The effect of the Great Rings upon Men

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

To me, the implication is that the Great Rings eventually turn a Man into a naked spirit. The hroä (body) becomes separated from the feä and the body dies leaving only the spirit which, through the power of the Rings, can still manipulate and be partially present in the physical world. Gollum and Bilbo possessed the Ring for a long time. They were partway through this "conversion". So perhaps it is not a question of their life span being extended, but rather that they had undergone a fundamental change in their nature.

The spirits even of the Nazgûl though were apparently still connected with physical bodies, and those bodies did occupy the world of the Seen as well as the Unseen. If that was not so, horses could not support them, nor could the "disguises" in the form of cloaks and hoods they wore in the Shire, have covered them.
As long as the Ringwraiths' spirits were subjugated to Sauron's, they had basically become extensions of his own fea, and thus would endure unless he reached a point he was too weak to maintain his hold.

That seems to make sense to me, anyway.

[Mithadan]

The Ringwraiths did not have bodies. Per Gandalf, their cloaks are real and gave "shape to their nothingness." When the flood of the Bruinen washed them away and several lost their cloaks, Gandalf mentions that they would have to make their way back to Mordor empty and shapeless.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Mithadan

The Ringwraiths did not have bodies. Per Gandalf, their cloaks are real and gave "shape to their nothingness." When the flood of the Bruinen washed them away and several lost their cloaks, Gandalf mentions that they would have to make their way back to Mordor empty and shapeless.

Gandalf could simply have been referring to the visible forms, imparted by the clothing. I still don't see how ordinary horses would support an insubstantial being.

[Firefoot]

I think I side with Inziladun on this one... I have no reason to think that the Nazgul were telekinetic, so they must have had some way of interacting with their horses, swords, etc. They can also smell and see (though poorly) which require sensory organs. Additionally,

Merry's sword had stabbed him from behind, shearing through the black mantle, and passing up beneath the hauberk had pierced the sinew behind his mighty knee.

Incorporeal spirits don't have sinews. However, their bodies also seem to be insubstantial and barely held together, since as soon as Merry stabs him, the "mantle and hauberk were empty." So maybe a little bit of both?

Gandalf also supposes that Frodo might become "like a glass filled with a clear light," which also sounds like a visible and insubstantial but still physically real form.

It seems to me that the use of the Rings is extremely damaging to the hroa but it doesn't seem to me that it becomes wholly separated from the fea.

On the other hand, I'm not familiar with the later volumes of HoME or Tolkien's Letters, so everything Mithadan posted from those sources is new to me.

[jallanite]

On the matter of the effect of a Ring’ of Power on Dwarves, Tolkien himself speaks in “Appendix A”, III DURIN’S FOLK, page 1076 in current printings (emphasis mine):

The only power over them [the Dwarves] that the Rings wielded was to inflame them with a greed of gold and precious things, so that if they lacked them all other good things seemed profitless, and they were filled with wrath and desire for vengeance on all who deprived them. But they were made from their beginnings of a kind to resist most steadfastly domination. Though they could be slain or broken, they could not be reduced to shadows enslaved to another will; and for the same reason their lives were not affected by any Ring, to live either longer or shorter because of it.

Originally Posted by Mithadan

One of the things I enjoy most about Tolkien is that his mythos is internally consistent. There are, even if they are speculative, solutions to resolve any apparent contradictions.

Only if you are very picky about what you count as “solutions to resolve any apparent contradictions”, which is unfair.

The 50th anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings, also published in paperback, contains on pages xvi to xvii a “Note on the 50ᵗʰ Anniversary Edition” by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull on their fixing of various errors in the text. Most of the changes are minor typographical corrections(?). They have been very conservative in their editing and every change has been approved by Christopher Tolkien. They note on page xvii:

Most of the demonstrable errors noted by Christopher Tolkien in The History of Middle-earth also have been corrected, such as the distance from the Brandywine Bridge to the Ferry (ten miles rather than twenty) and the number of Merry’s ponies (five rather than six). But those inconsistencies of content, such as Gimli’s famous (and erroneous) statement in Book III, Chapter 7, ‘Till now I have hewn naught but wood since I have left Moria’, which would require rewriting to emend rather than simple correction, remain unchanged.

All the emendations are listed with short explanations in “Changes to the Editions of 2004–5” published on pages 783–912 of Hammond and Scull’s The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion.

There are other contradictions not fixed as requiring too much rewriting.

For example, in the chapter “The Shadow of the Past” Tolkien has Gandalf explain:

A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but 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. He needed all my help, too.

Yet we later learn that at that time Gandalf has been secretly bearing a Ring of Power for close to two thousand years, a Ring given him freely by Círdan its keeper. Either Tolkien intends Gandalf to be uniquely lying, has accidentally typed “A Ring of Power” instead of something like “One of Sauron’s Rings”, intends the reader to understand that Gandalf has made a slip of the tongue, or perhaps had not yet invented the idea that Gandalf was secretly bearing an Elvish Ring of Power freely given to him by Círdan its keeper.

I can bring up other contradictions within The Lord of the Rings and still more in The Hobbit and between The Lord of the Rings and the published Silmarillion if you wish.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by jallanite

There are other contradictions not fixed as requiring too much rewriting.

For example, in the chapter “The Shadow of the Past” Tolkien has Gandalf explain:

A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but 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. He needed all my help, too.

Yet we later learn that at that time Gandalf has been secretly bearing a Ring of Power for close to two thousand years, a Ring given him freely by Círdan its keeper. Either Tolkien intends Gandalf to be uniquely lying, has accidentally typed “A Ring of Power” instead of something like “One of Sauron’s Rings”, intends the reader to understand that Gandalf has made a slip of the tongue, or perhaps had not yet invented the idea that Gandalf was secretly bearing an Elvish Ring of Power freely given to him by Círdan its keeper.

I can bring up other contradictions within The Lord of the Rings and still more in The Hobbit and between The Lord of the Rings and the published Silmarillion if you wish.

Gandalf does not offer a contradiction; he evidently offers everything Frodo needs to know about a Ring of Power, particularly the One he carries, without revealing where the 3 Elvish rings are.

Frodo will not know that Gandalf or Elrond hold Rings of Power until after the One Ring is destroyed (obviously, it has been predetermined that not even Frodo should have such information). Frodo will not know Galadriel has a Ring of Power until she herself reveals it to him in Lothlorien.

In any case, the three Elvish Rings of Power do not have the same issues as the Sauronic Rings of Power: the Elvish rings can be gifted freely and without resultant psychological/addictive problems, and they are held indefinitely by Elrond, Gandalf and Galadriel because, unlike the Sauronic Rings wanting to escape to their master (Sauron) and having the taint of the Dark Lord upon them, the Elvish Rings were created separately and for very different motives.

Obvious enough, to me at least.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

"... he [Gandalf] evidently offers everything Frodo needs to know about a Ring of Power, particularly the One he carries, without revealing where the 3 Elvish rings are."

I have argued similarly with respect to invisibility. Gandalf suggests to Frodo that the Great Rings confer invisibility, but in a letter Tolkien says that the Three (very arguably included among the "great" rings) do not confer invisibility. In other words, I have argued that the exception of the Three runs counter to what Gandalf wants Frodo to absorb about the Rings of Power -- since Frodo's ring does confer invisibility.

And I think it is natural enough in speech to leave out digressions that might only confuse, or do not illustrate the intended point at hand (especially if also a warning in some measure), even if what one is saying is technically "false" due to some silent exception.


I would say the same of Aragorn's Sauron comment. Since it is usually true that Sauron does not permit the name "Sauron" to be spoken, and since the point is made that the S-rune cannot be for Sauron, Aragorn need not speak to every possible exception (what about someone essentially speaking for Sauron as messenger, like the Mouth of Someone), unless he is merely spooning out information.

Although inconsistency with something in a letter is not, in my opinion, a true contradiction in any case, your post made me thing of the invisibility factor too, with respect to the Three.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

In any case, the three Elvish Rings of Power do not have the same issues as the Sauronic Rings of Power: the Elvish rings can be gifted freely and without resultant psychological/addictive problems, and they are held indefinitely by Elrond, Gandalf and Galadriel because, unlike the Sauronic Rings wanting to escape to their master (Sauron) and having the taint of the Dark Lord upon them, the Elvish Rings were created separately and for very different motives.

Agreed. Although the Three, being at least partially the product of Sauron's instruction, were subject to the One, they are clearly not in the same mold as the Seven and the Nine. The lack of invisibility of their wearers is a major indication of this.
I wouldn't think a mortal who had run across one of the Three would have been affected in the same way, either. The effect may have been similar to that seen by the Fellowship while in Lórien. They were not immortal, but for them biologically speaking, time slowed.

Back to the subject of the life-lengthening process of the other Rings, the fact that the Seven did not influence the Dwarven lifespan has always interested me. Because of their very nature they could not be turned to wraiths either. Did the Dwarven keepers become invisible while wearing their rings? I would think not, because the invisibility, life-lengthening, and wraith-potential all seem intertwined.