| Books-Commentary - J.R.R. Tolkien |
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If the Ring was so powerful, why didn't Bilbo and Frodo know about it?
We're told that because Bilbo and Frodo never "tried" to do anything else with the ring, that they didn't discover any of it's other powers. Also, because they were small hobbits of small ambitions, they didn't have the ability to.
But Bilbo and Frodo had and used the ring for DECADES. Is it really credible to believe that in all that time they never, either intentionally or accidently, discovered the ring could do other things? And as for their being too "small in stature" to wield the ring for other purposes, don't you think they were big enough to discover that it had at least some other purposes?
I mean, if the ring can do truly massive stuff, don't you think that Bilbo or Frodo, making an idle wish while the ring was on one day, could've accidently triggered something? Is the explanation we were given really credible?
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Bigger feet then Frodo
posts on 5/15/2005 5:12:10 PM
Frodo didn't really know what the Ring could do until Gandalf told him. Bilbo sort of was effeted by it. He didn't want to give it up, and he was ready to defy Gandalf about it. They didn't really know how powerful the Ring was, because they tried to keep it a secret, hidden from evil. You see, it all plays out.
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K1
posts on 5/15/2005 4:11:12 PM
The way I see it:
1) The ring can only do great things in the hands of the right people. Hobbits are not powerful enough to use the ring to it's full extent - unlike the Wizards or Sauron. All it makes hobbits do is vanish and of course, corrupt them over a period of time.
2) A bit of a guess here - Bilbo could use the ring freely in the Hobbit since at that time Sauron was still too weak to make a proper search of the ring, or know of the whereabouts of its wearer.
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Charlie Silent
posts on 3/18/2005 6:21:45 PM
Oh! Heres one. Maby Frodo and Bilbo were not supposed to know, or else the story would be different.
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alphonse
posts on 3/18/2005 5:13:56 PM
Hobbits were simple folk with no pretenses or worldly ambitions. They were pure of heart. It took much longer for them to be cosummed by the ring.The ring did corrupt gollum but only after an extended period of time. Men were much more easily corrupted by the ring.Gollum had the ring for hundreds of years under the mountain. A whole age of middle earth.
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