The Addictive Ring

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Pervinca Took

As for blaming Sauron or not, I think the Ring was somehow hardwired to defend and preserve itself at any cost, including driving mad and immobilising anyone who tried to carry it to its destruction. Not that Sauron thought anyone would every try to destroy it.

It's an interesting thought. I wonder if, when he made it, Sauron ever envisaged the possibility that at some point it might be possessed by anyone other than himself?

I've always felt like there is depicted as being something rather spontaneous about the effect that the Ring has on its possessors. What I mean is, I always felt as if it engendered possessiveness and mistrust in its possessors because that was simply in the nature of such an object, even if its owner, such as Gollum or Bilbo, was not aware of it. The Ring is depicted as evil, I would argue, because its purpose is intrinsically malevolent: to dominate the minds and wills of other rational beings. And because that is depicted as such a great evil in Professor Tolkien's work, it causes other evils as well; it brings out various evils in others because it is very fundamentally evil in a manner from which other evils derive.

I'm not sure if what I'm saying is a bit redundant but that is how I tend to perceive the Ring's evil: that its own innate evil also brings out other forms of evil in those who possess it: not through design or the workings of Sauron's spirit (isn't it essentially a mindless object?), but simply through its ("unnatural") nature.