Inspired to reread LOTR after seeing the most recent movie, I borrowed The Hobbit from my sister so I could start from the very beginning. Great book, of course, but I wonder how Tolkien tied in the use of the ring with Sauron’s hunt for it in the later books.
Simply put, Bilbo uses the ring a lot. And as Sauron was traipsing about dressed up as the Necromancer, why didn’t he notice it? Judging from the one map of Middle Earth I’ve seen, Dol Guldur isn’t that far from the Misty Mountains, Mirkwood, or Esgolath. Now I do remember that Gandalf and the White Council were fighting the Necromancer after Gandalf left the party at Mirkwood, but that was a while after Bilbo found the ring. As powerful as Sauron was, wouldn’t he have noticed Bilbo’s use of the ring? And why wasn’t the ring drawing Bilbo towards Dol Guldur?
I do know the real world explanation, but I’m curious as to how this fits in with the rest of the books.
Well, it seems that in JRRT’s writings, putting on the ring was not the equivalent of sending out an SOS directly to Sauron. Sauron had no idea at all where the ring went at that time, and while bending his mind to find it, was scanning the whole world. He also was taking thought to how to conquer the world if he didn’t get it back, which at the time seemed a possible scenario.
Also it seemed that the connection between ring-wearer and Sauron became stronger as the ring-wearer fell more and more under the ring’s evil influence. Note that Sam actually wore the ring at Cirith Ungol, right at the gates of Mordor under Sauron’s nose, but that didn’t set alarm bells ringing, as His eye was turned elsewhere, and Sam was quite resistant to the ring’s blandishments.
It was my understanding that during that time frame, Sauron was still gathering strength. He HAD had his butt kicked fairly recently, as things go in Middle Earth.
And Gandalf didn’t know it was the One Ring, as was rather dramatically shown in the first movie. Admittedly, he was suspicious, but didn’t act on it quickly – he had no reason to. It’s also noted that the White Council’s expert on Rings and Sauron was a chap named Saruman, who even at that point might have been getting a little flaky on the subject, and providing misleading information.
While the Ring did want to be found, it had yet to really awaken. Sauron’s power was still scattered, and the Ring had yet to really know that its fell master was up and around yet. I mean, why else would it have spent 500 years in a cave with Gollum?
You have to understand that Tolkien had not yet conceived of LOTR when he wrote The Hobbit. It was many years after The Hobbit was published that Tolkien decided to write a sequel which evolved into LOTR. When he wrote The Hobbit Tolkien did not intend for the ring to have any more special significance than as a useful device to turn Bilbo invisible. When he began LOTR, he seized on the ring as the central idea for his trilogy. He does make some small attempt in Fellowship to retroactively insert some of the ring’s significance into the Hobbit (Bilbo’s lying, Gollum’s obsession) but he did not have this significance in mind when he wrote his first novel.
As long as we’re asking questions about LOTR I may as well save a thread and ask it in here.
In Two Towers (the film) Gandolph and the Balrog are shown plummeting down that bottomless crevasse to eventually land in the water. Later, they are shown battling on top of a stone temple or battlement of some kind on top of a mountain. Am I right thinking that it’s to imply that the battle had a lot of aspects that we’re never to know, or was it a mistake? I seem to remember that book only made casual reference to Gandolph defeating the Balrog.
They fell into the lake (or was a lake ever mentioned?) where the Balrog’s flame was extinguished, battled all the way up through the mountain to the top where his flame was rekindled, and then Gandalf beat him (or they kind of beat each other a la Superman/Doomsday) as far as I remember.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read anything about this so Qadgop may well be around shortly to correct me :).
In the book The Two Towers, Gandalf describes the battle. It includes a description of plummeting into an icy lake, which put out the Balrog’s fire, making him a slimy, strangling creature. Then struggling up the Endless Stair to the top of Caradhras, where The Balrog burst anew into flame, and was cast down by Gandalf, who then fell over dead, and his spirit went back to Valinor.
EE “Doc” Qadgop has it ore correct. The movie cut oddly from the plunging into the icy water (the cavern in the movie was much larger than I had pictured it in the book. The book describes how Gandalf kept right on the heels of his foe so that he could find the way out as the balrog tried to escape from him. Keep in mind that Gandalf still had the sword in the book and the balrog only had his whip, and may not have had as much of a size advantage. Gandalf would have been lost for millenia without his fleeing foe to lead him out. They ascend an endless spiraling staircase (Durin’s stair) to the summit. I’m hoping that the extended version fills in some of the choppiness.
I hope so, too. I could swear in the teasers, there was a glimpse of B & G plunging into a large body of water – much closer than that distant shot of the cavern. Maybe it was one of those last-minute edits PJ was doing.