One Ring Futility / Unwanted Bilbo

[CAB]

They saw him sooner than he saw them. Yes, they saw him. Whether it was an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it took a new master, it was not on his finger. With yells of delight the goblins rushed upon him. - The Hobbit

‘Though he had found out that the thing (Ring) needed looking after; it shrank or expanded in an odd way, and might suddenly slip off a finger where it had been tight.’
‘Yes, he warned me of that in his last letter,’ said Frodo, ‘so I have always kept it on its chain.’ - Gandalf and Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring

It would seem that the Ring was trying to leave Bilbo, just as it left Isildur and Gollum. I would guess it didn’t have too many opportunities while Bilbo was in the Shire, there just weren’t enough Orcs running around.

Another thing, not to put it too bluntly, but the Ring kind of sucks at getting lost by an unwanted holder and getting found by Sauron’s servants, doesn’t it? First it falls off Isildur’s finger in the middle of a river. Then it falls off Gollum’s in the Orcs’ cave (probably its best effort) only to be found by Bilbo. When it first tries to lose Bilbo it only finds the bottom of his pocket (see the quote above). Also, I would guess that when Sam (actually, the Ring) frightens off the Orc in the tower of Cirith Ungol, this was actually the Ring calling for the attention of Sauron and his servants.

[Gordis]

Yes, you are right, CAB. The Ring is very powerful, but it is hardly smart. Perhaps it is hampered by the lack of sensors, other than "feeling other beings nearby", and possibly the last only comes through the eyes of the one who wears it.

As for possible actions, it seems to have three modes only: to slip from the finger, to ask the bearer (rather insistently) to put it on, and to call to the others nearby: "I am here...I am here!"

Early after quitting Sauron, it simply burned the finger of a wielder, but perhaps it was just a residual heat, not a deliberate choice.

And another thing. Gandalf was vague, but there is really some other force at work all the time, countering the Ring's best efforts. Really what was the chance that a Hobbit would find it in the orc's cave? On the other hand, the Ring wanted to leave the cave, so perhaps it was just "hunting" someone who would carry it out, into the Wide World. But then why had it slipped from Bilbo's finger when he was facing the orcs?

[Forkbeard]

Yes, you are right, CAB. The Ring is very powerful, but it is hardly smart. Perhaps it is hampered by the lack of sensors, other than "feeling other beings nearby", and possibly the last only comes through the eyes of the one who wears it.

It is also hardly sentient.

[Butterbeer]

lovely and round though ...

[ringbearer]

It is also hardly sentient.

I respectfuly disagree...The One is given the apearance of "being sentient" throughout the story...so it is sentient...(I guess it somewhat depends on your own definition of "sentient")

[Jon S.]

Source: http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/ringfaq.htm#Q1-Sentient

E4. Could the One Ring think, feel, and make choices?
(added 23 May 2002 )

(This FAQ entry is based in part on the May 2002 thread “Was the One Ring sentient?” in r.a.b.t. That word “sentient” is slippery, and discussion focused nearly as much on the question as on the answer. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language [Third Edition, 1992] defines “sentient” as “1. Having some perception; conscious. ... 2. Experiencing sensation or feeling”; science-fiction fans tend to equate “sentient” with “self-aware and intelligent”.)

Whether or not the Ring makes choices, it seems able to sense its surroundings. When it grows smaller to stay on a finger (remember that Bilbo’s was less than half the diameter of Sauron’s or even Isildur’s) or larger again to slip off a finger, [LotR I 2 (60)] the Ring adapts to the size of the finger that is wearing it. But we must not push that too far. A thermos will keep a hot liquid hot or a cold liquid cold, but it doesn’t sense the temperature of the liquid and make a decision!

We find evidence in The Lord of the Rings that the Ring could in some sense perceive its surroundings and act accordingly. This is also consistent with the traditions of myth, where objects do think and feel. Does this mean that the Ring was alive (whatever “alive” means)? Most people would hesitate to go that far, and no one on r.a.b.t argued that the Ring could think in anything approaching the human sense.

What in the story suggests that the Ring could sense its surroundings and make decisions?

When telling Frodo about the Ring’s history, Gandalf says “A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care — and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside. It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.” [LotR I 2 (68-69)]

And a little later, Gandalf makes the point again with more examples: “The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!” [LotR I 2 (68-69)]

After abandoning Gollum and being found “by chance” by Bilbo, the Ring may have slipped off Bilbo’s finger to betray him to the Goblins near their eastern exit: “Yes, they saw him. Whether it was an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it took a new master, it was not on his finger.” [Hobbit V (99)]

This was not the first time that the Ring seemed to try to expose its new master to the Orcs. Recall its betrayal of Isildur in the River near the Gladden Fields: “There suddenly he knew that the Ring had gone. By chance, or chance well used, it had left his hand and gone where he could never hope to find it again.” [UT: GF (275)]

The evidence is open to interpretation. With Isildur’s experience as with Bilbo’s, Tolkien takes pains to keep the question open whether the Ring was acting independently or slipped off by pure mischance. On the other hand, Gandalf was very definite in telling Frodo that the Ring had “decided” to leave Gollum.

If the Ring could act to bring about its purpose of getting back to Sauron, then why did it get itself picked up by Bilbo when “an Orc [would] have suited it better” [LotR I 2 (69)]? Doesn’t such a choice argue that the Ring was not making choices?

Gandalf meets this objection: The fact that Bilbo picked up the Ring was not the Ring’s doing, and not Sauron’s. “There was more than one power at work, Frodo. ... beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker.” [LotR I 2 (69)] In other words, someone other than the Ring chose Bilbo. (Eru? the Valar? we are not told.) On this view, where the Ring made a choice was in slipping off Bilbo’s finger and betraying him to the Orcs, as it had betrayed Isildur. And it’s quite possible that the Ring tried to betray Frodo by slipping onto his finger at the Prancing Pony in Bree [LotR I 9 (176)], though Aragorn seems to blame Frodo (“Why did you do that?” [LotR I 9 (177)]).

While these passages do suggest a sentient Ring, and most people who posted to this thread accept that interpretation, it’s possible to interpret them in other ways: perhaps the Ring operates out of instinct or like a computer program.

Some would argue that the Ring didn’t make choices any more than an ant does: that in effect it operated out of instinct, a sort of Sauron-tropism. True, in a Letter, Tolkien says, “Even from afar [Sauron] had an effect upon it, to make it work for its return to himself.” [L #246 (332), also on the Web] But that word “trying” is not conclusive: we often speak of a lower animal like an insect “trying” to do something where we don’t imply conscious thought or any awareness. We can even say that ivy “tries” to get better sunlight when it grows up the side of a house.

Tim Howe [r.a.b.t article, 14 May 2002, archived here] suggests another intriguing “non-sentient Ring” explanation: Sauron may have programmed the Ring as we program a computer or a robot. (Only some of what follows was in his article.) Computer programs can be fantastically complicated and can seem to make decisions; computer programmers even speak of a program “deciding” to do this or that. Even so, we don’t say that the computer program (or Ring) is thinking; all the sentience lies with the programmer (or Sauron).

Howe points out that the Ring’s actions could be explained by the simple program “slip on or off a finger at any time it will place an enemy in peril, and abandon an owner who holds the Ring too long without using it.” Such a program would have the effect of making the Ring turn up eventually if it were ever separated from Sauron — and as an immortal he could afford to wait. Obviously Tolkien was not familiar with computer programming and would not consciously have intended such an explanation, but that doesn’t mean we cannot use it as an analogy. We would think of Sauron not as programmer but as sorcerer, making these instructions part of the spell he cast when putting his own power into the Ring, so that it would eventually come back to him if he ever lost it. (Against this we must set the fact that Sauron did not seem very good at planning for unexpected contingencies, and ask why he would plan for being separated from the Ring when he had no reason to believe that could ever happen.)

In less modern language, we can simply say that the Ring behaved a lot like a cursed object in traditional myth. A cursed object brings bad fortune to anyone who holds it, and the bad fortune often takes the form of a series of apparent accidents — the woodcutter chopping off each of his limbs over time, the Ring slipping on and off a finger at inconvenient moments.

Some incidents in the story are hard to explain whether we think of the Ring as making choices or not. For instance, why did the Ring help Sam in the Orc-hold at Cirith Ungol? [LotR VI 1 (938)] True, he felt an almost irresistible impulse to put it on (which would have revealed him to Sauron), but he did resist and simply “clasped it to his breast”. Even so, it made him appear great and terrible to Sauron’s servants, thus helping him rescue Frodo and continue with their quest.

The incident at Cirith Ungol perhaps helps us find a middle ground: the Ring had a limited sort of intelligence and purpose, but only limited. It grew greater and more terrible as an object the closer it got to Mount Doom, and Sam benefited from that increased stature as anyone would have. But the Ring couldn’t turn its own nature on and off any more than it could choose whom to make invisible.

Even though one can give explanations that don’t require the Ring to be sentient, having purpose and making choices, it seems likely that Tolkien intended it to be so. The Ring seems to behave in many ways like a dog separated from its humans and making its way back across hundreds of miles. On several occasion Tolkien writes that the Ring tried this or decided that, and the most economical reading is that the Ring did indeed have some will and sense of purpose. This pathetic fallacy, though a logical error in the real world, is a standard part of many myths, and seems to be part of Tolkien’s myth as well.

[Gordis]

WOW!
Great post, Jon S. :)
It is so complete, one can hardly say more...

[Butterbeer]

the phrase ' a red rag to a bull ' springs to mind Professor! ... ;)

[Gordis]

As if you ever needed a red rag, o BB! :p