LotR -- Book 6 - Chapter 2 - The Land of Shadow

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

Certainly the Ring's actions can be taken to imply it has a conscious will, but I'm not sure there is one action it performs that can be said to prove that. What exactly was its 'program'? Changing its size doesn't prove it was conscious in any way, only that it could change size. Of course, 'absence of evidence isn't evidence of abscence' & the fact that one cannot find unequivical proof of its consciousness doesn't actually prove it isn't conscious. On the other hand there's Occam's Razor: there's no necessity for the Ring to be conscious - ie we don't require that hypothesis

The Ring is conscious, the Ring isn't conscious. It's both, and neither. That's in terms of finding concrete evidence in the text in any case. Characters seem to speak of the Ring having a 'will' or a 'mind' but events don't necessarily bear this out.

What I think is happening is that Tolkien chose to build in to the text an object which would appear all the more powerful for being enigmatic. That some characters believe the Ring has a 'will' suggests this is the general accepted view in Middle-earth that it has a 'will'; the Ring has an evil reputation. But just how far, if at all, does it have 'will'? Is this simply the fear of the characters? Is it them attempting to express the ineffable? The latter could be true - Gandalf seems to fail to find words to adequately convey to Frodo what the exact peril is, so has to express this in terms of anthropomorphising the Ring. As an approach, its not wrong; people are terrified of this thing.

I actually don't want to know whether the Ring is one or the other, as it's far more fascinating it being this engima, and besides, it's fun to argue the possibilities.