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Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man
But doesn't it therefore follow from that that Celebrimbor and the Mírdain sinned against Eru's law in making the Three Elven Rings?
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Clearly it was a 'sin' from Tolkien's point of view:
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'But the Elves are not wholly good or in the right. Not so much because they had flirted with Sauron; as because with or without his assistance they were 'embalmers'. They wanted to have their cake & eat it; to live in the mortal historical Middle Earth because they had become fond of it (& because they there had the advantages of a superior caste) & so tried to stop its change & history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce, even largely a desert where they could be artists, & they were burdened with sadness & nostalgic regret''
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They had 'flirted with Sauron' in the making of the rings, but their essential 'sin' was their desire to 'embalm' the world - which is what lead them to fall for Sauron's offer of aid.
Whether the Three were used for 'good' is a matter of opinion - I feel their use was rather a necessary evil. They were used to fight Sauron, but in the wrong way - principally by 'freezing' chunks of M-e into stasis. Of course, that was really the only way they could be used & they were the only weapons the Elves had to hand (or at least the most powerful).
Saruman had clearly adopted an 'Elvish' mindset at first & its easy to see that he could have been drawn to try & create a ring of his own originally not to emulate Sauron, but rather the Elven Lords. In other words he was probably driven at first by the desire to create another 'Elven' ring in order to strengthen the power of the opposition to Sauron. Unfortunately, his mindset moves from the Elven (desire to 'preserve') to the Sauronian (desire to rule).
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Originally Posted by Ninja91
A very interesting topic you bring up. Certainly, if the ring was very powerful and/or destructive, Tolkien would have made a much larger deal about it, and it probably would have been described more. But Tolkien did not just write that for kicks...
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Yet Tolkien was perfectly capable of introducing objects simply for the sake of the plot & then simply forgetting all about them - the Book of Mazarbul for instance. 'Saruman ring-maker' just sounds evocative.....