Why did Sauron even need the ring? He was obviously extremely powerful without it...

Why did Sauron even need the ring? He was obviously extremely powerful without it, and it was even implied that he was able to take physical form (when Gollum mentions that Sauron's hand had only four fingers) and all the references to him sitting around in Barad-Dur

The ring was meant to be used to control very powerful leaders of various races and it was able to do this because it was linked with certain rings that those people wore. In order for Sauron to create a ring that could do this he had to put a bit of himself, or a bit of his essence into the ring so when he lost the ring he lost that bit of power that he put into the ring. During the LOTR Sauron is merely trying to become whole again.

Well then why didn't he take his opportunity to reclaim it when Frodo was captured by orcs in Cirith Ungol?

Frodo didn't have it when he was captured, Sam did.

That and the fact that Orcs are fucking morons.

That's racist.

Yeah but according to the Mouth everyone in Mordor just assumed that they were spies? How could they have gotten past the two watchers without powerful elf magic? How dumb is Sauron??

They didn't get past the watchers. The watchers raised the alarm which is why they were caught. Why wouldn't Sauron assume they were spies? At around this same time Aragorn was making Sauron believe he was claiming the ring by taunting him through the Palantir

Cause Elrond, Galadriel and Gandalf were sitting around with rings making them op.
Especially Galadriel, her kingdom was untouchable.
>I AM THE SERVANT OF THE SECRET FIRE, WIELDER OF THE FLAME OF ANOR

Why would Sauron assume anything when it came to the ring?
Doesn't Frodo perceive that Lorien was under attack at Amon Hen though?

Because he was arrogant. He's omniscient or perfect, he is a character with flaws. This is what made his sudden realization that the ring essentially walked right past him to his doom so sweet when it was thrown into the fire.

>He's omniscient or perfect

I meant to say he's not omniscient or perfect obviously

Lorien itself was untouched, just the surrounding area that was ravaged.
Imagine someone cutting of your testicles.
>Why would you even need your testicles. You're "obviously" manly without them. It's even implied that you can still have children.

He didn't. Had Frodo not destroyed the ring when he did Sauron's forces of Mordor still could have overthrown the men of the West. That being said, the ring was his achilles heel, which is why it was such a priority for him to recover it.

This thread is the absolute most detail I've ever seen anywhere on Veeky Forums

you haven't seen the thread that pynch was in?

I just finished the Hobbit and absoluety loved it. Going to start the LOTR series tonight, what am I in for?

no one on Veeky Forums has ever read anything by pynchon. just "lol bananas" and "fell for the lol bananas meme" also sometimes "mason & dixon had me crying at the end"

You must be new here

A well written story

i'm not. i've just read pynchon and Veeky Forums

same token, i've never read lotr, so this shit could be "lol bananas"

You had better REALLY love Tolkien’s prose or else you’ll probably be bored

Beautiful prose. Great themes. But a little meandering at times.

I liked his prose and wasn't bored at all throught the Hobbit. Doubt it'll hold my interest for those 3 long ass books tho /:

As soon as you leave Rivendell the pacing is pretty good tbhfamalamdesu

Thumbnail looked like two girls enjoying a double sided dildo, but LOTR is good too!

Dont forget to read The Silmarillion. While LotR is the YA fiction of its time, The Silmarillion is the actual literature.

Holy shi--, I'm sorry it's just too funny seeing a bunch of middle-aged men debating over a children's book, Ha ha ha!-- Sorry, sorry, please go on, pals.

i much prefer middle-age men pretending to have read ulysses

Explain your reasoning considering orcs are the smartest creatures in Middle Earth.

You are what you eat.

The One Ring was similar to a horcrux (i know, i know, how DARE i use HP analogy in a LotR post!). Sauron put the vast majority of his essence/soul into the Ring (like, 99.999%).
Because of this, even if he didn't have the Ring on his finger, the Ring was still potent enough to cause havoc. And Sauron was able to survive in a form stronger than a ghost.
By the events of LotR books, Sauron had actually reacquired twelve of the rings of power.
The Nazgul no longer needed to be wearing their rings to be under the control of Sauron's will, they'd worn them for so long that they were completely dominated by him even without them on, so Sauron naturally reclaimed those nine.
He also managed to recover three of the "Dwarven" rings, the other four having been destroyed with dragon fire.
Sauron differed from Melkor primarily in one aspect: whereas Melkor expended his essence/soul into the physical "stuff" or substance of the world (excluding Valinor), Sauron merely wanted to control the minds of its inhabitants.
He did this through the One Ring, which allowed him to control the other 19 rings in a very similar manner to how he used a palantir to corrupt Saruman, or drive Denethor insane.
The difference between using the palantir and a ring of power was that corruption was guaranteed if Sauron had a control of the One Ring, whereas the palantir was less sure, because he had no part in the making of the palantiri.
This is why Denethor "only" went insane, whereas Saruman went completely evil. The palantiri had rules, sort of like computer administrative rights, and people who were allowed to use the palantir (like Denethor, since he was rightful ruler of Gondor) were given more protection from any outside influence (viz. Sauron). Saruman didn't have such rights, he merely discovered the palantir at Orthanc, but wasn't given those "administrative rights" to use it, so he was completely vulnerable to Sauron's will, he had no firewall, so to speak.

Now all the above is documented lore from various sources. The below is my speculation:

I think that the One Ring represents "will", or the thing-in-itself, noumena, or however any number of religions or philosophers have termed it, from Kant or Schopenhauer, to the Vedas and Buddhists.
The Ring represents the designs of Sauron/evil to control the minds of the inhabitants of Arda. Only by denying the will, denying those inner urges and desires, do we overcome the effects of the Ring.
The Elves, at least the Elves of the Third Age, are eternally sad because they know that ultimately they will have to leave Middle Earth, through the negation of their self-will (i.e. the destruction of the 3 Elven Rings, which will only occur when the ultimate source of will, the One Ring, is destroyed).
The Elves left Valinor, a type of Heaven, due to their pride and will, and Sauron tried to trap the remaining Elves by imprisoning their minds/will through their rings via the Ring.

this. T

(ran out of room to type)
I should mention that I base these speculations on certain things I noticed while reading World as Will and Idea.

1. Schopenhauer describes music in extremely similar ways to how Tolkien describes the creation of Ea and Arda via the Music of the Ainur.
2. Tolkien fans know that Tolkien himself hated allegory, but few know "why" he hated it so much. I admit, even I am in that boat. But Schopenhauer goes into great detail about allegory, and why he hated it so much, and given the other similarities between Schopenhauer and Tolkien writings, I can't help but wonder if Tolkien had read World as Will and Idea.
3. The similarities between the effects of the thing-in-itself (i.e. will) described by Schopenhauer, and the One Ring.
4. The similarities between the sadness of the Elves and their departure of Middle Earth after the One Ring was destroyed, and the sadness that Schopenhauer describes in those who become aware of Maya (the web of illusion that tricks everyone into exercising their will to greater and greater degrees) and of how they eventually see the "evil" that is will, learn to negate it (i.e. negate their self-will) and leave the confines of this existence to reach Nirvana (i.e. Valinor).

Honestly this just inspired me to read tolkien. Do i need to read his other stuff or just the hobbit and LotR?

>middle-aged men
Where do you live where people still die at 40-50?

I'm glad it wasn't only me

Someone else with the ring could have destroyed Sauron, for example Gandalf, Sauronman, Aragon (debatable). But in the process of doing so would turn into creatures as evil as Sauron himself.

Sauron believed Pippin had the ring, and that Aragon was going to use it to destroy him. He hasn't considered it's destruction

Eleventy one.

hobbit and lotr (in that order) is good because it incorporates an aspect that Tolkien himself desired, that aspect being the feeling of a deeper historical grounding that gives an illusion of reality to a fantasy world.
This illusion largely goes away when reading Silmarillion, but definitely still read Silmarillion.
But don't pop that cherry right away, enjoy your virginity at least once with Hobbit and LotR.

Disappointment. Tolkien peaked with the hobbit

I don't know why these books are so endlessly re-readable. I'm in the mood to give them another go and I've read them for the third time not even a year ago.

tanx

what?

frodo gets bit by the spider bitch while sam was fighting off gollum. when sam comes back he assumes frodo is dead and takes the ring with him. but because he doesn't want to abandon frodo even though he's dead, he turns back and finds out the orcs have taken his body. then sam pursues them to some tower where most of the orcs have killed themselves, rescues frodo, and the two head off to mount doom. the only time they're both "captured" is when they stop to rest on the side of some road and a troop of orcs marches past. the leader thinks they're orcs or some shit too since they've got on some dead orc gear and makes them march with them. but then there's some collision between two orc troops who refuse to give the other way and in the chaos frodo and sam run off and are never captured again.

it's great. i liked the books a lot more than the hobbit with the exception of the two towers. the first half of the book is fine but the second half is mostly a drag with some good parts.

I'm talking about the watchers from Minas Morgul while the hobbits were climbing the mountain before entering Shelob's lair. That's how the orcs knew to keep a watch on the pass. There were also unseen watchers that raised the alarm when Sam went to rescue Frodo from the orc tower.

That’s funny, it’s the complete other way around for me.

isn't most of the second part of the two towers just frodo, sam, and gollum walking? the stuff with faramir is great but it wasn't enough to make up for the rest of it.

I thought the watchers were at Cirith Ungol

It's the same area

is it just me, or is tolkien's writing style completely different by the end of return of the king?