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Not all that glitters is gold. Image of the ring in The Lord of the Rings.

What can the gold ring be associated with? What is it a symbol of? I’m sure, Dear Magpie, that when asked to answer, you’d give me beautiful stories of love, reveal romantic plans for the future or at least mused for a moment remembering the crazy – and in retrospect probably hardly responsible – “here and now, till death tears us apart”.

Let me subversively serve you a story that… is far from any positive connotations. Stay alert, dear Magpie. Here is the story of a cursed ornament full of dark demons, which you surely wouldn’t like to get as a present. I’m talking of course about the ring in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-1955) and its film adaptation (2001-2003).


Photo: Ewa Górnisiewicz

Golden affair

For the attempt to deface the noble idea of a ring Sauron (the main antagonist of the novel) is responsible and it is him I’m pointing at with my finger shouting loud “I accuse you!”… Let me quickly report why. Thousands of years before the actual events of the trilogy Sauron, the Dark Lord in Mordor, has created the One Ring to control the other rings belonging to elves (3 pieces), dwarf kings (7 pieces) and people (9 pieces). Having it, he aspired to conquer the whole Middle-earth. Luckily, he got „overpowered” by the elven and human Alliance in a great battle – the finger on which he was wearing his golden weapon was simply cut off (haha!).

Sauron lost his physical form and disappeared for thousands of years. The new owner of the ring was Isildur, as it turned out quickly a man of small imagination and weak will. Instead of destroying the ring in Mount Doom bowels, he decided to keep it for himself – unfortunately he was killed by filthy Orcs and the powerful gem disappeared in the River Anduin for two thousand years… It was fished out by some Déagol, a hominid from a tribe belonging to the Hobbit race. His buddy Sméagol though really fancied the golden trinket and when polite requests failed, he killed his friend in cold blood. Imagine that, Magpie! He hid in the Misty Mountains with his treasure and pupated into Gollum – indignant creature twisted by the hundreds of lonely years and destructive closeness of the ring. After some time Bilbo Baggins, a good Hobbit from Shire, happened to be in the same mountains and took over the ring. In the meantime Sauron managed to recover after the defeat as the fiery shred of his old self, settle back into his old estates in Mordor and attract a new crowd of obscene allies. He started to obsessively desire his beloved One Ring, which would allow him to fully recover and conquer the Middle-earth. Years have passed and the golden ring was inherited by Bilbo’s adopted relative – Frodo. The joy of the inheritance was not too great – friendly wizard Gandalf shed light on its grim history and the Hobbit realized the uncomfortable truth: the ring had to be DESTROYED…

Ring under scrutiny

The history of the ornament is – you have to admit, dear Magpie – of quite large caliber, full of complicated names, dates and designations half of which I wasn’t even able to list here. Let’s take a short break then, take the ring under scrutiny and look at it with our sharp eye. How does this cursed trinket look like? A powerful tool of evil should stand out somehow, right? Wrong! At the first glimpse the One Ring looks completely innocent and this is probably most subversive thing – it’s just a simple, massive golden ring like the one usually exchanged by the people entering matrimony. Don’t get fooled – the ring is cunning. It cheats its consequent owners by adjusting its size to them. It also has an engraved text which appears only in contact with fire. We will not see there any sweet sentiments, names or dates, which can be sometimes discovered on family jewelry. This is how the above mentioned Isildur described his first encounter with One Ring: “It was hot when I first took it, hot as a glede,(…) Yet even as I write it is cooled, and it seemeth to shrink, though it loseth neither its beauty nor its shape. Already the writing upon it, which at first was as clear as red flame, fadeth and is now only barely to be read. It is fashioned in an elven-script of Eregion, for they have no letters in Mordor for such subtle work; but the language is unknown to me. I deem it to be a tongue of the Black Land, since it is foul and uncouth. What evil it saith I do not know; but I trace here a copy of it, lest it fade beyond recall. (…) It is precious to me.” Thanks to Gandalf we know what the fiery inscription hides. The words in Mordor language taken from the poem known in elven tradition were engraved in their ancient alphabet and translated to Westron mean: One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Now all Magpies – even those most greedy for trinkets – should screech in one voice: „The ring needs to be destroyed!”. Gold is known as a precious metal but its durability depends on its fineness. As it turns out, nothing is what it seems in terms of One Ring. In Peter Jackson’s film it was nicely shown, that the ring couldn’t be destroyed with regular methods. Dwarf Gimli even tried to break it with his axe – without success. To really get rid of the cursed ornament one had to throw it in the fires of Orodruin, just where it was forged. Not to mention the proximity of Sauron’s sinister eye…

Toxic relationship

The journey to Mount Doom couldn’t have been easy. Both in the book and in the film adaptation a kind of wearer’s sick affection for the ring was shown. We know that Isildur withdrew from destroying it. Gollum with madness in his bulging eyes called it “his precious”. Bilbo, probably most impervious to the trinket’s influence, also repeated this word after him. Frodo didn’t want to hear about his friend’s offer to help him carry the burden. The ring, even though enviously protected in the clenched fists, vest pocket, envelope or worn on a chain, all the time deceived the current owner-usurper and was calling his true creator – it wanted to be found by him. It caused worrisome symptoms in its wearers: malice, cunningness, murderous instincts, introduced into a trance. Isildur felt it imposed thoughts and was as a staring eye. At the same time he gave a false impression of safety – wearing it on the finger made the owner invisible. But so what, if the poor man then became visible for his fiercest enemy and his demons?

Treasure… what kind of “treasure” is this? If one made a map of associations with One Ring it would certainly contain such words as burden, threat, traitor, tempter, destroyer and murderous weapon. And what about its symbolism? What is hidden in this literal/non-literal engraving? The shape of the ring can surely refer to the symbolism of the circle and the eye. Dictionary guru, Władysław Kopaliński, writes about an enchanted circle from folk tales which cannot be escaped without a proper spell. While the eye… Sauron’s eye was looking from Mordor for its loss, and we all know the sayings: be the apple of someone’s eye, eye in the sky, evil eye – slightly funny in the context of the history of the ring.

You can see, Dear Magpie – not all that glitters is gold, just like not every circle is perfect. The One Ring travelled through Middle-earth with its consequent owners like some kind of Cassandra’s pendulum – golden leitmotif bringing anxiety. It is amazing how much misery and despair such a small object could bring… Small, quite inconspicuous ring. Eventually they managed to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom. A lost ring… For spouses a nightmare, for Tolkien – a subversive happy ending. 

To Sroka ruda, gościnnie z Krakowa. Śmieszka, kulturoznawczyni i bibliotekarka z poważnymi dyplomami Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Wymyśliła dla siebie ulubiony typ turystyki – po księgarniach wielkich miast. Nieustannie poszukuje pięknie wydanych książek, godnych swoich pięknych treści. Dla Pica Pica pisze o biżuteryjnych zauroczeniach w literaturze i filmie. Uwaga: bardzo zdolny nerd w naszym stadzie!