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Old 06-20-2015, 12:57 PM   #1
Mithadan
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Ring The effect of the Great Rings upon Men

A tip of the hat to posts by Belegorn, Faramir Jones and Inziladun at the end of the Longevity of Hobbits thread for inspiring this thread.

The Great Rings, the One and the Nine, greatly extend the lives of their Mannish wearers, perhaps indefinitely (and I am aware that an argument exists that the Nazgul did not wear the Nine any longer by the time of LoTR, but rather they were held by Sauron). I cannot include the effect of the Seven upon the Dwarves as there does not appear to be any discussion of this. The Nazgul "lived" thousands of years. Gollum lived for hundreds of years. Gollum's life was clearly linked to the Ring. Its death was his. If it had survived, might Gollum have lived indefinitely? We do not know.

However, death is the Gift of Eru to Men. Their feär seek beyond the boundaries of Arda. I recall from somewhere that the Gift could not be withheld even by the Valar. Yet the Great Rings seem to do so. Your thoughts?
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Old 06-20-2015, 01:24 PM   #2
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Originally Posted by Mithadan View Post
However, death is the Gift of Eru to Men. Their feär seek beyond the boundaries of Arda. I recall from somewhere that the Gift could not be withheld even by the Valar. Yet the Great Rings seem to do so. Your thoughts?
I recall that quote, too. Yet, we see Morgoth exerting power on Húrin when the latter is captured and imprisoned.
Húrin was placed atop Thangorodrim and, according to Unfinished Tales at least, was not allowed to move or die, until Morgoth chose to release him. I guess it might be argued that Morgoth was just bluffing there, but it does seem that Húrin's biological processes were arrested at that time, as he could hardly eat, drink, or, ahem, perform other organic functions while "bound" by Morgoth's power.

I think it could have been in the power of certain divine spirits to affect the longevity of mortals in that way, at least temporarily. I would think though that there would have to be a point that the fea of the victim would be so weakened and stretched as to be forced to depart, apart from the body's condition.
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Last edited by Inziladun; 06-20-2015 at 01:49 PM. Reason: corrected typo
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Old 06-20-2015, 09:40 PM   #3
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It seems significant to me that even if their bodies' natural processes do not wear out and the bearers of Rings do not age, they can still be killed, as demonstrated by Eowyn killing the Witch-King.

This seems pretty comparable with the "immortality" of the Elves.
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Old 06-20-2015, 09:41 PM   #4
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I think it's also possible that the "withholding of death" is not permanent in these cases, but rather a temporary delay. I think of these ringbearers as not completely immortal, but rather infinitely stretched - part of their fea wanting to seek the gift, and the other part being held in place by some attachment, thereby stretching it (like butter spread too thin, as one of these lovely people described it ). One main aspect of this is that while death/biological processes are delayed, they are not stopped. It's almost like one life is stretched over the time of many, so that ageing slows down, but also the "intensity" of life weakens. Like you can only live so much, have only such a concentrated fea, that when life is stretched it can't be saturated across all it's length. Hurin's case is notably different from the others, but I want to point out right away that he went from Thangorodrim as an old man. Morgoth may have forced onto him a supernatural strength to survive without basic needs, but this was a physiological kind of interaction. Morgoth just kept his body in sufficient condition to hold his fea (which was still young enough not to die by itself... you know what I mean!); he did not interfere with the spirit. I don't know what would have happened had he not lifted his curse - and I'm not a great fan of the realm of the would-haves; I'll just stick to what there is. The ringbearers, on the other hand, are described more like their entire lives and fear are stretched, not just some survivalist ability. I think that's part of why tge ringwraiths aren't really alive - because part of their fear are already dead, and only the very remainder that is held by the hook holds on. Once the hook is removed, they would die. So it's like a very long but temporary delay of death.

Another thing is that if a Ring was given to a dying person, I don't think it would prevent their death - like Mithadan says. Once the Gift is given... well, only Beren came back, and even then only death can pay for life, as GOT fans would say. Instead, the Rings seem to stretch the middle part of life, such that the time for the gift does not arrive for a possibly infinite amount of time. And there is all the stretching again, where what should have been a more concentrated 1 year of life becomes a significantly more dilute larger number.

Hopefully I'm making sense with this. I'm trying to keep my thoughts apart, but the points are so intertwined that it's hard to keep them as separate ideas.
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Old 06-21-2015, 12:08 AM   #5
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It might be worth considering the case of the Men of Duharrow also. Evidently the shades of dead men could linger long after their time, although in this case I'm not sure how long the society of the living Men of Dunharrow persisted before they entirely died out and were replaced by the spectres of the dead.

It seems to me that it was beyond the power of the Ainur to force the souls and bodies of mortals to stay united indefinitely, but the effect of the Rings seems to have circumvented this (albeit with obvious and severe side effects) by instead indefinitely extending the period of time in which the body and soul existed.

ie even the Ainur did not have the power to cause a mortal to "grow or obtain more life" beyond their span, but in Eä it was possible to, if you'll pardon the horrible sci-fi-ish-ness of the term, "warp" time in such a way that it produced "counterfeit immortality" at the price of corruption and great suffering on the part of the subject. This seems to be a different thing to directly counteracting the Gift of Men.

This seems to have been the normal state of affairs in places like Valinor where, in a sense, time passed and yet did not pass.
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Old 06-21-2015, 05:15 AM   #6
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This seems to go in line with the overarching concept that no one, but Eru, can create.

Melkor desired the ability to do so, but found that he could only take Eru's creations and warp them: elves & orcs, eagles & fell beasts, ents & trolls. I get the impression that the immortality of the ringbearers is Sauron's (and Melkor's by proxy, I suppose) attempt at warping lifespans.
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Old 06-22-2015, 03:17 AM   #7
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Originally Posted by Andsigil View Post
This seems to go in line with the overarching concept that no one, but Eru, can create.

Melkor desired the ability to do so, but found that he could only take Eru's creations and warp them: elves & orcs, eagles & fell beasts, ents & trolls. I get the impression that the immortality of the ringbearers is Sauron's (and Melkor's by proxy, I suppose) attempt at warping lifespans.

I would say that the Rings were never intended for mortals. They were originally made to corrupt the Elves, and the life-stretching was probably tied to the Elves’ desire to preserve things. One has to remember that the Rings were not solely designed by Sauron. Elves such as Celebrimbor were also involved.

Once Sauron had taken back as many of the Rings as he could, only then did he consider the possible effect of such Rings on mortals...
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