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It's very flat, two dimensional, black and white. Sure, the ring represents power and the whole story shows how absolute power corrupts absolutely, listing off examples like Saruman, Gollum and Boromir.
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I'm sorry, Magician, but his is a hypocritical statement. You can not claim that the lines of good and evil are clearly defined, because ther are several examples of 'shades of grey' , mostly in Smeagol/Gollum. The movies
only show him as two different entities, in the book he is just struggling with his addiction to the Ring and its effects on his phsyche, thus giving him an entire spectrum, not just black and white.
In fact, the whole 'magic ring' concept is just a metaphor for the numerous corruptions we as humans face in our lives. There are examples of this throught the book, with a multitude of characters: Gandalf and Galdriel both knew that if they took the ring, they would have been corrupted absolutely, like you said. But Boromir succumbed to the Ring's lure
even though he was a good person at heart , which, in my opinion, Tolkien went to great lenghts to describe to the reader.
Frodo is another story. He carries the burden of the Ring through innumerable perils, but when it comes time to rid himself of it, he chooses not to. Gollum is what saves the Free Peoples of Middle Earth from certain descruction, even though he did it without thought for anything but himself.
The Lord of the Rings is not a two-dimensional story, and I think this should be proven to you by the amount and lenght of the replies you have gotten.
On a lighter note, thank you for starting such an interesting topic!