One Ring to Addict Them All
One Ring to rule them all; One Ring to find them; One Ring to bring them all; and in the darkness bind them. J.R.R. Tolkien.
As any Tolkien-aholic sometimes does, I reread Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings recently. I was struck again by what a powerful metaphor for addiction the Ruling Ring in the Trilogy represents.
Like any potentially deadly addiction, the Ring initially confers seemingly transcendent powers on its bearer. They include invisibility, unnaturally long life, heightened senses, etc. Pleasing to the eye, this ancient smart-device quickly hooks and then robs all but its strongest users of that initial ecstasy and sense of mastery. The euphoria is supplanted by the addict’s familiar agony and gathering clouds of despair. As smartphone bearers do, the Ring’s victims become naked to discovery, monitoring, and tracking by an outside, malignant force.
What a horrific swath of addiction and death the Ring cuts across Middle Earth as it tries to work its way back to Sauron, its evil, seemingly omnipotent creator:
Isildur is the Ring’s first victim. This brave warrior cuts it off Sauron's hand thousands of years before the events recounted in the Trilogy. Isildur is immediately addicted, and refuses Elrond’s urgent advice to “unmake” the Ring by casting it into the fires of Mt. Doom, the active volcano in Mordor, the heart of Sauron’s realm. The Ring betrays Isildur when it slips off his finger as he swims the Great River, fleeing Sauron’s evil stormtroopers, known as “orcs.” No longer invisible, Isildur ends up floating face down in the current with four orc-arrows in his back for his trouble.
One of Tolkien’s most deformed, yet somehow sympathetic, characters is Gollum. This loathesome creature twists helplessly in the addictive power of the Ring longer than any character. Gollum (his given name is Smeagol before the Ring crushes his self-will) has a cousin, Deagol. That hapless hobbit-like lad is the next casualty. Deagol finds the long-dormant Ring at the bottom of the River Anduin on what starts as a pleasant little fishing trip with his soon-to-be former friend Smeagol. Smeagol/Gollum kills Deagol to get the Ring. In a classic addict’s denial, Gollum lies to himself and his family that it was a well-deserved “birthday present” from Deagol; what Gollum calls his “Precious” in his croaking, retching voice.
Seeking refuge from his family’s understandable ostracism in a bitter cave in the Misty Mountains, Gollum becomes a classic strung-out junkie. As the Elven Queen Galadriel (played by Cate Blanchett) intones in the film’s opening prologue, “for five hundred years, [the Ring] poisoned his mind.” Gollum’s lust for the “stolen” birthday present, and the nearly intolerable withdrawal symptoms his loss causes, force him out of his mountain lair. A continual, perilous struggle is fought between the better and worst angels of the creature’s nature. Gollum is the devil on the host's shoulder, urging him to regain the Ring at all costs. Its alter-ego, Smeagol, still has a sliver of compassion and a desire for warmth and friendship. As we come to learn, that doesn't end well.
Of all the ring-bearers, Bilbo, the adventurous hobbit, is the only one who relinquishes the Ring voluntarily. And it still takes the wizard Gandalf’s powers of intervention to make that happen. Ever wondered anxiously where your smart phone is, only to find it in your pocket(ses)? That's where Bilbo realizes he has tucked the Ring during the early scene when Gandalf persuades him to give it to his adoptive nephew and heir, Frodo. Yet part with it Uncle Bilbo does, feeling immediate relief.
Still, in one of the most startling scenes in the books, brilliantly rendered in the first of Peter Jackson’s three movie adaptations, when Bilbo and Frodo are reunited in Rivendell, the venerable hobbit succumbs to old cravings. He asks Frodo for “just another” look at the Ring, to which Bilbo (as Gollum madly does) eerily refers to as “my Precious.” Bilbo’s face is briefly transformed into a repulsive, grasping caricature of an orc-like demon. Fortunately, his plain hobbit common-sense and resiliency (at which Gandalf always marveled), and Frodo’s own kindling addictive attachment to the Ring, avert a relapse.
Boromir, proud man of the West and member of the Fellowship, is the next to fall. His craving for the power he correctly senses the Ring would give Minas Tirith, his beloved, beleaguered city-state, leads to his death by orc arrows (see, Isildur) when the Fellowship splinters among the pines above the River Anduin. Boromir only finds redemption when (in what I think is one of the most moving scenes in cinematic history) Aragorn cradles the dying warrior in his arms and tells him that he dies a hero. You can see in Boromir's eyes, and hear in his dying words, how the knowledge that he’ll never possess the Ring has brought him peace.
Now to Frodo: What a terrible legacy Bilbo unknowingly passes on to the young hobbit in the envelope on the mantelpiece at Bag End. Frodo is not impressed at first. He briefly wonders why Bilbo gave the Ring to him, and then says, “Still, it may be useful.” He has no idea.
Frodo's addiction to the Ring is a slow process, for it must overcome his hobbit’s native inner strength and basic goodness. Yet, the irresistible addiction takes hold of Frodo. Near the end of the story, Sam and Frodo struggle up the slopes of Mt. Doom to do what Isildur’s addiction prevented; to cast the Ring into the fire. By now, the Ring has become an unbearable, yet unshakeable burden for Frodo. As the faithful Sam carries him piggy-back up the slopes, Frodo tells him that the Ring has become a “wheel of fire” that, as it did to Gollum, is consuming his mind and body.
Speaking of Gollum: The twisted, emaciated junkie finally catches up with Frodo at the precipice above Mt. Doom’s rivers of lava (the hellfire of an addict’s nightmare). The demon of addiction perched on Gollum’s left shoulder has won. As has Frodo’s: The Ring has now made Frodo into a channel of its own malice, preventing him from hurling the Ring into the Inferno. The Ring is only “unmade” when Gollum bites off Frodo's ring finger. His Precious firmly in hand at last, Gollum has a fleeting moment of pure ecstasy, only to suffer a catastrophic overdose as he loses balance and plunges to his and the Ring’s demise in the inferno.
To Sam's delight, when he rushes to Frodo's side, he sees that his friend is now clean and sober, clear-eyed, and rid of his addictive demon. Yet Frodo never fully heals. Wearing a comforting white jewel bestowed by Galadriel around his neck in place of the consumptive Ring, he joins Bilbo, the only other surviving Ring-bearer, on a journey to the green shores beyond Middle Earth. Frodo sees them from the ship on a lovely new dawn of recovery, healing, and hope, and is restored to serenity.
2024 ©/TM Stout Heart, Inc. and Cameron G. Stout. All rights reserved
Nothing contained in this article is or should be considered therapeutic, clinical or psychological advice of any kind.