Gandalf’s Possible Inaccuracy in the chapter “The Shadow of the Past”

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Morthoron’s attempt at explanation I do not understand at all. He asks:

So why would Gandalf confuse Frodo with provisos, quid pro quos, caveat emptors and various other Latin phrases that may or may not have anything to do with what Gandalf was talking about and what he needed to impress upon Frodo so that the Hobbit could achieve his mission?

Gandalf doesn’t do this and no-one, certainly not me, thinks he should.

At the risk of putting words into another poster's mouth: pretty sure he means Gandalf was giving Frodo a simplified version, leaving out unnecessary details- cf WCH's last post.

I believe this will do as an in-story explanation, if one is needed (though I am also inclined to agree it's really an oversight on the part of Tolkien).

[Alcuin]

For my two bits on this – FWIW, that is –

I’m inclined to agree with a number of points:

• Hammond and Scull’s assertion,

  …its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care – and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing and really done it. – This is true of the One Ring, but not of all Rings of Power, of which Gandalf seems to be speaking generally. Celebrimbor gave away the Three Rings. Círdan gave his Ring to Gandalf, Gil-galad (when dying) gave his to Elrond, and Thrór gave his Ring to Thráin.

• “[T]he Three are not ultimately comparable in most ways with Rings of Power as Gandalf meant in the context of his conversation with Frodo.” (Inziladun).
  
• “all the ‘Rings of Power’ were forged based on some sort of design contrived by Sauron and that Sauron himself had a hand in the forging of the One and all the others, except the Three which Celebrimbor himself made. Even though Sauron had no hand in the forging of the Three it still had his imprint in design. I think therefore all of the other Rings, like the One, would have the same or similar effects on mortals, excluding the Dwarves. The Three, however, not so much but they were linked to the One based on their design so that they could all in some manner control the bearers through Sauron wielding the One.” (Belegorn).
  
  That sounds remarkably like a “back door” or “Trojan” computer malware, doesn’t it?
  .
• “Thrór was able to pass on his Ring because he was a Dwarf and not a Man” (Zigûr).
  
• “Gandalf was hyperbolizing” (Kuruharan).
  
  C.f., in the 2005 edition of Reader’s Companion, for p 499 regarding Treebeard as “eldest”, Hammond and Scull quote “Christopher Tolkien’s comment that his father was given to ‘rhetorical superlatives’, such as ‘the oldest living thing’”.
  JRR Tolkien was indeed given to ‘rhetorical superlatives’; we should not be surprised if Gandalf was, too.
  
• “Gandalf was giving Frodo a simplified version, leaving out unnecessary details” (Nerwen).

I’ll add a few other points, just to feed fuel to the fire.

• The Dwarves claimed Celebrimbor gave the greatest of the Seven to his friend Durin III. Later the Elves doubted it; but I’ll bet it’s true. Celebrimbor knew he was in trouble and needed to hide the Rings: he wisely sent the Three out of Eregion altogether. Perhaps because he gave the best of the Seven to Durin, Sauron was inspired to give the other six to Dwarves as well; and then the Nine to Men, who proved easier to ensnare.
• I think Gandalf was attempting to impress upon Frodo the power of a Great Ring, especially upon Mortals and in particular upon Hobbits: that Bilbo could give it up, albeit with a mighty big assist from Gandalf, who acted in this case as ἄγγελος, or angel, to overcome the power of the One Ring, something that perhaps Bilbo on his own could not do. In this regard, Tolkien wrote to Michael Straight, editor of New Republic in Letter 181,

  [Gandalf's] function as a “wizard” is an angelos or messenger from the Valar or Rulers: to assist the rational creatures of Middle-earth to resist Sauron, a power too great for them unaided.

  You are of course free to believe that Bilbo gave up the One Ring entirely upon his own or only with the assistance of Gandalf; I am inclined to believe it was only with the assistance of Gandalf. Frodo was later unable to give it up; Sam Gamgee did surrender it, willingly, to Frodo: but this was due in large part, I think, to his loyalty to Frodo, and to his simplicity of spirit: In that simplicity of spirit, he saw through the deceptions of the Ring when it tempted him to become “Samwise the Strong”, a test Boromir failed without ever wearing the Ring, a test with which Galadriel struggled even after millennia of contemplation and introspection.
• The Rings were never meant for Mortals in the first place. The Noldor of Eregion were trying to hold back the effects of time. Mortals turned invisible when they wore the Rings; I argue there is no reason to believe Elves did, but every good reason to believe they did not.
  • Tolkien himself tells us the Seven did not render Dwarves invisible or give them longer lives.
  • The Three certainly did not convey invisibility: Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel were all visible, and we know Galadriel was wearing Nenya at the Mirror of Galadriel.
  • The Elves wanted to stop the process of fading, whereby their bodies (hröar) were consumed by their spirits (fëar). If the Noldor were trying to prevent fading, why in blue blazes would they invent a device to make them invisible? The two goals are contradictory, at cross-purposes with one another.
  • However, Sauron’s methods apparently entailed some sort of necromancy. (He was, after all, The Necromancer.) If the Noldor under Sauron’s tutelage used necromantic techniques to accomplish their goals, then the Rings were drawing on the power of the Unseen, but in a most unwholesome way (excepting the Three).
    
    Men, though, including Hobbits, might be easily overwhelmed, and instead of “tapping” into the power of the Unseen, move altogether into the Other Side, which they perceived as a wraith-world because they entered it by means of necromancy.

Gandalf must explain all this quickly and decisively to Frodo, keeping in mind that his goal from the start is to convince him, above all, do not put on the Ring. Bear in mind also that he cannot say, “O, by the way, I have Narya, one of the Three, and here are some Ring-bearer tips you should know…” No, no! he’s going to scare the pants off Frodo! A little after telling him, “It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it,” Frodo blurts out, “O Gandalf, best of friends, what am I to do?” Frodo is panicked! “You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?” And Gandalf can not take the Ring: it’s too dangerous for him. We would say, Frodo doesn’t know how to “turn it on”: he isn’t powerful enough to use it; for Gandalf, it’s a deadly trap. Poor old Frodo has the Radioactive Potato.

Finally, Frodo says, “…I must keep the Ring and guard it, at least for the present, whatever it may do to me.” This is exactly what Gandalf wants! And the wizard replies, “Whatever it may do, it will be slow, slow to evil, if you keep it with that purpose.”

So he didn’t give Frodo all the details. All the better. Ever read a contract? An End User License Agreement? “The party of the first will accede to the party of the second, except at the aforementioned times and in those places enumerated in Addendum C-2…” Frodo didn’t need the details. He needed to know that he was, in effect, living with the nuclear football hanging around his neck, and it had a (fortunately slightly defective) homing device.

[Zigûr]

Good thoughts.

I find this assertion of Hammond and Scull to be curious, however:

Gil-galad (when dying) gave his to Elrond

Isn't this incorrect? In Unfinished Tales, in "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn", it states of the first Council in the Second Age, after the War of the Elves and Sauron, that "At that time also Gil-galad gave Vilya, the Blue Ring, to Elrond". He appears to have given Vilya to Elrond when he was hale and hearty, well before they departed for Mordor - one thousand, seven hundred and thirty three years before the Battle of Dagorlad in fact, more than half the length of the entire Second Age.

In my head I generally imagined that Elrond left Vilya behind in Imladris when he accompanied Gil-galad to Mordor, and I similarly imagined that Círdan did the same with Narya. It seems like bringing any of the Three to Mordor, even (of course) unworn, would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do.

[Gothmog, LoB]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Good thoughts.

I find this assertion of Hammond and Scull to be curious, however:

Isn't this incorrect? In Unfinished Tales, in "The History of Galadriel and Celeborn", it states of the first Council in the Second Age, after the War of the Elves and Sauron, that "At that time also Gil-galad gave Vilya, the Blue Ring, to Elrond". He appears to have given Vilya to Elrond when he was hale and hearty, well before they departed for Mordor - one thousand, seven hundred and thirty three years before the Battle of Dagorlad in fact, more than half the length of the entire Second Age.

In my head I generally imagined that Elrond left Vilya behind in Imladris when he accompanied Gil-galad to Mordor, and I similarly imagined that Círdan did the same with Narya. It seems like bringing any of the Three to Mordor, even (of course) unworn, would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do.

I think there are conflicting accounts when exactly Gil-galad gave Vilya and Narya to Elrond and Círdan, respectively, but nothing suggests Elrond only received Vilya from a dying Gil-galad. But I don't recall right the exact discrepancy, but if I'm not mistaken then it is between 'Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn' and 'Of the Rings of Power'.

In fact, the assumption that Gil-galad (or Elrond, Círdan, and Galadriel - if she was with the army) would have taken any of the Three into Mordor during the war against Sauron doesn't make any sense. If they had lost the war or been captured Sauron could have gained possession of the Rings, not to mention that it is by no means certain that Sauron while wearing the One could not have detected or felt the presence of the Three this close by. Perhaps he might even have been able to read the minds of the guardians of the Three while they had them in their pockets.

After all, the One Ring also has an effect on Frodo even before he puts it on his finger for the first time (it slows his aging process just as it did with Bilbo before). Granted, the Three weren't made by Sauron, but they were still under the dominion of the One.

One assumes Gil-galad, Galadriel, Círdan, and Elrond hid the Three somewhere in their abodes and never took them out until Sauron was overthrown and the One taken from him. And even then it might have taken quite some time until Elrond and Galadriel finally gave into temptation and actually tested what they could achieve with Nenya and Vilya.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Alcuin

The Rings were never meant for Mortals in the first place.

This begs the question of why did they make so many and who were the original intended recipients.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Gothmog, LoB

If they had lost the war or been captured Sauron could have gained possession of the Rings

My thoughts exactly. We can't imagine they brought them with them to use them, because at the time Sauron still had the One, so they couldn't use them. If any of them had, as you say, been captured, or if they had been killed and their body not recovered, Sauron would have gained one of the very things they had fought a bloody war earlier in the Age to keep from him.

In any event, I don't believe we ever hear of Gil-galad or Elendil having time to say or do anything as they died; I always got the impression both were killed very quickly, and we know that Gil-galad was burnt alive (I always imagine something like the way Harry "accidentally" kills Quirrel in Philosopher's Stone) by the hand of Sauron, so if he made any noise, he was probably screaming

Thus I personally see Vilya being left at Imladris, and Narya at Mithlond; given that they discussed similar ideas at the Council of Elrond we might imagine there being something like a backup plan, so that those who stayed behind would take the Rings over the Sea in the event that the Alliance lost the war.

As an aside, it strikes me as potentially (but not necessarily) inconsistent that Sauron's spirit was capable of carrying off the One during the drowning of Númenor, but could not do so from Mordor at the end of the Second Age. Why wasn't Isildur grabbing at it out of the air as it slipped off Sauron's severed finger and floated away into the East? Presumably Sauron could no longer achieve feats like this, having expended so much power in creating another body for himself after the last one was drowned.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

As an aside, it strikes me as potentially (but not necessarily) inconsistent that Sauron's spirit was capable of carrying off the One during the drowning of Númenor, but could not do so from Mordor at the end of the Second Age. Why wasn't Isildur grabbing at it out of the air as it slipped off Sauron's severed finger and floated away into the East? Presumably Sauron could no longer achieve feats like this, having expended so much power in creating another body for himself after the last one was drowned.

I don't find that inconsistent at all. I think you have provided a rational explanation.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

As an aside, it strikes me as potentially (but not necessarily) inconsistent that Sauron's spirit was capable of carrying off the One during the drowning of Númenor, but could not do so from Mordor at the end of the Second Age. Why wasn't Isildur grabbing at it out of the air as it slipped off Sauron's severed finger and floated away into the East? Presumably Sauron could no longer achieve feats like this, having expended so much power in creating another body for himself after the last one was drowned.

I see in those two examples a fundamental difference in what was happening to Sauron.

At Númenor, Sauron's physical form was unexpectedly destroyed by the force of the waters inundating the island. His fea was completely intact.

After fighting off Elendil and Gil-galad, and robbed of the Ring by Isildur, his hold not only on his corporeal body but also his very spirit was sudden;y weakened. The shock alone could have rendered him incapable of doing anything to regain the Ring.

[Gothmog, LoB]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

As an aside, it strikes me as potentially (but not necessarily) inconsistent that Sauron's spirit was capable of carrying off the One during the drowning of Númenor, but could not do so from Mordor at the end of the Second Age. Why wasn't Isildur grabbing at it out of the air as it slipped off Sauron's severed finger and floated away into the East? Presumably Sauron could no longer achieve feats like this, having expended so much power in creating another body for himself after the last one was drowned.

That is actually easily resolved. Sauron didn't take the One with him to Númenor in the first place. Both The Akallabêth and Of the Rings of Power tell us that Sauron took up the One again after he had returned to Barad-dûr. If he had brought the Ring with him in spirit form he would have had no need to take it up again unless we infer against the text that he put it down for some time, doing other spirit things in spirit form before beginning his work to restore his body.

There are two important reasons why Sauron might have deliberately chosen to keep the One hidden in Barad-dur, protected by the Nazgûl and his armies (who might not have known that the Ring was back there):

1. He wanted to appear humble and defeated in the eyes of Ar-Pharazôn. The One, as a Ring of Power, enhanced his power both in appearance (Sauron would appear more powerful etc. than he might actually be, just as Galadriel did when Nenya's light concentrated on her) and in actuality (however that worked exactly). But Sauron did not want to appear terrible and powerful, he wanted to win the trust of the King and Númenor and corrupt and ruin him.

2. He might have feared that the Númenóreans would actually take the Ring from him and use it against him. His armies were terrified by the might and splendor of Ar-Pharazôn, after all, and he was at the peak of his power and wearing the Ring at that time. One can but wonder what Pharazôn could have done or become had he taken the Ring from Sauron. And he could have done that, there is no doubt about that. Keep in mind that Sauron never feared that anybody would destroy the Ring, but it is never stated that he never feared to lose the Ring to a superior enemy and thus be usurped and replaced by a new Dark Lord who takes everything from him. He certainly might have feared that Ar-Pharazôn would attempt to do that.
Sauron leaving the instrument and symbol of his power and rule over Middle-earth - his crown if you will - back at Barad-dûr would also symbolize that he only temporarily abandoned his seat. He would come back eventually as he did. And the Nazgûl most certainly were completely under his thumb by then. They could not have taken the One for themselves in any case, and they would have guarded it against any mortal lieutenant of Sauron's who might have entertained such notions (had any such known that Sauron had left the Ring behind).
We also have to keep in mind that Númenóreans must have known about the existence of the Rings of Power. Three Nazgûl were Númenóreans after all, and if some of them were of the line of Elros (which is not unlikely in my opinion) then they would have known even more about them.

There is a letter (or a draft of a letter) in which Tolkien talks about Sauron's spirit bringing the One back from the abyss that took Númenor but you can see while reading that letter that he begins to wonder how that would have worked. My guess is the lines in The Akallabêth and Of the Rings of Power talking about him taking the One up again might have been inspired by such ideas.

Of course, if you want to insist that Sauron must have taken the Ring to Númenor then one could speculate that Sauron's body being destroyed by some natural disaster isn't *metaphysically* or *legally* the same as him being overthrown by living enemies (and there is some truth to that). Gil-galad/Elendil and subsequently Isildur had a certain right to the Ring because it was taken from him in combat, and that could indeed explain why Sauron's spirit was unable to snatch the Ring from his own body or out of Isildur's hand.

But then, being crushed by Ilúvatar himself (or by the Valar being granted greater power by Ilúvatar) should have had an even more devastating effect on Sauron so ... this is tricky.

Anyway, I'm firmly in the camp of those who believe that the Ring never was in Númenor in the first place.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Gothmog, LoB

We also have to keep in mind that Númenóreans must have known about the existence of the Rings of Power. Three Nazgûl were Númenóreans after all, and if some of them were of the line of Elros (which is not unlikely in my opinion) then they would have known even more about them.

In Letter 211, however, Professor Tolkien does state that "I do not think Ar-Pharazôn knew anything about the One Ring. The Elves kept the matter of the Rings very secret, as long as they could. In any case Ar-Pharazôn was not in communication with them."
Of course this is the same letter in which Professor Tolkien states that Sauron had the Ring with him in Númenor, so I suppose, if you dismiss that idea, the idea that Pharazôn was ignorant of the Ring can be dismissed as well, but that borders upon dismissing too much in my opinion. In any event the Ring could have been easily hidden when he was taken prisoner, and would have looked like a piece of ordinary jewellery in any event.

I don't have a problem with Sauron having the Ring in Númenor but I do find the image of his spirit carrying it off back to Middle-earth with him rather silly.

[Galin]

The H&S reference is probably (I'm guessing) based on Appendix B:

"Gil-galad before he died gave his ring to Elrond; Cirdan later surrendered his to Mithrandir." The Tale of Years, The Third Age

Granted I would agree that "before he died" doesn't necessarily mean when dying, but in any case, as far as my canon goes, however one interprets this, it is author published description versus posthumously published description in Unfinished Tales.

Can't think of anything else at the moment, although from the Council of Elrond we know Elrond could have been present at Gil-galad's death (near enough).

Anyway, I'm just wondering too