Something is bugging me about this 'one ring to rule them all'...

This is reductive. You're not reading far enough into it.

Enlighten me then?

>inb4 WW2 factions bullshit

I think you're wrong and that that line of thought is reductive. The whole thing is an etiological myth. Elves represent virtue in a time of big damn virtuous heroes. It's not that ideals can't exist in this world. It's that they used to and now we have to make do with what we have passed down to us.

Agree with the wizards being religious. Gandalf was clearly a Jesus figure, sacrificing himself for the party and resurrected as Gandalf the white, for example.

Heh, the LoTR plot is almost the novelization of the Jerusalem hymn.
*And did those feet/ in ancient times/ walk upon Middle-Earth's mountains green*

I'm not about to enlighten you. But by reading stuff as merely alegorical of other stuff you're missing the point.

>overlooking allegory in fantasy is missing the point

Tolkien explains in the intro to the Silmarillion that the elves are the embodiment of his vision for the productive nature of man where all effort is directed by art and craftsmanship, where things are made for the beauty in the thing and in the process of creation.
Mordor and all its products represented the kind of progress and industrialization that he hated where all invention and all product has only the goal of increasing power.
Elven magic is meant to make ones will more in tune with nature, Mordor magic is meant to exert ones will over nature.
He shows the seductive power of dark magic in several ways throughout the series, the most powerful probably being when Sam gets the ring and imagines using its power to turn all of Mordor into one beautiful garden. It sounds like a noble and beautiful goal but it would require him imposing his will over the rest of creation and would result in tremendous evil. Even if he could have accomplished it, which of course he couldn't have because Sauron would have bested him and taken back the ring as was its plan.

I agree with what you're saying. I do get that his work is not meant to be an allegory at large but there are certain allegorical elements he confirmed himself, such as the theme of industrialism. That user asked an allegorical question, so I gave him an allegorical answer. Simple as that.

That was Tolkien's thing. He took existing poems, hymns and legends, and re-wrote them to make an alternate ancient history. You can find parallels to his work in many old songs.

It's a beautiful and complex weaving of myth that stands on it's own and is only made less by being picked apart as an allegory for your easier consumption.

This guy gets it.

You're right. I'm very glad you mentioned the passage with Sam.

How comfy was that scene in the Return of the King cartoon?

Appreciating a cog momentarily doesn't lessen the experience of the watches craftsmanship.

now THATS what i call autism

My working theory was that the ring played on the darkness in mens hearts. Amplifying and distorting corruptible elements. I don't have a quote on this but I recal Tolkien said at one point that if he should have got the ring, Gandalf, who was already righteous, should have become self-righteous.

The best example of this is Boromir, who is proud and who has alot to be proud of, is unable to humble himself before the wisdom of others and this lack of humility in conjuction with his own desperation lead him to his betrayal of the fellowship.

Also in this vein is Galadriel, not a dark lord but a queen, beautiful and terrible as the dawn.

That's exactly correct.

In order to make the One Ring work at all, Sauron had to put a huge amount of his own power/being into it. This wasn't a problem when he had it it with him, but once he lost the ring he also lost that part of himself that gave the one ring its power in the first place. At the beginning of the LOTR books he's a shadow of his former self because of that. They're trying to stop him getting back the power he put into the one ring, not control of the others.

unless you were referring to something else

Dwarves are Jews.

Yes, exactly.

The point of Sauron/The Ring is to resonate with our perception of our current industrialist leadership in the west.
They have given everything for power. They would never be able to exist without their machinations.

They have no soul of their own, no inspiration; they gave it to their greed and it crystallized outside of themselves. They sacrificed the entirety of their potential, the potential that they or any of the descendants they may have, to reach an immediate goal. As though they assumed they could see the end of all eternity and made a prudent investment.

Obviously they're just insane and evil and the only thing for us to do is to destroy their world and start over.

Exactly.

>8672426
One of the major veins of thought in the Lord of the Rings is about the potential of human life.

It's not a "fantasy story", of course. It is a mythology that applies directly to our world. That in some sense is allegory. There has to be some language to talk about aspects of the meaning behind it.

Relax. It seems like you have that quote from Tolkien saying "LOTR is not an allegory!!!!!!!" burned a little to hard into your thinking.
It IS allegory. Just not in the most popular sense of the word "allegory".

The victory is always bitter sweet in Middle Earth. Elves sacrifice and lose most by the defeat of Sauron because their three rings are what you can call "time stoppers"

This is why Rivendell and Lorien feels like "out of time" and like you don't feel "time passes" Elves wanted to stay in Middle Earth where they are the most powerful beings and yet the wanted to live like in Valinor. In Middle Earth everything was fading too quickly for the elves and they wanted to match it up with their internal clock of Valinor. This was the main purpose of the forging of the rings. With Sauron defeated and the rings lose their power, it also meant that places such as Rivendell and Lothlorien cannot exist in the same sense anymore.

Which is also the same kind of machination Tolkien hates. Rings were basically machines, ruling over the nature, changing the nature of Middle Earth. Elves flirted with Sauron to create them. This is why they are inherently evil and Elves accept their mistake and help to destroy the One Ring even if it meant the destruction of their precious toys.

> stop enjoying a complex work of art for longer than i did

Okay now that you understood the plot, what is the application to our reality? What does this correspond to?

It is mostly an environmentalist piece of art that directy confronts the human greed.

I don't think so. I agree that it is that, i even wrote a legal paper on exactly that aspect of it.

But i think there are equally prevalent political and ethical themes. For example, you can read Sauron really effectively as the advent of the modern centralized regulatory state, with Barad-dur as an echo of Bentham's Panopticon.

The Shire is a kind of anarchist paradise. There's no meaninful central authority and everyone minds their own business. One thing that strikes me as fairly important about the scourging is that some hobbits are buying up land, more land than they can use which is something that resonates with me as I watch the property market around me being inflated by central banks and chinese millionaires.

I always viewed the Orcs as aberrations of Men. A reflection of men's corruption, which in Tolkien's mind is impending industrialisation. The Orcs are essentially without ego or greed and purely savage.

Great thread.

Definitely. Part of the conservativism of tolkien's work is his distrust of efficiency and expansion. The scouring of the shire reflects that.

The shire is sort of anarchist, but it does have a government structure. It has Thanes i believe, a government mail system and border guard. And its ultimately a province of the lost kingdom of Arnor. The implication though is definitely that the shire can govern itself best, but only when it keeps to itself and its population is homogenous and known to itself and adheres to its specific cultural traditions. Ethics and tradition govern the shire more than anything else.

>tfw think all the ideas being talked about ITT are fantastic but still think the novels as they exist on the page are sloppy, trite and boring.

Fuck off. DFW is shit. He'll be forgotten in 50 years while Tolkien will remain.

I'm exactly the same my man. I've listened to a big part of the silmarillion (audiobook), and it's absolutely joyful hearing about the world more thoroughly, and I do love the world of LOTR quite a bit, but the books have always remained incredibly dull to me for some reason.

I never actually understood how exactly any of them would even know how to use this power. It doesn't seem to help them much besides invisibility. It doesn't even get them past the morgul sentinels. What the fuck are they supposed to do with it?

the reason is that you are a brainwashed piece of shit that needs constant screaming noise and colors bombarding your face to feel stimulated

>orcs
The product of race mixing. Not even joking.

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

You don't understand the basic concept of the Ring. It grants one power based on their natural abilities and corrupts based on one's deepest desires. The more corrupt one becomes, the more power the ring grants them.

It only gives the Hobbit characters invisibility because a Hobbit's primary talent is being able to go unnoticed. When Boromir had it, it played on his pride and his desire to protect his city. When Sam had it, it played on his desire to make the land wholesome and beautiful. None of them had it long enough to become truly powerful or corrupt. That's why Galadriel was so afraid of it.

Reminder that The Hobbit casually mentions guns.

Reminder that the Hobbits had invented firearms at the time of LOTR, making them the most technologically advanced race by far.

Reminder that Hobbits only used that technology for occasional hunting, because they have no interest in progress for the sake of progress or holding power over other living beings.

Reminder that Hobbits are the only race that is truly good and pure.

bbut Isildur used it for invisibility...

meant to quote:

Well it gives you what you want or need at the time. Every single time a Hobbit used the ring, it was from the desire to keep hidden. Isildur wanted to keep hidden too at that point. Hobbits are just better at using it for that particular purpose because it's their natural talent.

Not entirely true.

One thing tolien said was that he regretted makng orcs seem irredeemable. You can see when merry and pippen are with the orcs that captured them that there are distinct orcish societies. Orcs are brutish and self serving because where the elves and edain have been touched by the divinity of the valar who taught them good social order and virtue the orcs instead had morgoth impose his own will on them in what was an inherantly selfish act.

>brainwashed piece of shit that needs constant screaming noise and colors bombarding your face to feel stimulated

What? I have no problem being entertained by any other book, be it 200 pages or 1000. Do calm down buddy, your bloodpressure!

Question: what was Frodo's desire? What character flaw of his would the ring have worked on? We had the scene with Sam's gardening fantasy, but there was nothing like that for Frodo iirc.

I think Sam had much more strength of character than Frodo, which is why he couldn't have been allowed to have the ring. I wonder what the other hobbits would have done with it. Merry would probably become a warlord and Pippin would throw parties and fuck bitches. Frodo is a mystery though.

There's a kind of parrallel spirit world. This sound crazy but bear with me. Men exist only in the mortal plain but Elves exist in both. When Frodo puts on the ring he leaves the mortal plain and enters the spirit plain. This is why when he wears the ring he sees the elves as glowing and sees the nazgul as pale kings. Because he's not seeing their physical presence but their spiritual one.

I don't think that should anyone get ahold of the ring and use it that it would infer any obvious power but work in subtle ways. For example should Boromir have taken it to gondor he would have jsut been the greatest military commander. Orcs would flee him and Men would flock to him because of the great power of his increased spiritual presence. And this would happen until he became over-confident and Sauron would step in and resume his power and control.

it turns out that sauron had the power to raise a giant army and control the death eaters all along

he just needed to believe in himself :3

No they aren't, they're corrupted elves. You're probably just thinking about the Saruman's half-orcs

i mean, whether or not tolkien intended it or not, and he probably did, they are like "african americans" or "mestizos" in our world. They have no real free will, they have no intuitively perceived purpose, they are aimless and were bred for the sole purpose of being slaves.

they represent artificial genetic manipulation of humanity. They are analogous to niggers and spics, who were created in an attempt to make africans and native americans into useful slaves to the west.

Anyone looking forward to this?

It's my favorite chapter from the Silmarillion,so I'm quite hype

there isn't one.
"the best hobbit in the shire" according to Gandalf

Frodo wanted everything to keep going as it was. His desire was to destroy the ring, and he knew and felt deeply that to use the ring would prevent its destruction. So the ring had nothing to work on except fear.

the use of that mythology was played out well enough in the Lord of the Rings.

Stop fucking the dead horse.

Why did you feel the need to post in this thread?

>Veeky Forums having a meaningful LOTR thread

Doesn't happen often enough desu. I've been playing around with the idea of re-reading it through a Nietzschean lens.

Sam is an ugly motherfucker.

>Tfw I genetically lucked out and have the same shitty facial hair

It wasn't the real ring. The real one was probably lost long ago, and all three of them were imitations.

Thanks user. Could Frodo having this particular mindset and being described as the best hobbit be another way in which Tolkien's anti-industrial and anti-progress for the sake of progress message manifests itself? Or is that too superficial?

I agree. /tv/, with all its shitposting and memes, usually has better Tolkien threads than Veeky Forums.

Frodos not the ideal hobbit in that sense. He's actually not like a typical hobbit at all given his Tookishness. At some point in the fellowship before leaving the shire he says something like how the ring might be what those sleepy Hobbits need, like a little bit of a shake up, before thinking again of his love for the Shire.

>hunting
>good and pure

Interestingly enough, Saruman studied Ring Lore and made his own,which he flaunted to Gandalf before locking him up in Isengard. Therefor even though he was killed,and the West denying him a place back there (the West wind blowing his smoke form away),what occurs to me is this:

Could he,in time,remanifest like Sauron because of that ring? Sandyman the hobbit devotee picking up the ring from the smoking remains and running off,trying it on,and being posessed by Saruman and through him using his Voice of Command to gather an army or some such? I see it as a sequel unforseen,with the two remaining Ishtari wizards returning from the East and fighting each other for dominance,their sucess determined by the whiteness of their robes each morning. More Moon letters found on that map to the Lonely Mountain, a DurinsDay phenomenon revealing the long forgotten Roadways between the Dwarf strongholds and Moria,and the sinister things found there. An aging Samwise taking his family to visit Gondor,with Elanor an adult,with a nervous deputy mayor assisstant playing unheeded court to her. And young Frodo Gamgee who has unequalled skill with a slingshot even for a hobbit,helping his father deal with the Situation of warring wizards. And the lost company of hobbit bowmen sent to the wars long ago rediscovered as a tribe of guerilla orc killers hiding from everyone. And an undead Smaug rising from the lake under the command of a wizard...

It could work,and fit snugly in the established canon.

Frodo is a kierkegaardian knight of resignation.

The ring represents money

You're so smart. Tell me more.

Too GRRM. Still I kinda like it

>yfw Tolkien actually planned a "gritty" sequel but scrapped it because he knew it would be shit even if it would make him a fuckton of money

The Three Rings were made by Celebrimbor, who had already been slain thousands of years before. After the death of Sauron Saruman remained the only living maker of a Ring of Power, but because he devised his Ring according to the lore he had studied (which was the remnant of the secrets of the Elven-smiths of Eregion and such of Sauron’s teachings as had been preserved) Saruman’s ring was also subject to Sauron’s One Ring. Hence, when the One Ring failed Saruman’s ring would also have to fail.

I don't think that ring would have been very strong at any rate. Like that time in the 90's I wanted pogs but my mom wouldn't buy me pogs so I made some out of cardboard.

Sauruman and his cardboard ring trying so desperately to be cool.

The ring gives you the power to exert your will over other people. The best example of this is when Frodo uses the power of the ring to bind Gollum to his will. If you find the passage it's just about explicitly that this is the power of the ring,and it also shows how even Frodo was succumbing to it.
But that's small scale because the ring is an amplifier and Frodo has neither the desire nor ability to really use it. If Boromir had used it he could have commanded an army of fanatical devotion and ability. It's like an AoE buff.
With enough time and practice with the ring he probably would have been able to do proper magic too.
If Gandalf had used it he would have been able to really pull some shit. He or the elves who are already so advanced as to be able to do magic, which is the ability to influence the world through will, would have had their power kicked up to epic level.

Reminder that the Silmarillion is filthy Elf supremacist propaganda.

In this vein, without going full bored of the rings tier retarded, what are some ways that Tolkien could have included an orcish redemption story. Just an isolated example to give us evidence that Orcs like all living things are redeemable and should be given the opportunity to prove their worth.

...

burzum.org/eng/library/paganism03.shtml

what do you guys think about this? (It's about LOTR)

It's kind of like what Tolkien describes as "hobbit-sense". Having a clear feeling about your surroundings and understanding how things fit together. Frodo has a special version of hobbit-sense. I wouldn't say it has much to do with traditionalism as pragmatism.
Tolkien presents an overwhelmingly powerful argument against industrialism, yet never presents the argument literally. He just presents the obvious implications. It is, objectively, horrible for everyone. Communism or capitalism doesn't matter; they are very far beside the point. That's why Tolkien took some issue with his work being called allegory.

The understanding of the outside world that Bilbo gave Frodo vicariously affected him deeply. It gave him the start of some real wisdom; the sense to know what's right and how to preserve in the face of evil.

That's what Tolkien was doing with this work of his. He's meant to be our Bilbo, letting us on to to an invaluable perspective on things that would probably otherwise be drowned out by the various distractions in our circumstances.

He certainly gave me some valuable perspective in this black pit of a culture that we're all supposed to live and breathe.

Gandalf is literally Odin. He's literally named after him. Jesus isn't the only dying god.

Gandalf is "literally" Gandalf. Tolkien was inspired by multiple gods and characters from myth, not just Odin. He was also a Christian.

You have no obligation to like the prose, just don't become too much of a secondary if you're not going to read the books.

Except everything about Gandalf screams Odin.
>The name
>The attire
>Ungodly fast steed
>Master of magic
>Wanderer
>Connection to raven
>Dies to become wiser
Nothing of his character has to do with a Jesus-like or Messianic figure.

You do realise that Odin is not the only ancient god with those attributes? I'm not denying that Odin was an inspiration, I just don't like your assertion that Gandalf is "literally" Odin.

>That's why Tolkien took some issue with his work being called allegory.

Did he really? I got the impression while reading his letters that he disliked the sort author enforced allegory like in Narnia with Aslan being a 1:1 allegory with Jesus, but he had no problems with readers interpreting things for themselves or recognizing that the authors real world experiences and views had effects in his works and I can't imagine Tolkien would have a problem with people applying or comparing his work to real world issues.

I was being hyperbolic, but back when he started the Hobbit as a children's story there's no reason why he wouldn't have lifted him up directly from the myth. It's not like he didn't do other stuff with him but the influences are pretty obvious.

>Odin is not the only ancient god with those attributes
Care to give one that reunites them as well as that and whose mythology Tolkien worked as extensively with?

I wonder, were Tolkien and Lewis friends for all their lives? They seem like polar opposites.

As far as I know they were close but grew apart over the years.

Consider Aesops fables. Tolkien disliked the format of eplicitly telling the reader the moral of the story at the end, feeling that if the story was a vehicle for a moral there was no point to read the story again once the moral was known. If the story can be reduced to something as simple as a moral then it's not a very good story.

Alot of things which people call allegorical interpretations are actually very reductive. It's a grand story that is excellent in it's own right. People who say that LotR is WW2 or that Galdalf is Odin are reducing complex ideas. If you accept that Galdalf is Odin he ceases to be an interesting character in his own right. (to that user I understand you were using hyperbole I'm just holding this here as an example)

Allegories should enrich our understanding of the text rather than reduce complex ideas into simple ones.

>lotr is ww2

Almost as bad as the BUT MUH EAGLES meme. Can't believe people actually think that.

main ring is (likely) based off of the ring from Plato's Republic, it represents corruption created by ineffective law enforcement

iirc Tolkien never once mentioned this, but he did mention the ring of the Nibelungen.

A place ruled by traditions cannot be anarchist.

>Nothing of his character has to do with a Jesus-like or Messianic figure
except uniting all men and sacrificing his body against the incarnation of the ultimate enemy and being reborn to complete his task

en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gandur#Icelandic
Gand could mean wizard, magician,
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alf#Dutch
Alf could mean spirit

obviously Tolkien looked for older roots than modern norse or german languages. But it's cool to see some of them are still recognizable in spoken languages.

>except uniting all men

He didn't - there were kingdoms of men who allied with Sauron.

>sacrificing his body

He knew he would suffer greatly and possibly die against the Balrog. He didn't know it for sure though but he knew it was necessary for him to stay and fight to at least give the party a chance to escape.

> incarnation of the ultimate enemy

The Balrog had nothing to do with Sauron, was considered a lesser Balrog to begin with, was weaker than Sauron, and existed as slaves/followers to Morgoth - the original great enemy.

I have read on First Things that Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn are incarnations of elements of Jesus, The Man, The King, The Sage.

Do you have a link to the article?

I would just like the day that I really liked how magic was handled by tolkien. Unlike other fantasy lands where magic is fireball and teleportation, Tolkien magic is more subtle with enchanted artifacts and magic is more about fear, binding, and force of will.