The effect of the Great Rings upon Men

[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.