The One Ring

What the Ring was

The One Ring was made to rule the other Rings of Power. Those Rings had been made by the Elven-smiths of Eregion with Sauron's teaching, and every one but the Three was touched by his craft. The One was forged so that whoever held it could see what was done by the lesser Rings, govern the minds of their wearers, and in the end bind them to a single will.^1,3

To give it that strength Sauron put into it a great part of his own native power. This is the key to the whole history. While the Ring existed, Sauron could not be wholly destroyed, even when his body was overthrown; and if it were ever unmade, he would be reduced to a spirit of malice too weak to rise again. Tolkien explained the bargain directly: the Ring held power that had been Sauron's own, and its loss was his ruin.^1,7,8

It was also his greatest weakness. A part of himself now lay outside himself, and could be taken. He seems never to have imagined that anyone who held it would want to destroy it rather than use it, which is why the West's whole strategy in the War of the Ring was to do the one thing he did not guard against.^9,8

The forging

Early in the Second Age Sauron came among the Elves in fair form, calling himself Annatar, the Lord of Gifts. Gil-galad and Elrond distrusted him, but the smiths of Eregion, led by Celebrimbor, grandson of Fëanor, welcomed his teaching. Around S.A. 1500 they began to forge the Rings of Power. Celebrimbor made the Three alone, around 1590, and Sauron never touched them.^1,2

Around 1600 Sauron forged the One in secret in the Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire in Orodruin, in the land of Mordor that he had chosen for his stronghold. In the same years he completed the Barad-dûr. But the moment he put the Ring on, the Elves perceived him and knew him for what he was, understood that they had been betrayed, and took their own Rings off.^1,2

Sauron demanded the Rings back and made war for them. Between 1693 and 1701 he overran Eriador, laid Eregion waste in 1697 and killed Celebrimbor, but the Three had been hidden and he never recovered them. He did seize the other sixteen. Nine he gave to kings of Men, who became the Nazgûl, first seen around 2251; seven he gave to the Dwarves, on whom they worked chiefly as a lust for gold.^2,1,10

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, / One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The words are written in the Black Speech that Sauron devised, but in Elvish letters: “The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor,” Gandalf tells Frodo. They appear only after the Ring has been heated in fire, as fine lines of fire on the cooled gold.^3,11

Isildur's Bane

Sauron kept the Ring through the downfall of Númenor, where he had been brought as a captive in 3262 and where he corrupted the king. When the island was drowned in 3319 his fair body perished with it, but his spirit returned to Mordor, and the Ring with it. In a letter of 1958 Tolkien remarked that one need not boggle at a spirit carrying off the One Ring, on which his power of dominating minds now largely depended.^12,2,13

Elendil and Gil-galad formed the Last Alliance against him. They won the battle of Dagorlad in 3434 and besieged the Barad-dûr for seven years. In 3441 Sauron came out himself and fought them on the slopes of Orodruin. Elendil and Gil-galad were both slain, and Isildur cut the Ring from Sauron's hand with the hilt-shard of his father's broken sword, Narsil.^2,1,9

Elrond and Círdan, who were there, urged Isildur to cast it into the fire nearby. He refused.⁹

This I will have as weregild for my father, and my brother.

Before going north Isildur wrote an account of the Ring that he left in Minas Tirith, where Gandalf found it more than three thousand years later. It records that the Ring was burning hot when he took it, that the fiery writing was fading, and that he would keep it.⁹

It was hot when I first took it, hot as a glede, and my hand was scorched, so that I doubt if ever again I shall be free of the pain of it.

It is precious to me, though I buy it with great pain.

In the second year of the Third Age, marching north to Arnor, Isildur's company was ambushed by Orcs near the Gladden Fields. He put on the Ring and escaped into the Anduin, but the Ring slipped from his finger in the river. When he came up out of the water the Orcs saw him and shot him dead. The shards of Narsil were saved by his squire and taken to Rivendell.^9,14,1

The long dark

The Ring lay in the mud of the Anduin for 2,461 years, while Sauron slowly rebuilt himself, the Nazgûl returned, and the North-kingdom of Arnor broke apart and fell to the Witch-king's realm of Angmar.⁵

About 2463 two river-folk of hobbit kind went fishing near the Gladden Fields. Déagol was dragged into the water by a fish and came up with the Ring. His friend Sméagol asked for it as a birthday present, and when Déagol refused, strangled him. Sméagol's later name for the Ring, his “birthday present”, comes from that day.^3,5

The Ring gave Sméagol exactly the use his character invited: he used it to find out secrets and steal, until his family drove him out. Around 2470 he crept under the Misty Mountains to hide from the sun. There, for nearly five hundred years, the Ring lengthened his life without renewing it, and he became the creature called Gollum.^3,5

In 2941 the Ring left him. Gandalf is precise about the agency: the Ring was not lost but abandoned its keeper, because it was trying to get back to its master and Gollum would never take it anywhere. It fell from his finger in a tunnel, and a few hours later Bilbo Baggins, lost in the dark, put his hand on it.^3,15

A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it.

It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.

Gandalf then adds the sentence on which the theology of the book turns: that something other than Sauron was also at work, and that Bilbo was “meant” to find it.³

Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker.

Bilbo, then Frodo

Bilbo won his way out of Gollum's cave invisible, and used the Ring through the rest of his adventure in The Hobbit: against the spiders of Mirkwood, to free the Dwarves from the Elvenking's halls, and to steal into Smaug's lair.^15,18,19

He did not tell the truth about how he got it. His first account, given to the Dwarves and later written in his memoir, was that Gollum had promised it to him as a prize for winning the riddle-game. Gandalf eventually forced the true story out of him and was troubled: a falsehood was unlike Bilbo, and it suggested the Ring had begun working on its keeper at once.^20,3

Bilbo kept it for sixty years and barely aged. At his eleventy-first birthday party on 22 September 3001 he vanished with it on, as a joke, and then found that giving it up was nearly beyond him. He called it “my precious”, as Gollum had, and Gandalf had to face him down before he would leave it in an envelope for Frodo. He was, as Gandalf stressed later, almost the only one ever to give it up of his own accord.^16,3

I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.

For the next seventeen years Gandalf hunted for the truth. He found Isildur's scroll in the archives of Minas Tirith in 3017, and questioned Gollum, whom Aragorn had caught in the Dead Marshes. In April 3018 he came back to Bag End and threw Frodo's ring into the fire. When it came out, cool, the fiery letters stood on it, and he knew.^3,9,5

What the Ring does

Its most visible effect, making a mortal wearer invisible, is almost incidental. Wearing it also dims the wearer's sight of the ordinary world and sharpens hearing; Sam notices both when he wears it in Cirith Ungol. More dangerously, it opens the wearer to the unseen world where the Nazgûl and Sauron can perceive them. On Weathertop the Black Riders become visible to Frodo the moment he puts it on, and on Amon Hen he feels the Eye searching for him.^4,21,22

It stretches life without adding to it. A mortal who keeps it does not die but “merely continues”, and one who uses it often fades: in the end he becomes permanently invisible and passes under the dominion of the power that rules the Rings, which is how kings became Ringwraiths.³

It cannot be harmed by ordinary means. Gandalf tells Frodo that no smith's hammer or ordinary fire could damage it, not even the fire of a dragon, which had destroyed some of the Seven. Only the fire it was made in could unmake it.³

It can change its size, slipping off or tightening at a treacherous moment, and it seems to act: it slips onto Frodo's finger when he falls in the Prancing Pony, at the worst moment, in front of a room full of strangers.^3,23

Above all, it tempts each person through what is best in them. It offers the strong the power to do good by force, and the more powerful the bearer, the greater the power and the greater the corruption. That is why the Wise refuse it. Galadriel tells Frodo that before he could use its power he would need to grow far stronger and train his will to dominate others.^3,24,25

Its weight grows as it nears its maker. In Mordor Frodo feels it as a physical burden and sees a wheel of fire in his mind; on the last slopes of Orodruin he can no longer walk, and Sam carries him.^26,17

Who was offered it, and what they saw

Gandalf was offered it by Frodo at Bag End and recoiled. He names exactly how it would take him: through his pity, by the desire to use strength to do good.³

Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good.

Tom Bombadil put it on and did not vanish, made it disappear and reappear like a conjuring trick, and could see Frodo when Frodo wore it. The Ring had no power over him. At the Council of Elrond, Gandalf judged that this was exactly why he could not be trusted with it: he would not understand the need, and would soon forget it or throw it away.^27,9

Boromir wanted to use it to save Gondor, and on Amon Hen tried to take it by force. Frodo escaped by putting it on, and Boromir came to his senses in grief; he died defending Merry and Pippin.^22,28

Galadriel was offered it freely in Lórien, and described aloud the queen she would become, beautiful and terrible, loved and despaired of. Then she let the vision go.²⁴

I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.

Faramir learned what Frodo carried when Sam let it slip. Before he knew what it was he had vowed that he would not take it even if he found it lying by the highway, and he held to his word.²⁹

Sam took it from Frodo when he thought him dead, and in Mordor it offered him a vision of himself as Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, turning the land into a garden. His plain hobbit sense saved him.^4,30

The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm.

The Crack of Doom

The Council of Elrond rejected every alternative. It could not be hidden, sent over the Sea, or given to Bombadil; it could only be unmade in Orodruin. Frodo offered to take it, and left Rivendell with the Fellowship on 25 December 3018.^9,31,6

He carried it through Moria and Lórien, broke with the Fellowship at Amon Hen on 26 February 3019, and with Sam and Gollum crossed the Dead Marshes, passed Minas Morgul and climbed into Mordor by the pass of Cirith Ungol, where Shelob stung him on 13 March. Sam took the Ring that night and returned it when he rescued Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol the next day.^6,4,30

While Aragorn led the armies of the West to the Black Gate to hold Sauron's eye, Frodo and Sam crossed Gorgoroth and climbed Orodruin. In the Sammath Naur, at the brink, Frodo failed.^8,17

I have come. But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!

He put it on. Sauron at once became aware of him and of his own folly, and the Nazgûl turned for the mountain. But Gollum, who had followed them, attacked the invisible Frodo, bit off his finger with the Ring on it, and in his joy danced too near the edge and fell into the fire with it.¹⁷

The Ring was destroyed on 25 March 3019. The Barad-dûr collapsed, the Nazgûl caught in the air were burned, and before the army at the Black Gate a vast shadow of Sauron rose and was blown away by the wind. In Gondor the new year was afterwards counted from that day.^17,32,33

Tolkien insisted that Frodo's failure was not a moral one. At the place of the Ring's making its pressure was at its height, and no one, he wrote, could have been expected to resist it. What saved the Quest was the mercy that Bilbo and Frodo had both shown Gollum.²⁵

I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure.

With the One gone, the power of the Three faded too, as Elrond had said it would. Their keepers, Elrond, Galadriel and Gandalf, sailed from the Grey Havens two years later, taking Bilbo and Frodo with them.^9,34

How Tolkien made it

In the first edition of The Hobbit (1937) the ring was simply a magic ring that made its wearer invisible, and Gollum offered it as the prize in the riddle-game. When Tolkien began the sequel at the end of 1937 the ring was still Bilbo's useful trinket; the early drafts show him deciding, within the first chapters, that it was the Necromancer's ring and the key to the new story.^35,36

To make the earlier book agree with the new one, Tolkien rewrote “Riddles in the Dark” for the second edition of 1951, so that Gollum, possessed by the Ring, never intends to give it away. Inside the story he explained the discrepancy by making the first version Bilbo's lie.^15,20

Readers have long compared the Ring with Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Tolkien dismissed the comparison in a single sentence, though critics have argued since about how much the two share.³⁷

Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.

Timeline

1. S.A. c. 1500The smiths of Eregion, taught by Sauron, begin forging the Rings of Power.²
2. S.A. c. 1590Celebrimbor completes the Three.²
3. S.A. c. 1600Sauron forges the One in Orodruin. The Elves perceive him and take off their Rings.^2,1
4. S.A. 1693–1701The War of the Elves and Sauron. Eregion is destroyed and Celebrimbor slain (1697).²
5. S.A. 3262–3319Sauron, a captive in Númenor, corrupts it. The island is drowned; he returns to Mordor with the Ring.^2,12
6. S.A. 3441Sauron is overthrown on Orodruin. Isildur takes the Ring.²
7. T.A. 2Isildur is killed at the Gladden Fields. The Ring is lost in the Anduin.^5,14
8. T.A. c. 2463Déagol finds the Ring. Sméagol murders him for it.⁵
9. T.A. c. 2470Sméagol hides under the Misty Mountains.⁵
10. T.A. 2941Bilbo finds the Ring in Gollum's cave.⁵
11. T.A. 3001Bilbo's farewell party. The Ring passes to Frodo.⁵
12. T.A. 3017Gandalf finds Isildur's scroll in Minas Tirith; Aragorn captures Gollum.⁵
13. T.A. 3018, AprilGandalf tests the Ring in Frodo's fire at Bag End.^3,6
14. T.A. 3018, 23 Sept.Frodo leaves Bag End.⁶
15. T.A. 3018, 25 Oct.The Council of Elrond.⁶
16. T.A. 3019, 13–14 Mar.Sam bears the Ring after Shelob's attack, then returns it to Frodo.⁶
17. T.A. 3019, 25 Mar.The Ring is destroyed in the Crack of Doom.⁶

Names

Questions readers ask

Why didn't the Eagles fly the Ring to Mount Doom?

The books never raise the question, so any answer is inference. What is on record is Tolkien's own view of the Eagles as a narrative device: he called them a dangerous “machine” that he had used sparingly, and he refused to let a film script use them as transport.³⁹

Interpretation Readers who answer it from inside the story usually point to what the text does say: Sauron's watch over Mordor, the Nazgûl on winged steeds, the Ring's pull on anyone who carries it, and the Council's choice of secrecy over strength.^9,8

Could anyone have destroyed it willingly?

Tolkien thought not. In his long letter of 1963 he wrote that at the Crack of Doom the Ring's pressure reached its maximum, and that he did not think anyone could have resisted it. He saw the ending as grace: a reward for the pity shown to Gollum, not a test that Frodo failed.²⁵

Why didn't the Ring affect Tom Bombadil?

The text shows that it did not, and Gandalf says only that the Ring has no power over him because he is his own master. Tolkien said Bombadil was meant to be an enigma, and declined to explain him.^27,9,40

What would have happened if Gandalf or Galadriel had taken it?

Both say so in the story: they would have overthrown Sauron and become a new Dark Lord, all the worse for having begun with good intentions. Tolkien elaborated the point in his letters, imagining a Gandalf who made himself a tyrant of righteousness.^3,24,25

On screen

Where the best-known adaptation departs from the books. Nothing in this section is evidence for the books themselves.

In Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring Frodo leaves the Shire soon after Bilbo's party. In the book seventeen years pass in between, while Gandalf searches for proof.^41,3

The film shows Isildur taking the Ring and Gollum murdering Déagol as on-screen prologues. In the book both are told at second hand, by Elrond and Gandalf, and Isildur's own words survive in his scroll and in Elrond's memory of them.^42,3,9

Sources

Citations name the chapter rather than the page, so they work in any edition. The colour of each note shows what kind of source it is.

• Published story The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as Tolkien published them.
• Appendices Tolkien's own appendices to The Lord of the Rings.
• Edited posthumously The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and Tolkien's late writings on the Elder Days, assembled by Christopher Tolkien from his father's papers.
• Tolkien's letters Tolkien explaining his own work. Authoritative on intent, but private and sometimes provisional.
• Drafts Earlier versions Tolkien changed or abandoned. Evidence of how the story grew, not of what is true in it.
• Adaptation Films and other adaptations. Never evidence for the books.

1. Edited posthumously The Silmarillion, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”
2. Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, “The Second Age”
3. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, ch. 2, “The Shadow of the Past”
4. Published story The Two Towers, Book IV, ch. 10, “The Choices of Master Samwise”
5. Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, “The Third Age”
6. Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, “The Great Years”
7. Tolkien's letters Letter 131, to Milton Waldman (c. 1951)
8. Published story The Return of the King, Book V, ch. 9, “The Last Debate”
9. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, ch. 2, “The Council of Elrond”
10. Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, III, “Durin's Folk”
11. Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F, I, “The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age”
12. Edited posthumously The Silmarillion, “Akallabêth”
13. Tolkien's letters Letter 211, to Rhona Beare (1958)
14. Edited posthumously Unfinished Tales, Part Three, I, “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields”
15. Published story The Hobbit, ch. 5, “Riddles in the Dark”
16. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, ch. 1, “A Long-expected Party”
17. Published story The Return of the King, Book VI, ch. 3, “Mount Doom”
18. Published story The Hobbit, ch. 8, “Flies and Spiders”
19. Published story The Hobbit, ch. 12, “Inside Information”
20. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Prologue, 4, “Of the Finding of the Ring”
21. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, ch. 11, “A Knife in the Dark”
22. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, ch. 10, “The Breaking of the Fellowship”
23. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, ch. 9, “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”
24. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, ch. 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”
25. Tolkien's letters Letter 246, to Eileen Elgar (1963)
26. Published story The Return of the King, Book VI, ch. 2, “The Land of Shadow”
27. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book I, ch. 7, “In the House of Tom Bombadil”
28. Published story The Two Towers, Book III, ch. 1, “The Departure of Boromir”
29. Published story The Two Towers, Book IV, ch. 5, “The Window on the West”
30. Published story The Return of the King, Book VI, ch. 1, “The Tower of Cirith Ungol”
31. Published story The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, ch. 3, “The Ring Goes South”
32. Published story The Return of the King, Book VI, ch. 4, “The Field of Cormallen”
33. Appendices The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D, “Calendars”
34. Published story The Return of the King, Book VI, ch. 9, “The Grey Havens”
35. Drafts The Hobbit, first edition (1937), ch. 5, “Riddles in the Dark”
36. Drafts The Return of the Shadow (The History of Middle-earth, vol. 6), the early drafts of “The Shadow of the Past”
37. Tolkien's letters Letter 229, to Allen & Unwin (1961)
38. Edited posthumously The Silmarillion, Appendix, “Elements in Quenya and Sindarin Names”
39. Tolkien's letters Letter 210, to Forrest J. Ackerman (1958)
40. Tolkien's letters Letter 144, to Naomi Mitchison (1954)
41. Adaptation Peter Jackson's film trilogy (2001–2003), The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
42. Adaptation Peter Jackson's film trilogy (2001–2003), The Fellowship of the Ring (2001); The Return of the King (2003)