They could have fitted the whole ring / tape / mouse assembly into a small paper bag Aragorn could have kept it in his jacket and fed it little bits of lembas on the way how lovely x
I dunno… he didn’t have it for very long in the films, then hesitated when Frodo asked for it back. He resisted the ring, but it still affected him a little bit.
I forget the exact wording, but the Ring essentially showed Sam visions of being some sort of a supreme gardener king. Sam dismissed that as fucking stupid, because he just wants a simple garden.
Here’s my answer from the last time this came up (which might as well have been yesterday from how often people unfairly lionize Sam and shit on Frodo):
“As he stood there, even though the Ring was not on him but hanging by its chain about his neck, he felt himself enlarged, as if he were robed in a huge distorted shadow of himself, and vast and ominous threat halted upon the walls of Mordor…”
"Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dur… He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. "
“In that hour of trial it was the love of his master that helped most to hold him firm; but also deep down in him lived still unconquered his plain hobbit-sense: he knew in the core of his heart that he was not large enough to bear such a burden, even if such visions were not a mere cheat to betray him. The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.”
Sam was tempted, and if he possessed the ring long enough he would have been overcome like any other, but his Hobbit-sense saved him in that one small moment, when he had held the ring but a short while.
We can read the same words and take something different from them. That reads to me like he was able to pretty easily dismiss the temptation. Maybe he would’ve been tempted like Boromir was, maybe he would’ve had the resolve of Frodo, maybe he could’ve held it for much longer like Bilbo.
His Hobbit-sense saved him there. The only one who can tell us with certainly where it lies in relation to Frodo is no longer able to.
It would eventually corrupt anyone… except Tom Bombadil.
Which is equally funny, because he’d have no reason to keep it from Sauron, except kneejerk comedic denial when someone tries to wrong him. The forces of Mordor could rain death upon his woods, and he’d somehow catch hellfire in his chimney and make an especially strong pot of tea. Sauron himself, re-embodied, could swing that ox-sized mace at his door, and howl impotently as each strike bounces off and becomes a knock-knock joke. And then one day, some orc siege captain (who’d slowly gone from digging trenches to tending the carrot patch) would remark on what a fine piece of jewelry Tom wore, and he’d just hand it over and skip away.
Oh stop you bombadil simps are even worse then the eagle people. Bombadil would have fallen to Sauron full stop. The elves say so, gandalf says so, Tolkien says so. Tom can’t even destroy the ring. He’s not Superman, he’s just a plot Device created by Tolkien and in my unpopular opinion should have been cut like in the peter Jackson trilogy. Sure his singing is nice in the audiobook, but he’s the 1940’s equivalent of “omg so rAnDoM” scene girl self insert, who is “like OMG the strongest because he just is okay. Isn’t he so wacky and random?”.
They say he couldn’t keep it safe. And he couldn’t - because he does not care. He is the personification of Middle Earth itself, and the ring has no effect on him because the plot has no effect on him. Whatever you think of his inclusion, being a cartoon character set firmly askew in a fairly grounded universe, he is a reminder that Sauron threatens the people of this world… not the world. In his wildest egomaniacal fantasies, Sauron still lacks the power to impact the stage for all this drama. His boss, the devil, can’t even do that.
The executive summary of Tolkien’s whole cosmology is that Melkor declared he would ruin the song that is reality, and the omnipotent creator of all things told him, “You can try.”
‘But in any case,’ said Glorfindel, ‘to send the Ring to him would only postpone the day of evil. He is far away. We could not now take it back to him, unguessed, unmarked by any spy. And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it. Could that power be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not. I think that in the end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First; and then Night will come.’
‘I know little of Iarwain save the name,’ said Galdor; ‘but Glorfindel, I think, is right. Power to defy our Enemy is not in him, unless such power is in the earth itself. And yet we see that Sauron can torture and destroy the very hills. What power still remains lies with us, here in Imladris, or with Cirdan at the Havens, or in Lórien. But have they the strength, have we here the strength to withstand the Enemy, the coming of Sauron at the last, when all else is overthrown?’
It says right there hiding the ring with him, even if he didn’t lose it on accident would still be a failure. Sauron would steamroll middle earth and he would have gone out last as he had also been the first, and the ring would have returned to Sauron in total victory.
Yeah that totally contradicts where I said he could keep it safe, oh wait.
The text is outright telling you, eventually Sauron would get it. Not by “steamrolling” anything. Tortuously, through the use of all his power, with several hint-hint comparisons to the world itself having no strong opinion. Not because Tom Bombadil is any less capable than some half-pint farmers and a few aristocrats. He’s filled to his feather-topped brim with bullshit magic. But the power to defy the enemy is not within him. Frodo shows him the ring and he barely gives a shit.
You’re arguing like I think he’s the bestest OC ever, donut steel. Nah. He’s Roger Rabbit. Eddie gets handcuffed to Roger, they barely survive some shenanigans, and when he finally gets a hacksaw to separate them Roger slides his hand out so he can lean in and watch. Eddie understandably throttles him, demanding - “You mean you could’ve done that, at any time?!” Roger tells him: “No! Only when it was funny.”
Did you forget the rest of the book? Helms deep, busted. White city, broken and barely holding on. The last alliance of elves and men could do nothing but be a distraction to Sauron. The elves have left, the ents are toast, who else is there to help? The shire gets steamrolled but no heroes to come back after to save it, they never went on the journey. Who exactly isn’t getting completely rolled here?
That’s not a very long eventually, it’s about the same as the duration of the books.
Literally they say in the books that the ring has no effect on Tom, it’s not simping its just cannon. He would have forgotten about it and lost it because it has no hold on him and can not influence his will. It literally could not corrupt him. Every one is influenced by it to some degree just being around it, the awe and fear of the power it hold. Tom can not even think of the ring like that it’s just a little trinket to him. He isn’t some super strong being or anything, he just doesn’t have the ability to want things like that.
Also arguably the ring was having a big effect on him the entire time. The entire journey sam hates Smegal, which he sees as what Frodo is becoming carrying the ring. Smegal was a walking personification of the fear sam had for Frodo. That fear was turned into hate by the ring slowly corrupting Sam’s love for his master into a weakness for the ring to leverage. He absolutely was not immune to its power.
The animated films had a segment of when Sam had the ring and was going to rescue Frodo, and it tempted him that he could use its power to set the world right. I kind of wish Peter Jackson would've done something similar.
He really was, though. Both Frodo and Bilbo carried the weight better than any other had before them, but they were still negatively impacted by it. But not Sam. Truly a goldenhearted being.
The ring shrinks down to fit the mouse sized knuckle. After disappearing, the mouse would have hopped on on of those massive eagles and flown away from the volcano.
It’s both an iron will and a life goal that isn’t really susceptible to corruption. The ring takes the thing you want most and connects itself to that in your mind, twisting your goals to accomplish what it wants.
I’m not really certain what value being temporarily invisible has when all you want to do is garden. Hell, I don’t even think a giant army or conquering the whole world would help either. Just means a more overwhelming garden, which defeats the point.
I mean that’s the reason Hobbits in general can withstand the Ring longer than any other race of Middle Earth. They just want a quiet life without any fuss and that’s pretty much the opposite of what the Ring can promise them.
Ring: I can make you rich!
Hobbit: Eh, than my cousins will pester me all day.
Better yet, start the battle of pelannor fields as usual, cept you give that paper bag to Gwaihir and have him drop that shit on Mt doom like a gahdamn b52. NnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnerrrroooooomKABOOM. Job done.
Mouse would escape the tape and stick its head through the ring. Then you have an invisible mouse to rule them all to deal with. The whole of Middle Earth would be absolutely overrun with mice
Cut to the palace of Mausron the Terrible I: “And that’s how we overthrew the apes and founded our perfect paradise, which I now rule with my tiny, iron adorable fist.”
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