The movie makes it seem that the Ring had enchanted him from the start. Is that different in the books? Is it just plain stubbornness that makes him keep it? It’s been awhile since I read it. Another question: do all the Rings of Sauron let you go invisible, or is it just the One? Is that invisibility why the Nazgul need cloaks-bc they’re “stuck” as invisible?
Only Sam gave it up exclusively due to his own will and he’d only had it for a hour or so. And even then, he needed a bit of help from Frodo demanding it back, otherwise he’d have kept it. Bilbo needed the help of a lot of Gandalf’s power to do so. We only get a hint of this in the book because the book is written from the standpoint of the hobbits, not Gandalf. Frodo did not give it up, but rather had it stolen.
The ability to give it up depends on the native power of the person. The more powerful, the bigger the draw and the more difficult. Isildur is a powerful being, Sam is much less so.
Makes sense, and also the reason why Sauron didn’t spend the skills and resources on making hobbit-rings – just not a big enough ROI.
Good point; in fact, his exile from his family and his disordered photophobia that led him to seek isolation underground may have been a blessing in disguise, because there’s no question he was using the Ring a fair bit before that:
Although I think that even using the Ring to capture and kill an occasional Orc in an underground tunnel counts as wielding its power.
Another confounding factor, of course, is the issue of the connection between the influence of the ring and the strength of Sauron himself. The rings of the Nine were initially under the full control of Sauron near the height of his power, so resistance would probably be pretty much useless. AFAICT Sauron was still pretty quiescent and weak when Gollum first got the One Ring, and presumably its evil influence was more diluted and sporadic. We see that when Sauron resumed his full might and was actively seeking the One, Frodo got extremely mentally beat up by it over the course of a couple months, much more so than Bilbo had been in half a century.
(Disclaimer about further compounding factors including impact of Morgul-knife wound and cognitive enlightenment in general. One of the nice touches about Tolkien’s ontology is that the more wise and well-informed you are, the more aware you are of evil and consequently the more strength evil has to ensnare your imagination and weaken your resistance. Otherwise, there would just be a huge plot hole around the question “Why doesn’t Gandalf or Galadriel or Elrond or some other super-good and super-powerful being just take the Ring and magic it into Mount Doom somehow?” Yeah, Sauron’s probably keeping an Eye on them yadda yadda, but I think a more profound essential reason is that the more capable a person is of wielding power well, the more vulnerable they are to the temptations of power.)
That was effectively touched on in the FotR movie with the Galadriel’s Mirror scene.
Tom Bombadil seemed wise and well-informed.
In many ways, but in others kind of oblivious? My imagined take on Bombadil is that he was a sort of failed experiment of the Creator(s) prior to creating other races (the “Eldest”): a being personally impervious to evil but also pretty lousy at directly combating it. Good-natured and kind and ready to help victims of evil who cross his path, but ultimately a “not my problem” kinda guy.
I agree that he gets described that way by folks who, IIRC, haven’t met him; but whenever we actually see him, he seems completely on the ball…
Well, we haven’t seen him doing anything much other than offering help and hospitality to some nice travellers within his own borders. What did he do in the Great War, Daddy? Jack-shit, AFAICT.
Fair enough, but: isn’t it that, after he helps them on his own initiative, he gives them a means for calling on him again if they need help again — which is what winds up happening, like he figured, and he unsurprisingly comes through for them again? It’s not just that he also equips them with stuff he figures will come in handy; he plans ahead, so he can personally help them out if when they wind up needing his help as expected.
And then they — don’t ask him for anything else, I guess? They think about doing it, and talk about doing it, and then they don’t bother.
And would it have done any good if they had, once they were heading east on the Road again? Nope: “Tom’s country ends here, he will not pass the borders.” He’ll look after travellers in the (shrinking) region of the Old Forest and Barrow-downs where he is “Master”, but he won’t go beyond it.
And AFAICT, he never did, not in the sense of united action. “When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless […]” But did he ever join in any of the wars against the Dark Powers, as the other peoples did through the ages? Not that I can see.
Which is why, in my headcanon (which I know is different from the actual textual history, in which Bombadil was essentially an alien element grafted into the story to represent Tolkien’s daughter’s doll), Tom Bombadil is ultimately a creative experiment that wasn’t successful enough to “go into production” as one of the “Peoples” of Middle-earth. He functions as kind of a genius loci, a protective spirit of a particular place, a sort-of-embodiment of territorial guardianship that can get married to a sort-of-embodiment of a natural feature of the territory (i.e., Goldberry the “daughter of the River”).
But he does not work well with others, in the sense of being able to combine disparate and divided elements in united and concerted action against evil. That was Gandalf’s mission, going up and down and back and forth to try to draw all the forces of good together to overthrow tyranny by altruistic cooperation as much as by mere sheer might. It’s no accident, IMHO, that Gandalf is the “Grey Pilgrim” while Bombadil is essentially sedentary. Admittedly, Tom’s locus in past ages was much wider than it is when we meet him, but that’s part of the problem: when evil advances, he doesn’t try to eradicate it, he just retreats from it and protects the innocent from it within his own bounds.
And territorial protection by a sedentary genius loci, however kindly, we are told wouldn’t be enough in the long run. “Could that power be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not. I think that in the end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First; and then Night will come.”
Certainly the Nine do:
They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun
My personal theory is that Hobbits are no more resistant to the Rings than any other race, from a physical perspective. They just resist putting them on better than others. Whether it’s their humble nature or something about their brains’ physiology.
I think there is evidence of that in the stories and other writings, but nothing definitive, so that’s why I just call it a personal theory.
What might have happened if a Sackville-Baggins had gotten the ring? They have Ambition, which is what the ring uses to really snare you.
Witch-Queen Lobelia sounds absolutely HORRIFYING.
Right, Ambition is the cornerstone of how Rings ensnare their users. But even a highly-ambitious hobbit, like a Sackville-Baggins, is nothing compared to the like of, say, Gandalf, or Galadriel. Or even Aragorn, Boromir, or Faramir, mortals like the hobbits.
Lobelia, the Dark Lady of the Spoons.
And with dark spells written in cruel eldritch runes, shall she lay her curse upon you: “Fiddlesticks!”