One Ring

The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring, Isildur's Bane, or the Precious, is a central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). It first appeared in the earlier story The Hobbit (1937) as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and rewrote parts of The Hobbit to fit in with the expanded narrative. The Lord of the Rings describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the Ring and save Middle-earth. Scholars have compared the story with the ring-based plot of Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen; Tolkien denied any connection, but scholars state that at the least, both men certainly drew on the same mythology. Another source is Tolkien's analysis of Nodens, an obscure pagan god with a temple at Lydney Park, where he studied the Latin inscriptions, one containing a curse on the thief of a ring. Tolkien rejected the idea that the story was an allegory, saying that applicability to situations such as the Second World War and the atomic bomb was a matter for readers. Other parallels have been drawn with the Ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic, which conferred invisibility, though there is no suggestion that Tolkien borrowed from the story.

The One Ring, also called the Ruling Ring, Isildur's Bane, or the Precious, is a central plot element in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954–55). It first appeared in the earlier story The Hobbit (1937) as a magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Tolkien changed it into a malevolent Ring of Power and rewrote parts of The Hobbit to fit in with the expanded narrative. The Lord of the Rings describes the hobbit Frodo Baggins's quest to destroy the Ring and save Middle-earth. Scholars have compared the story with the ring-based plot of Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen; Tolkien denied any connection, but scholars state that at the least, both men certainly drew on the same mythology. Another source is Tolkien's analysis of Nodens, an obscure pagan god with a temple at Lydney Park, where he studied the Latin inscriptions, one containing a curse on the thief of a ring. Tolkien rejected the idea that the story was an allegory, saying that applicability to situations such as the Second World War and the atomic bomb was a matter for readers. Other parallels have been drawn with the Ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic, which conferred invisibility, though there is no suggestion that Tolkien borrowed from the story. ==Fictional description== File:Roman Temple - geograph.org.uk - 1318760.jpg|Tolkien visited the temple of Nodens at a place called "Dwarf's Hill" and translated an inscription with a curse upon the thief of a ring. It may have inspired his dwarves, mines, rings, and Celebrimbor "Silver-Hand", the Elven-smith who forged Rings of Power. File:Vyne Ring.jpg|The Ring of Silvianus is a Roman gold ring of around the 4th century, found near a former Roman town, Silchester that has an inscription naming Senecianus. Anne C. Petty, writing in The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, notes that Tolkien was all the same quite capable of using "allegorical elements when it suited his purpose", and that he agreed that the approach of war in 1938 "had had some effect on it": The Lord of the Rings was applicable to the horror of war in general, as long as it was not taken as a point-by-point allegory of any particular war, with false equations like "Sauron=Satan or Hitler or Stalin, Gandalf=God or Churchill, Aragorn=Christ or MacArthur, the Ring=the atomic bomb, Mordor=Hell or Russia or Germany". One aspect of such applicability, which the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes is rarely picked up by readers, is that Tolkien chose dates of symbolic importance in Christianity for the quest to destroy the Ring. It began in Rivendell on 25 December, the date of Christmas, and ended on Mount Doom on 25 March, a traditional Anglo-Saxon date for the crucifixion. ==Adaptations== .]] In the 1981 BBC Radio serial of The Lord of the Rings, the Nazgûl chant the Ring-inscription; the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's sound effects for the Nazgul and the Black Speech of Mordor have been described as "nightmarish". In Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the wearer of the Ring is portrayed as moving through a shadowy realm where everything is distorted. The effects of the Ring on Bilbo and Frodo are obsessions that have been compared with drug addiction; actor Andy Serkis, who played Gollum, cited drug addiction as an inspiration for his performance. The actual r ing used for the films was designed and created by Jens Hansen Gold & Silversmith in Nelson, New Zealand, and was based on a simple wedding ring. Polygon highlighted that A tabletop Middle-earth roleplaying game, The One Ring, was manufactured by Cubicle 7; a new edition is planned by a partnership of Sophisticated Games and Free League Publishing from 2020. Cards representing the One Ring were included in a Lord of the Rings-themed Magic: The Gathering set, of which one copy was unique, printed with its own artwork and Tengwar text. That unique card was purchased by the singer Post Malone for US$2 million, making it one of the most expensive CCG cards.

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