rings, including the previous ring that he has lost?
he poured his will into that ring, it's like a uploading your brain to a computer
but he still got all other rings, they also have power, don't they? So its not like he lost all power and became miserable ghost. He somehow still retained control over Nazguls, when IN THEORY they all should have gone and bowed down to Bilbo, because he was the master of the ring.
Bilbo wasn't the master of the ring, he only carried it. Only other Maiar and Galadriel could've actually mastered the ring. Isildur tried to bend the ring to his will for years and couldn't do it.
How did Isildur lose? He's the King of Gondor. A seven foot tall gigachad wearing the thickest armor, wearing The One Ring, surrounded by badass Gondorian warriors. And a couple dinky little level 1 goblins on the side of the road take him down. The One Ring was so useless.
It never occurred to him that someone would want to destroy the ring, rather than utilize its power. Also the obsessiveness with obtaining the ring at any cost meant that its bearers did not care about their own (and by extension the ring's) wellbeing, hence why Isildur and Gollum both went to their graves trying to keep it.
If the three rings made for the elves are not under the power of the one ring and they were not made by Sauron, why even mention them? Why were they so important?
important to show the mary sue elves are speshul snowflakes who can make their own good wholesome /r/eddit rings which are like the opposite of sauron's mean bad smelly rings
important to show the mary sue elves are speshul snowflakes who can make their own good wholesome /r/eddit rings which are like the opposite of sauron's mean bad smelly rings
It's interesting how so many gamechanging events in LotR happen basically by providence, rather than resulting directly from any action taken by the main characters.
Bilbo finding the Ring? Providence.
Gandalf coming back? Providence.
The hobbits stumbling upon the palantir that would give rise to Aragorn's gambit? Providence.
The Ring being destroyed after Frodo succumbs to it? Providence.
You literally have an entire species who are just elves who got kidnapped, tortured raped and mindbroken into ugly morons sold into slavery, and who are permanently banned from heaven for this. They weren't exactly protected for being "good", nor did their free will play any part in this.
Lotr's not about "good always triumphs over evil" it's just god commanding some guys to throw a magic ring into a volcano with no morality involved.
>You literally have an entire species who are just elves who got kidnapped, tortured raped and mindbroken into ugly morons
There is not really a canonical origin for orcs. The tortured elves is just the most popular version but Tolkien never committed to it. In some versions they're basically golems.
Hmmm i think i will take my power away from me and put it inside this ring for no reason then i will put the ring on my finger so it can be taken away easily, surely nothing will go wrong
By literal interference from God. He thought (correctly I might add) that there was no ducking way the most pathetic form of sentient life in Middle Earth could resist his ring and it would only be a matter of time before he got it back.
And again, he was RIGHT. But as Eru told Melkor, he would weave such chords from his disruption the Beaty of which he was incapable of understanding.
God’s divine plan but not outright intervention, the good natured hobbits got the ring all the way to mount doom where none else could have without being corrupted, Bilbo and Frodos mercy also preserved Gollum who swore on the ring to protect Frodo. Upon breaking his oath his and the ring fate were intertwined leading to its destruction in the end. It’s not like Eru tripped Gollum but he was working through the Hobbits and it is he that is the origin of the magic power of oaths and oath breaking and he is the ultimate source of the power within the ring.
>God’s divine plan but not outright intervention, the good natured hobbits got the ring all the way to mount doom where none else could have without being corrupted, Bilbo and Frodos mercy also preserved Gollum who swore on the ring to protect Frodo. Upon breaking his oath his and the ring fate were intertwined leading to its destruction in the end. It’s not like Eru tripped Gollum but he was working through the Hobbits and it is he that is the origin of the magic power of oaths and oath breaking and he is the ultimate source of the power within the ring.
accurate
That would be a bad ending both for the book or the movie. What is the point of following what thee characters do if they end up failing and is Eru (God) the one that does the work?
That's how the book ends...
I haven't read the book but I'm just saying that is a bad ending in my opinion. Imagine reading hundreds of pages caring about what the characters do to reach the ending, see how they fail and then it's God that uses his allpowerful nature to defeat the bad guy...
He loses because good prevails over evil. Bilbo refuses to murder Gollum in the cave, and instead spares him in pity, by which the ring came to him. He then gives the ring to Frodo, who attempts to take the ring for himself because it is so powerful, but Gollum attacks Frodo leading to the destruction of the ring. If Bilbo had no spared Gollum, then the world would have been doomed.
But people here are saying that it was Eru the one that made Gollum fall to the volcano. That is what I'm referring to.
Eru causes nothing save bringing together the orchestra.
It is the singers that make the tune.
Was that ever stated in the book? I thought that was from Tolkien's notes.
But those notes or letters I think are considered cannon too.
Fair enough. Personally I always considered author's notes to be supplemental rather than core canon though.
If Gollum hadn't killed his friend by the river, stolen the ring and fled to that exact cave to kill and eat goblins, then the world would have been doomed. That's not good helping the world, it's cherrypicking the specific moment of larger causality that can be interpreted as "good".
But the forces by which Smeagol killed Deagol were evil. The forces by which Bilbo spared Gollum were good. That's still good prevailing over evil. If some loner gets bullied and decides he wants to shoot up a place, but someone else shows him some kind of kindness which prevents that from happening, then good prevailed over evil.
I'm sure Deagol will agree with you that good really won the day, everyday, while his corpse is being raped by maggots and eaten by bears.
"Good" is one single action in a large chain of events that led to a magic ring being destroyed, and many of those actions required to destroy the ring were evil. If Gollum weren't evil then Frodo would've lost. It's dumb to surmise the entire moral of Lotr should be defined by a smaller spinoff novel about a character barely in Lotr.
the ring was acting its power on Deagol too, as soon as he picked it up he would have not wanted to let it go, as Gandalf explains. It's not like if Deagol kept the ring he would have been unchanged and used it for good or something. He would have turned into Gollum himself.
And you presume too much. If Gollum had never gotten the ring, who is to say what would have happened? Perhaps the forces of good that Gandalf explains are able to influence the world could have done something else to get the ring into Mount Doom. We cannot say for sure that if there were no Gollum that the world would be doomed. We don't have enough information.
The only "forces of good" that can influence the world is Eru, and if he influenced the world to force everything to happen then your logic is self-defeating because it was not good free willed nature triumphing over evil, it was Eru doing everything.
As another anon explained, it's an orchestra arranged by Eru, but not directly forced. Like real life Catholicism. God is the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of the universe, and He can afford us free will but also indirectly influence circumstances to produce a certain outcome--that outcome being that evil will not prevail over Him.
Seems like an irrelevant discussion anyway, because Gandalf TELLS Frodo this very plainly, that the forces of good MEANT for Bilbo to have the ring, and that's why it seemed so lucky that Bilbo would happen to land his hand down on the ring in the dark of a cave. The chances of that are astronomical, and that he happens to survive and keep the ring. It was not simple luck, but otherworldly forces that wanted to put the ring into Bilbo's hand.
>but also indirectly influence circumstances to produce a certain outcome
No he can't. It doesn't work like "oh it doesn't count as interference when I don't want it to count teehee". Either they have to interfere to make everything turn out nice and wholesome, or they don't and it does that on its own. If you had to interfere to make it that way, then that is not the way of the world, it is the way of your interference.
Meaning Good does not win over Evil in Lotr, the unintelligent god made by an unintelligent author obtusely sticks his fingers into the earthly cookie jar then tries to pretend they all just floated into his mouth
>No he can't.
But He can, and He does. Gandalf tells us this. You aren't smarter than Gandalf. The forces of good meant for Bilbo to have the ring, and Bilbo's goodness spared Gollum's life; then the forces of good also meant for Frodo to have the ring, and Frodo also pitied Gollum. Gandalf says that Gollum has a part to play yet in the fate of the ring, for good or ill, and he was right. It was Gollum's greed for the ring which destroyed it, and that only possible because of Bilbo and Frodo's kindness. The ring is like a stand-in for Human sin, and our complex relationship with it, where we love it and also hate it. But, without the ring, without sin, we are good creatures with the same kindness Bilbo and Frodo had.
Gandalf is not a real person he's a shallow children's book character parroting the platitudes of his cowardly deserting writer. I'm way smarter than Gandalf and way smarter than (YOU).
If the "forces of good" manipulated physical events to make Bilbo land his hand on the ring in a specific cave he fell down in, then "good creatures with kindness" did not save the day, god forcing things to conveniently line up exactly how he wants saved the day, and Evil nature would have won if not for god pushing things to an unnatural outcome
>Evil nature would have won if not for god pushing things to an unnatural outcome
But why is it that when Evil does something to influence the world (such as the power of the ring, which corrupts the minds of people) you consider it "natural" but when Good indirectly gives someone access to that same corrupting ring, you consider it "unnatural"?
Both the forces of Good and Evil are testing to souls of man, of hobbit, of elves, of dwarves. Sauroncels are just upset that people generally have more good in their heart than evil, and that's why evil will never win.
Because you use "Good" as merely a pseudonym for Eru. They didn't win because a tolkien manbaby on the internet said "people generally have more good in their heart than evil", they won because Eru won it for them.
But Eru did not put the ring into Gollum's hand, the forces of evil did that, and Gollum's black heart accepted it. Like I said, free will won the day. Frodo and Bilbo's goodness, and the goodness of all the other characters, is what won the day. Eru could put the ring into any number of people's hands... but if those people were evil, then Eru would be defeated. That is the nature of free will.
no force of evil did that, Gollum did that of his own free will after it was found by change. Eru forced the ring into Bilbo's hand without free will. You've literally got it completely backwards.
Gandalf tells us that evil works its forces on the world. "There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil." He also tells us that good works its forces on the world too. The ring corrupts, and it has a will of its own, wanting to return to its master. That is the evil force at work. You're right that Gollum chose to take the ring of his own free will. I don't meant to say he was forced to. But that's the nature of free will, good and bad people both have it.
Bro Sauron's just a guy. If he did the shit Eru is doing then he could just force Bilbo not to find the ring in the cave then say "haha that means men have more evil in their hearts than good, because I stopped him finding the ring"
The ring is doing that though. Forces of both good and evil play on the ring, push and pull for influence. Evil put the ring into Gollum's hand, and Good put the ring into Bilbo's hand. Gandalf mentions that Bilbo is the only one he knows of who voluntarily chose to give up the ring (with some prompting from Gandalf himself). It isn't an easy thing to give it up, because evil is constantly vying for control of your heart and your mind, but he does give it up, and that's a show of his character and his willpower.
all Deagol did was pick up a ring he found in a river, and he got murdered for it. So much for "good winning the day", evil killed him and nobody on earth or heaven cared.
I sense an Atheistic bitterness from (you). This is a similar argument you hear when people discuss real life good and evil. And the simple truth is that man is mortal. Hobbits are mortal too. If Deagol did not die there, he would have died some place else. Battles occur in Middle Earth, and plagues, and famine, and death. Are those things necessarily evil? Is it evil to die? Or is the TRUE EVIL something in the heart? And if you die with good in your heart, then that is good? Where if you live in sin and die with evil in your heart, then it is bad?
Gandalf mentions in the book that there is a sliver of light shining in Gollum's mind, where there is some good left in him, even after hundreds of years of living in evil. Even Gollum was not beyond saving. There was a chance, though the evil in him defeated the good, and that was his choice, which led to his death.
"evil in your heart" has to be the gayest cope I have ever heard from a tolkienbrainlet. Congratulations on being the new record-holder.
What is "living in sin" IF NOT murdering and torturing and causing pain and the suffering of life.
Inflicting that on others is the definition of evil within your own babyshit setting, as you yourself define Gollum as evil for doing these things. And Deagol suffered and died at and for Evil's hand, completely without "good" somehow protecting him or granting him a good life.
You see, you have a very earthly and material understanding of good and evil. To you, good and evil is not something you possess, but something you DO. It is a temporary thing that waxes and wanes depending on how you're feeling in the moment. Evil lies in the heart, and it's always there, in all of us. Even Gandalf admits he could do terrible evil with the ring, although it would begin as his desire to do good with it--and Galadriel too. But, remove the ring, and the capacity for evil is gone. I think Frodo's final choice to try to keep the ring is an important one in the books and movies. It's an evil action, but he is saved by his overall goodness (which directly results in him being saved, because he spares Gollum, and Gollum steals the ring from him and dies with it). So even if we fail and fall into sin, which we inevitably will, we can still be saved by the goodness of our overall character. The same with Boromir actually: He tries to take the ring in an act of evil, but he repents for this deed and redeems himself, because he was overall a good person.
What a gay, verbose and ultimately vacuous essay you just wrote out anon, you should write your own Lotr too.
Because you simply ignored the very point that being of a "good" nature does not mean you win, for others like Deagol it means you lose and die horribly.
As I said, death is not evil. Theodan dies. His son dies. Boromir dies. Plenty of people die, and they will keep dying, sometimes in good ways, other times in bad ways. What matters is that you die well, with goodness in your heart. I am not sure whether Deagol would qualify, regardless. Was he overall "good"? Or was he overall "bad"? We really don't have enough information.
No, as you hypocritically contradicted yourself, evil is something you do "Even Gandalf admits he could do terrible evil with the ring". "the capacity for evil" "t's an evil action" "He tries to take the ring in an act of evil"
Murdering your friend unprovoked is an act of evil. Gollum's action was evil. And deagol suffered for it and was not stopped or saved by any "force of good"/
>you hypocritically contradicted yourself
This is elementary school semantics. You believe that good and evil is not inside your heart, and that it is just some random action you choose whenever you want for no reason. I do not mean that evil actions cannot be performed, but that they are performed because of evil inside the heart--just as good actions are performed because of good inside the heart. You're the one who said "evil in your heart" was a gay cope, indicating you do not believe good and evil exists in the heart.
an Evil Action committed by someone with an "Evil Heart" or in a non-babyish way of putting it Evil Intention, murdered Deagol and cut his life short.
Good did not win for him, Evil won and he suffered pointlessly.
>Good did not win for him, Evil won and he suffered pointlessly.
You continue with your willful ignorance of what good and evil truly means. So I will engage only once more with you, if you continue to ignore this simple truth: Death is not evil. You believe that because Deagol was killed, that Eru or "goodness" lost and failed him. For one matter, we don't even know if Deagol could be described as "Good" or "Evil". For another, death is inevitable, and simply being killed is not evidence of evil defeating good--evil only defeats good when you yourself choose evil over good. So it would be more correct to say that Smeagol suffered pointlessly, because evil won in his heart against good (but then again, that resulted in him indirectly saving the world through his greed). So stop with this notion that "if you have good in your heart God should give you an invisible shield that protects you from all forms of death and make you immortal forever" it's such a babyish understanding of theology and metaphysics.
Murder is evil. You can’t simultaneously pretend it is proven that “good won over evil” by a physical action in managing to destroy the ring, when it was actually an evil action and an interfering god that led to the ring’s destruction.
Deagol got murdered and his only life cut short (an act of evil and an act of suffering) without goodness having anything to do with it, the ring was destroyed because of random chance, factors completely unrelated to “good triumphs over evil”, examples of evil triumphing over good and an interfering deity. Good doesn’t triumph over evil in tolkien babyshit, Tolkienms favourites win because he manipulates the plot in contrived artifical ways to make his cardboard cutouts win and /r/edditors clap.
>act of suffering
Death is not true suffering. You fundamentally misunderstand Tolkien and Catholicism. Pain and anguish are terrible, and those who are able to endure them are very strong individuals, but it is not evil to suffer. Jesus suffered physical torment, but it did not waiver his faith. I say "true suffering" or "true evil" would be if Jesus were to forsake God on the cross, blame Him for his death, to let the physical torment change his character for the worse. He died well, and He ascended to Heaven, along with the others who died with goodness in their hearts. Like I said, you are too materialistic, as an Atheist; you cannot comprehend that death is itself not an evil, but the act of torturing or murdering is evidence of the evil in the torturer's or murderer's soul (the evil in Gollum, which resulted in his ultimate defeat and the defeat of the ring and Sauron). You believe that our mortality is evil, and that apparently God should make us immortal if we believe in Him. Your concept of theology and metaphysics is juvenile, and as I said, there's no point in continuing with you. Good day.
The lore of LoTR is so gay. Anime tier bullshit.
Beaty
You fricked up, anon!
The first or the second time?
why was he reaching?
if only he wore the ring under the armored gauntlet
but i guess then he couldn't grope and feel the asses of his fallen enemies
he wanted to finger Isildur in the butthole
Sauron was a Maiar, does that mean he was equal in power to the Wizards and the Balrog?
Yes
why would Balrog fall down if he had wings? Why Sauron doesn't just fly himself out on the Nazgul and get the ring ?
He wasn’t just a Maiar, he was the most powerful of all the Maiar.
Eonwe and Melian mogged him and so did that one random sea Maiar I can never remember.
Lapras
No he wasnt. He was just Morgoths right hand man.
Not all Maiar are equal in power or rank, Sauron was one of if not the mightiest of the Maiar, shadowing Melkor as the mightiest of the Valar. Gandalf in his wizard form had a physical body and had his original power capped but even in full Maiar form was still ‘weaker’ atleast in martial ability and sorcery that Sauron. His powers were in wisdom and sympathy for the mortals of middle earth.
The Balrogs were lesser Maiar associated with fire who were swayed to Melkors cause in the earliest era when the Ainu sung the world into existence. They were corrupted in spirit before they even manifested physically on Arda so they ended up fiery demons in the first instance.
He wasnt, he was just a Maia of Aule.
Wasnt what? One of the mightiest of the Maiar? Im pretty certain there is a line in the silmarillion that states he was one of the most powerful if not the most powerful among them.
no
while they are same type of being its like asking: could average anon beat [some professional fighting champion] because they are both human?
sauron was the strongest maiar and the wizard were some the weaker ones
he was always a loser, he lost to a dog and a woman lol
So Sauron through cheating created The Ring that somehow subjigated all other rings. After loosing that ring, why can't he make The New Super Ring that will subjigate all rings, including the previous ring that he has lost?
He put too much of his power into the One Ring, literally.
but he still got all other rings, they also have power, don't they? So its not like he lost all power and became miserable ghost. He somehow still retained control over Nazguls, when IN THEORY they all should have gone and bowed down to Bilbo, because he was the master of the ring.
Bilbo wasn't the master of the ring, he only carried it. Only other Maiar and Galadriel could've actually mastered the ring. Isildur tried to bend the ring to his will for years and couldn't do it.
he poured his will into that ring, it's like a uploading your brain to a computer
How did Isildur lose? He's the King of Gondor. A seven foot tall gigachad wearing the thickest armor, wearing The One Ring, surrounded by badass Gondorian warriors. And a couple dinky little level 1 goblins on the side of the road take him down. The One Ring was so useless.
The Ring betrayed Isildur and slipped off his finger while he was in the water. Only then the orcs found and killed him.
The tallest Numenorean in all of history Elendil was only 7ft. Isildur and other Numenors would've only been 5'4.
Why does Smeagol talk like a moron? Is that ever explained? I'm reading the book and he talks like that even when he was "normal" which is odd.
Couldn't keep up with the beat
A regular human outmuscled him in wrestling and threw him onto the ground for Isildur to slice and dice
It never occurred to him that someone would want to destroy the ring, rather than utilize its power. Also the obsessiveness with obtaining the ring at any cost meant that its bearers did not care about their own (and by extension the ring's) wellbeing, hence why Isildur and Gollum both went to their graves trying to keep it.
No tax plan
If the three rings made for the elves are not under the power of the one ring and they were not made by Sauron, why even mention them? Why were they so important?
important to show the mary sue elves are speshul snowflakes who can make their own good wholesome /r/eddit rings which are like the opposite of sauron's mean bad smelly rings
serious replies only, please
He was too arrogant to believe anyone would want to destroy his ring, so it never occured to him that they would.
His over confidence to accept that the mortals would unite and dare to resist him.
It's interesting how so many gamechanging events in LotR happen basically by providence, rather than resulting directly from any action taken by the main characters.
Bilbo finding the Ring? Providence.
Gandalf coming back? Providence.
The hobbits stumbling upon the palantir that would give rise to Aragorn's gambit? Providence.
The Ring being destroyed after Frodo succumbs to it? Providence.
You literally have an entire species who are just elves who got kidnapped, tortured raped and mindbroken into ugly morons sold into slavery, and who are permanently banned from heaven for this. They weren't exactly protected for being "good", nor did their free will play any part in this.
Lotr's not about "good always triumphs over evil" it's just god commanding some guys to throw a magic ring into a volcano with no morality involved.
>You literally have an entire species who are just elves who got kidnapped, tortured raped and mindbroken into ugly morons
There is not really a canonical origin for orcs. The tortured elves is just the most popular version but Tolkien never committed to it. In some versions they're basically golems.
Hmmm i think i will take my power away from me and put it inside this ring for no reason then i will put the ring on my finger so it can be taken away easily, surely nothing will go wrong
His author is a hack.