Why did the One Ring get heavier as it approached 🌋Mordor?

[Rivendell_librarian]

Did the Ring in some way sense that Frodo and Sam intended to destroy it in Mt. Doom? While approaching Mordor it was getting nearer to Sauron. That would be a reason for the Ring getting lighter not heavier, I would think. How intelligent was the Ring?

 

[Ent]

Zounds, my dear @Rivendell_librarian. Such deep and (dare I say) speculative questions.

Ent will chime in with his thoughts...
1. The Ring wanted to get back to its master. It would be making known to its bearer it was a "burden too heavy for them." Also, by becoming a heavy burden, it would increase the likelihood the bearer might make a mistake, or (as Frodo would eventually have) collapse under the weight in a place where it might be found by someone else, to move along on its journey.

2. The Ring was probably also exerting itself, because yes, it was aware in some way Frodo's intent was not its own.

3. The Ring needed 'a master' - and Frodo had not yet claimed it as his own.

4. I tend to feel getting closer to Sauron would indeed make the ring a heavier burden for anyone else, rather than a lighter one. "All Sauron's thought" was bent on locating it, which would add weight to its 'desire' to return to its master as well.

5. I don't think the Ring was 'intelligent' as we think of intelligence. It was just 'singularly purposed.' This is why it would take a bearer of 'great strength' to 'wrest it from its master.' As such, the ring had no innate intelligence at all. (I believe somewhere Tolkien has spoken to this, but I can't recall where, and do not have time, sadly, to go search it out.)

6. I believe this is also why Sauron had no problem sending the Ringwraiths to get the ring for him. We can rest assured he would not send anyone to take possession of the ring, who would be strong enough to actually wrest it from him..! The Ringwraiths had no such power. (which should also tell us something about whether their leader could actually have bested Gandalf. There were few who were considered possibly strong enough to actually control it and take it from Sauron. He was one of them. As the Ringwraiths could not have, we don't have to wonder about an actual contest between Gandalf and any of them...though all of them at once may have been a bit dicey.)

There. An Ent's perspective.
Feel free to support, enhance, decry, undermine, or shred at will.

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

So can we take it that the Ring in some way knew that Frodo wasn't taking it to Sauron?

Here's the Ring Sauron - all I want in return is to keep the Shire safe and have fully stocked larders at Bag End and a good supply of books and writing materials. Oh and regular visits from Gandalf with fireworks.

Frodo doesn't think that way of course.

 

[TrackerOrc]

I've always thought of the ring in a much more simplistic way.
It's a part of Sauron which is always trying to get back to Sauron.
I don't think of it as an 'intelligent' being in any human sense.
It's almost like a mechanical/magnetic entity using anything and everything to get back home; and not always successfully - it abandons Isildur and spends forever on a riverbed, it gets found by one of the riverfolk and spends hundreds of years under a mountain.
And I don't think it physically gets heavier as it gets nearer to Mordor, more that the 'burden' on the ringbearer grows more and more; 'burden' being one of those words that Tolkien uses which can be an endless source of debate and interpretation.

 

[Erestor Arcamen]

Why are things so heavy in Mordor? Is there a problem with Middle Earth's gravitational pull?

In all seriousness, I assumed as it was getting closer to its origin/birth place. It was so close to Sauron and wanted to get back to him. So it was becoming unbearable to Frodo; too heavy, an extreme burden.

 

[Elthir]

Why are things so heavy in Mordor? Is there a problem with Middle Earth's gravitational pull?

LOL!

And hey, all anyone had to do was bring a cat.

 

[Radaghast]

It wasn't physically getting heavier. It as a psychological thing and, yes, the Ring was trying to prevent its destruction, and it almost succeeded.

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

Yes I think we only read that Frodo thought it was getting heavier - though it did have a habit of slipping off a finger by getting bigger:

Bilbo knew no more than he told you, I am sure,’ said Gandalf. ‘He would certainly never have passed on to you anything that he thought would be a danger, even though I promised to look after you. He thought the ring was very beautiful, and very useful at need; and if anything was wrong or queer, it was himself. He said that it was “growing on his mind”, and he was always worrying about it; but he did not suspect that the ring itself was to blame. Though he had found out that the thing needed looking after; it did not seem always of the same size or weight; it shrank or expanded in an odd way, and might suddenly slip off a finger where it had been tight.’

I don't think it was ever actually weighed e.g. by Sam's portable cooking scale:

"you have to get the amount of the ingredients right Mister Frodo"

 

[Olorgando]

As to the One Ring's "weight" consider these two passages.

RotK, Book Six, chapter III "Mount Doom" (p. 950-51 in my 2002 Hardback):
"As Frodo clung upon his back, arms loosely about his neck, legs clasped firmly under his arms, Sam staggered to his feet; and then to his amazement he felt the burden light. He had feared that he would have barely strength to lift his master alone, and beyond that he had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring. But it was not so. Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering, or because some gift of final strength had been given to him, Sam lifted Frodo with no more difficulty thsn if he were carrying a hobbit-child pig-a-back in some romp on the lawns of hayfields of the Shire."

TT, Book Four, chapter X "The Choices of Master Samwise" (p 740):
"And then he bent his own neck and put the chain upon it, and at once his head was bowed to the ground with the weight of the Ring, as if a great stone had been strung on him. But slowly, as if the weight became less, or a new strength grew in him, he raised his head, and then with a great effort got to his feet and found that he could walk and bear his burden."

Note that Sam felt no such burden while he held the chain an Ring in his hands, only after he had put the chain around his neck.
And when he pick up Frodo later on in the quest, he is not wearing the Ring, and does not feel the Ring's weight that he had experienced earlier at Cirith Ungol and expected to feel again. What are we to make of this?

P.S. And in both quotes, JRRT confronts us with two of the countless infuriating "either - or" non-explanations he strewed through the book ... without which JRRT forums, is my estimate, would be approximately 1% as large as they in fact are. 😁

 

[Rivendell_librarian]

 

[Deimos]

As to the One Ring's "weight" consider these two passages.

RotK, Book Six, chapter III "Mount Doom" (p. 950-51 in my 2002 Hardback):
"As Frodo clung upon his back, arms loosely about his neck, legs clasped firmly under his arms, Sam staggered to his feet; and then to his amazement he felt the burden light. He had feared that he would have barely strength to lift his master alone, and beyond that he had expected to share in the dreadful dragging weight of the accursed Ring. But it was not so. Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering, or because some gift of final strength had been given to him, Sam lifted Frodo with no more difficulty thsn if he were carrying a hobbit-child pig-a-back in some romp on the lawns of hayfields of the Shire."

TT, Book Four, chapter X "The Choices of Master Samwise" (p 740):
"And then he bent his own neck and put the chain upon it, and at once his head was bowed to the ground with the weight of the Ring, as if a great stone had been strung on him. But slowly, as if the weight became less, or a new strength grew in him, he raised his head, and then with a great effort got to his feet and found that he could walk and bear his burden."

Note that Sam felt no such burden while he held the chain an Ring in his hands, only after he had put the chain around his neck.
And when he pick up Frodo later on in the quest, he is not wearing the Ring, and does not feel the Ring's weight that he had experienced earlier at Cirith Ungol and expected to feel again. What are we to make of this?

P.S. And in both quotes, JRRT confronts us with two of the countless infuriating "either - or" non-explanations he strewed through the book ... without which JRRT forums, is my estimate, would be approximately 1% as large as they in fact are. 😁

Supernatural help/intervention, which, we know, was always in the picture.
Frodo was meant to have the RIng, obviously, to destroy it. He and Sam were going to get whatever help was needed to do that.
Note, there was no guarantee that the quest wouldn't kill them, but that the Ring was going to be destroyed was never in doubt.
Our fears (as readers/observers) and attendant gut wrenching suspense was for Frodo and Sam's lives, and the alteration of ME, how much would be lost due to the Ring's destruction.

 

[Olorgando]

Supernatural help/intervention, which, we know, was always in the picture.

You're saying that in all of those infuriating occurrences of "either - or", where one of the alternatives is a natural explanation, JRRT actually means the other, indicating that Eru is constantly meddling in Middle-earth affairs like a nosy sitcom mother-in-law?

 

[Deimos]

You're saying that in all of those infuriating occurrences of "either - or", where one of the alternatives is a natural explanation, JRRT actually means the other, indicating that Eru is constantly meddling in Middle-earth affairs like a nosy sitcom mother-in-law?

No, but I AM saying that they had supernatural help, and not only a few times. .

How to explain what Gandalf meant when he said Bilbo was meant to find the Ring and in turn, Frodo was meant to have it? Who was it that meant it? (And thus brought it about). Not the Ringmaker; Gandalf is clear about that.

How do you explain Frodo seeming so very light when Sam picked him up?

When Sam and Frodo are traversing the Gorgoroth plateau amid the ash and choking fumes with very little water Tolkiens says of Sam: "...[T]hough weary and under a shadow of fear, he still had some strength left. The lembas had a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die."
We know the elves did not make "magical" things because of the answer an elf gave Pippin when the latter asked if the elven cloaks were magical.
So what "virtue" was present in the lembas that the elves did NOT "mix in"?
(virtue... ..virtus in Latin... derives from another Latin word: vis, which means strength or power).
So whence came the power of the lembas?

Tolkien being a Christian had no problem with supernatural intervention, and so he's written it into his mythology.
He had no difficulty with it in his everyday life (viz. his Catholic faith observances) and thought it completely and perfectly normal., so there is no reason to think he would leave it out his mythology.
[Philosophical] materialists, I daresay, have not a little difficulty with it.

 

[Olorgando]

Tolkien being a Christian had no problem with supernatural intervention, and so he's written it into his mythology.
He had no difficulty with it in his everyday life (viz. his Catholic faith observances) and thought it completely and perfectly normal., so there is no reason to think he would leave it out his mythology.
[Philosophical] materialists, I daresay, have not a little difficulty with it.

Not in the least with his "either - or" occurrences. Perhaps that was one aspect of JRRT's genius as a writer.
I'm sure you've noticed that JRRT remained non-committal in all of these cases. He himself and others of like mind, I'll call them philosophical supernaturalists, may have had no problem with supernatural intervention, but JRRT does not come down heavy-handedly on this side. A point of criticism he had for the Arthurian legends, and possibly implicitly for some of C.S. Lewis's fiction writing.
Philosophical materialists have no problem, I would propose, in waving off the supernatural intervention side of the "either - or" with a "Bah, humbug!", and choosing the natural explanation. There are undoubtedly millions of such people among JRRT's fans, some of whom might be put off by C.S. Lewis's heavy-handed dogmatism (Lewis was well aware of this character trait of himself), at least in comparison to JRRT's writing.

 

[Deimos]

Not in the least with his "either - or" occurrences. Perhaps that was one aspect of JRRT's genius as a writer.
I'm sure you've noticed that JRRT remained non-committal in all of these cases. He himself and others of like mind, I'll call them philosophical supernaturalists, may have had no problem with supernatural intervention, but JRRT does not come down heavy-handedly on this side. A point of criticism he had for the Arthurian legends, and possibly implicitly for some of C.S. Lewis's fiction writing.
Philosophical materialists have no problem, I would propose, in waving off the supernatural intervention side of the "either - or" with a "Bah, humbug!", and choosing the natural explanation. There are undoubtedly millions of such people among JRRT's fans, some of whom might be put off by C.S. Lewis's heavy-handed dogmatism (Lewis was well aware of this character trait of himself), at least in comparison to JRRT's writing.

Agreed, but in the examples I've provided (and in the others I have not) he has implied an "interference" by something or someone that is clearly not natural.
In your previous post I got the impression that you thought I was cheerleading for a [author provided] Deus ex Machina every time things got a bit sticky.
He may not be heavy-handed about it, I agree, but supernatural/providential intervention is most definitely present.

 

[Deimos]

Why did the One Ring get heavier as it approached Mordor?​

To cut to chase on this.... unbeknownst to anyone Sauron forged the One Ring from an alloy.
Yes! That's right! an alloy made from 99% Gold (Au... Aurum) plus 1% Heftium (Hf), an element found only in petrified mumak tusks, and then only in microscopic amounts.

Now, Gold has an atomic number of 79, while Heftium (much farther up the Periodic Table) has an atomic number of... of... well it's just a really high number, which makes it super dense material kind of like White Dwarf matter.
It can be alloyed with any precious metal, but only by using the extreme heat found in volcanoes, which also activates its properties.
Away from Mount Doom, the Gold in the ring predominates, but as the Ring is brought closer to any volcano (Mount Doom, in this case) the Heftium starts to predominate such that the Ring gets heavier and heavier.

Now Tolkien took some liberties here because, scientifically speaking, once the Ring was carried to the very brink of the Cracks of Doom (in the Sammath Naur) its weight would have increased so much that no one except Sauron could have lifted it, nor even heaved it over the edge into the lava.
But science was never Tolkien's forte, so his publisher (Allen and Unwin) kind of let it go and didn't mention the error to Tolkien, which was why Frodo and then Gollum were able to wield the Ring right to the end.

 

[TrackerOrc]

Whether because Frodo was so worn by his long pains, wound of knife, and venomous sting, and sorrow, fear, and homeless wandering, or because some gift of final strength had been given to him, Sam lifted Frodo with no more difficulty thsn if he were carrying a hobbit-child pig-a-back in some romp on the lawns of hayfields of the Shire."

I see this as a beautiful example of the 'either, or' passages you mention.
The obvious natural explanation is that Frodo has simply been hollowed out by the travails of the journey, and the physical wounds he's taken. But then Tolkien gives us the idea that Sam has been given some final gift of strength, which, in itself can be looked at both ways: is this gift something which he has found within his own character, or is it an exterior, supernatural/divine occurrence?
As a non-religious person I tend to think that it could just be some inner strength that Sam draws on, yet it's also completely plausible, within the text, that it's divine intervention. It's part of the beauty of the writing that it doesn't really matter either way.

 

[TrackerOrc]

Supernatural help/intervention, which, we know, was always in the picture.
Frodo was meant to have the RIng, obviously, to destroy it. He and Sam were going to get whatever help was needed to do that.
Note, there was no guarantee that the quest wouldn't kill them, but that the Ring was going to be destroyed was never in doubt.
Our fears (as readers/observers) and attendant gut wrenching suspense was for Frodo and Sam's lives, and the alteration of ME, how much would be lost due to the Ring's destruction.

I'm not sure I'd agree that the destruction of the ring was ever in doubt. I think that apart from being a superbly written work of literature, the book is also a real page-turner as regards the suspense of the outcome.
And let's not forget that the ring almost wasn't destroyed at the end !

 

[Deimos]

I'm not sure I'd agree that the destruction of the ring was ever in doubt. I think that apart from being a superbly written work of literature, the book is also a real page-turner as regards the suspense of the outcome.
And let's not forget that the ring almost wasn't destroyed at the end !

You're allowed to disagree. 😉
Very often a discussion ends with "let us agree to disagree".

 

[TrackerOrc]

You're allowed to disagree. 😉
Very often a discussion ends with "let us agree to disagree".

Very well put Deimos
I have managed to find the emojis button!