The Sentience of the Ring

[Jnyusa]

Sass, well, I've gone through your post three times now, and even took notes on it, LOL, like a good student.

I do still think you're on to something ... not certain yet that 'sentience' is the way I'll end up thinking about it, but ... well, more about that in a moment.

If you could truly feel my pain, not just acknowledge the fact that I have pain, then ... you could no more inflict pain upon me than you could methodically take a knife and carve upon yourself. So, I'm sorry, but I still have to reject your concept that empathy is possible for evil.

I'm not sure this would be true for all the abysmal real world choices people are called upon to make.

When I first read Faramond's and Griffy's objections to imagination as the source of evil, I had trouble orienting myself to the argument they were making. But as I thought about it, I realized they were thinking about 'evil' as 'wrongdoing' ... and I guess I was thinking about imagination (openness) and fear (closed-ness) more as properties of the human spirit, rather than as choices to behave a certain way.

One can do wrong without being evil, in other words, and vice versa. I think that's where the possibility enters that a person might have both imagination and empathy ... and even too much imagination, as Griffy says ... and yet choose to do wrong and to cause harm.

I was watching a movie last night that took place in France during the 1930s ... it was sort of a 'snapshot' of several people's lives and the choices they made to survive those times ... not committing terrible crimes, you know, but just ... endless compromises of the soul, sucking up to people they hated, dropping a dime on friends to make themselves appear loyal, hoping to get through the Vichy regime with their own meager fortunes intact. So it was close to the front of my mind that we all temporize, find justification for acts which, on reflection, are not upright. (It was Sméagol's birthday, after all.) And it doesn't have to be such a dire situation as the eve of war. It doesn't have to be outrageous greed, like the greed of Goldman Sachs. Ordinary greed, ordinary selfishness, ordinary fear are sufficient provocation for most of us to make bad choices.

I re-iterate that, in Morgoth, or Sauron, we are not dealing with ordinary evil.

Yeah, Tolkien is very much not post-modern in this respect. He allows the primary evil in his story to be an evil that is 'theological' rather than behavioral.

That's why Saruman is more interesting than Sauron, imo, because he is wicked, you know? He makes abominable choices to further his own ends, and we are shown (to some extent) the evolution of those choices in the text, ending with his final wages. Whereas Sauron (having been presented to us before Morgoth was presented to us) has to be accepted by the reader as inherently evil, evil without cause and evil beyond curing, with only a hint at the underlying cosmogeny that accounts for the appearance of such a being in the world.

Thus, countering the evil represented by Sauron is not presented to us as ... a career recommendation, you know? It is rather the ambient and other-wordly condition of the tale, the theological terms under which the story takes place and against which the virtues of the heroes are played out. No one takes on Sauron directly ... not just because he's too strong but because he's too other. Instead they wage the inner war against the resonance of what he represents within themselves.

But now that we have the Sil, we have a more behavioral treatment of Sauron.

... his unwillingness to meet strength with strength ... definitely suggests that he was absolutely capable of imagining -- and fearing -- defeat, long before he was brought down by Gil-Galad, Elendil, and Isildur.

I shall need to seriously consider cowardice. What a thoroughly despicable character Sauron is! At least Morgoth has the grandeur of a fallen angel ....

I am intrigued by this idea that Sauron secretly longs to assert himself, even while still under the dominion of Morgoth, and that the Ring secretly longs to be its own master.

I don't know whether I can agree that the Ring prompted Gollum to commit suicide ... I'm not sure that self-destruction is ever a thing willed by the sort of will to power we are contemplating here. But I don't find it entirely unthinkable either.

If Morgoth were permitted to return to within Arda, and came again to Middle Earth, what would Sauron's relationship be to him?

It is not difficult for me to imagine the inner conflict, the inner chaos, provoked in one who was long subservient, then free, and now faced with subservience again. It's quite an intriguing question, in my opinion, whether seeing all the works of one's self and one's former master destroyed would not be preferable to becoming subservient again. It is precisely the sort of quandry that would break the mind of the sort of character Tolkien has created in Sauron.

If the Ring is to Sauron as Sauron was to Morgoth (or has become so by now over the millennia of separation) is it too far-fetched to imagine a final act of wanton self-destruction, committed knowing that Sauron too and all of Barad-dûr are brought down by that act?

Admittedly Tolkien himself did not explore these avenues. I am not willing to say, though, that the story precludes their exploration.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

Here is some textual evidence that there is an evil in Third Age Middle-earth that seems beyond the consciousness of Sauron.

It is during the final temptation of Sam on Mount Doom when he conducts an inner dialogue. The dialogue concerns an invitation to nihilism and finishes when Sam rejects the voice.

'And I'll carry Mr. Frodo up myself, if it breaks my back and heart. So stop arguing!'
At that moment Sam felt a tremor in the ground beneath him and he heard or sensed a deep remote rumble as of thunder imprisoned under the earth. There was a brief red flame that flickered under the clouds and died away, The Mountain too slept uneasily.

'

Right from the first time I read that it has fascinated and puzzled me. It is clearly not happenstance. It is a mythological moment but does one lay it at Morgoth's door or merely to the malevolence of the genius locii as one does with Caradhras?

[vison]

Yeah, Tolkien is very much not post-modern in this respect. He allows the primary evil in his story to be an evil that is 'theological' rather than behavioral.

It is a stumbling block for me. I suppose that is mostly because I don't believe that there is a Force for Evil in the universe, or that Evil exists independently of human actions. So, in reading LOTR and The Sil, I tend to ignore it, and spend my energy on the actions of the characters: the choices they make.

"The Choices of Master Samwise" sums it up perfectly for me. However, I can and do accept that in Middle Earth there are Powers for Evil that I can't sidestep.

So, with Gollum, and The Ring. I tend to think that the Ring had a kind of sentience, that it was part of the Ring from the moment of its creation. Perhaps Sauron intended it as a kind of homing device ( ), but I think he may have poured more into the Ring than he meant, that by putting any of his power into it the mistake was irretrievable, since he unwittingly gave it "power" he had not intended?

There is a chemistry of Myth, where ordinary things, like a stick lying on the forest floor, or water that has been blessed, or a golden Ring, are imbued with power that in "the real world" does not exist: the atoms are realigned, with effects that might not work the way they were intended, the powers being "fell and fey" and beyond human or Sauron's control.

As for the Ring hurling itself, via Gollum, into the Fire, I think that's definitely possible. It would be like a fish, returning to spawn. It had no power to act without a finger to hold it - it had only urges, and instincts, and desire. Brought to the place of its creation, what else would it do? I don't think the Ring loved Sauron.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

There is a chemistry of Myth, where ordinary things, like a stick lying on the forest floor, or water that has been blessed, or a golden Ring, are imbued with power that in "the real world" does not exist: the atoms are realigned, with effects that might not work the way they were intended, the powers being "fell and fey" and beyond human or Sauron's control.

I like this.

[vison]

I was going to edit my post above to add this, but I'll just put it here:

I think "the real reason" Sauron made the Ring was as a kind of focus for his power, a magnifying glass of a kind, a means of concentrating his power. I don't think Sauron ever intended to "put" his power into the Ring, as in, let any power go from his physical being into the actual device, so that if the Ring was lost or taken from him his powers would be lessened, or that the new Ringbearer would obtain them.

But as I said above, magic rings are chancy things, the chemistry of evil magic is dangerous. Sauron was arrogant, cocksure, and (as has been asserted), he lacked imagination. He did not imagine or foretell that his little chemistry lab might produce unintended results.

To Sauron, and to the Ring, the long stretch of years between Isuldur and Aragorn are as NOTHING.

[axordil]

One could break down the theological evil of Morgoth and Sauron into personal evil easily enough. After all, with the possible exception of some psychopaths, I don't think anyone who does evil things would ever think of themselves as evil. Sometimes it's a matter of redefining terms, so that what one does is axiomatically good, and backfilling justification as needed. Sometimes it's rejecting the good/evil framework entirely, replacing it with strong and weak, or (as Saruman does) wise and foolish.

Saruman,as others have pointed out, is the more interesting villain, because we get to see, if not his fall, at least fresher evidence of it than Sauron's. Along these lines, Boromir is even more engaging as a character, as we can track his seduction page by page in FOTR. Both fall because of a combination of character flaw and the nearness of a proxy for Sauron: the palantír, the Ring. But while Saruman is actively corrupted, Boromir is the victim of his own pride and fear, reflected and amplified by the Ring.

The Ring reacts to a changing environment, certainly. But that's reflexive to its nature. It was made to dominate, and it will do so the best it can in any circumstance. But in order to be sentient, it would have to be alive, and I don't think that's a bridge JRRT could cross. I think of it still as a form of magical simulacrum of thought, a flexible mirror of one's own desires. That's one reason it has so much trouble getting to Frodo: his desires are never for himself Thus he can't be subverted, only overwhelmed, and only when he reaches the Sammath Naur.