ooooohhh, I wish I knew how to wield the powers of this board--how someone can get quotes from more than one person inside their replies is beyond me at this point.
anyway ...
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Thanks dininziliel and Willie, for the feeback. But I think our posts are coming from different angles. We'll simply never know how the Ring works, try as we might. This is why I was taking another tack, trying just to figure out who specifically did something quantifiable, and how did that manifest and relate to others involved. Guessing at a charcters emotions and levels of denial and even specific desires is just that, guessing.
It's especially difficult when some people don't know what the word ignorant means. Which, by ironic definition, would make them ignorant. Unless, of course, they are suffering through a case of denial and as such refuse better counsel or to simply open a dictionary.
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How the Ring/evil works is an infinite question. Quantifying the actions of Gollum & Boromir in order to relate those actions to others is certainly a question requiring thoughtful analysis, but it's not quite as much fun nor are the results as useful to the mind, heart, and spirit as exploring the nature of evil as manifested in the Ring. The best questions are those with no final right/wrong answers. LOTR & Silmarillion are nothing if not explorations of the infinite (in whatever form you choose to categorize it).
No, we may never
know the answers, but what we discover along the way and the connections we make with others on that path may be of more value than answers to quantifiable questions.
What was called "guessing" is "exploration" to me. And, yes, these terms are a bit juxatposed.
And, I think we know what "ignorant" means. It was defined a few posts back quite adequately. I think (but do not
know) [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] that
exploringthe role of ignorance in LOTR makes a terrific topic--especially when the context is that of evil as embodied by the Ring.
Bilbo and Gollum certainly did not know (were ignorant) that the Ring was evil/a creation of Sauron when they found/saw it. Nor did they seem aware of its evil as time passed. Only Bilbo awoke to that fact after the incident at Rivendell w/Frodo (book and movie). We must assume Gollum had passed that particular threshold of awareness long before Bilbo found (and took, albeit peacefully in contrast to Boromir's attempt) the Ring. However, in this context, the interesting thing is that Gollum had a window of opportunity to choose again when Frodo's pity and kindness entered Gollum's awareness. Gollum's ignorance of the
experience of kindness caused him to deny that call to Love, and he chose to return to darkness.
And then there's Frodo, who started the Quest full of
information about the Ring, but ignorant of the
experience. I suggest that it was his experience that enabled him to have pity/empathy for Gollum which proved to be all that was necessary for Iluvatar's ultimate will to triumph. (Recall Iluvatar's statement to Morgoth in Silmarillion that nothing Morgoth could do or conceive of could ultimately thwart Iluvatar's design? Frodo's solo failure atop Mt. Doom and subsequent success via his connection to both Sam & Gollum are absolutely wonderful illustrations of how Love/God/Iluvatar work--those "mysterious wonders to perform." Okay, so that's another aspect of ignorance.
Bear with me, I know this is long and getting longer ...
Now, for your good, popular notion of old-fashioned ignorance, Boromir is your man. [img]smilies/cool.gif[/img] He definitely obtained information about the Ring during the Council of Elrond from among the wisest sources around. Yet, despite this informational knowledge, he still attempted to take the Ring and was even moved to violence to get it.
What do Boromir and Gollum have in common and how do they compare/contrast from the rest of the characters?
Well, one can count and correlate acts of violence, the number of times someone uses a certain word or phrase, and other measurable variables in connection to the Ring, but I suspect one will come up with interesting statistics and averages but no real conclusions, only conjectures (aka "guesses"). Why? Because Tolkien did not write a traditional mystery story nor a gigantic archaeological account.
He may have begun creating a world to support his languages, but when he finished he had illustrated the greatest questions, issues, elements of human experience using a fairy story/myth.
Okay, I'm done with my own thoughts. Here are some brief excerpts using the index heading "effects of the Ring upon the bearer" from
The Letters of JRR Tolkien, HarperCollins, publ. 1995: Letter 131, p. 154:
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...so great was the Ring's power of lust, that anyone who used it became mastered by it; it was beyond the strength of any will [even Sauron's] to injure it ... or neglect it.
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(And, please don't misinterpret "lust" in its popular, biblical sense--follow the advice of a previous member and go see Mr. Webster first.)
Letter #153, p. 191:
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Suffering and experience (and possibly the Ring itself) gave Frodo insight ...
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(I swear I had not read that before writing the body of this post above.)
Letter #131 again, p. 160:
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...the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, (and so also inevitably by lies) ...
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Peace to your hearts! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
[ February 12, 2003: Message edited by: Fain Clawmirth ]