Quote:
Originally Posted by SonofUgluk
why when Bilbo wears the ring , does he not enter the 'wraith world' and have his sight and sound etc affected like frodo & sam do when they wear it ?
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The real (external) answer is pretty simple but not so satisfying.
When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, the ring was simply a device for helping Bilbo through his adventures - interesting and fun, but not particularly diabolical.
When he started writing LOTR, he selected the ring as a connecting link and source of the crisis to be faced. In so doing, the ring became much more powerful and intrusive (on the wearer) becoming "The Ring" (capitalized), the ONE Ring of power.
Tolkien rewrote the Riddles chapter of the Hobbit explaining that the earlier version (in which Gollum offered Bilbo the ring as the prize for winning the contest) was Bilbo's "lie" (in an attempt to legitimize his possession of the ring). Gandalf referred to this in Shadow of the Past "clearly the ring had an unwholesome power that set to work on its wearer immediately".
However, he never rewrote the description of wearing the ring from Bilbo's POV (point of view) so we are left with Bilbo apparently having clear sight when wearing the ring - - - AND we are left with speculative attempts to explain the difference within the framework of the story.
Of course, we "could" always assume that Bilbo really DID have wraith-world vision but just decided to omit such from his memoirs. Maybe he just figured it was no big deal - or maybe he thought people would think less of him if he admitted to being so affected by the ring?