So, appropriately enough, I think The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are the first high fantasy novels I ever read. Actually, if I'm being totally honest, I haven't read a ton of high fantasy. I've read more classic science fiction. But in the summer before my freshman year of high school, procrastinating on reading Ender's Game, which was the required reading (a book that is actually quite interesting, and all the more shocking when you realize that the homoerotic subtext was almost certainly accidental on the part of its homophobic author,) I delved into The Hobbit, and then, during the school year, I made my way through Lord of the Rings. The copies of each of these books (the exception being the Two Towers) were the short-run edition with concept art from the then-upcoming movies by Peter Jackson. The timing was perfect: I read through the books, and then the next year, in December of my Sophomore year (a year that, honestly, felt more notable at the time for 9/11 and the beginning of the War on Terror) we went to see The Fellowship of the Ring, and I freaking loved it.
I remember that John Rhys-Davies said he thought the series was going to be bigger than Star Wars, and I scoffed with skepticism, but while I think probably in the long run, they don't have quite the same cultural impact, in my personal pantheon of movies, they occupy similar spots near the top.
I tried reading the Silmarillion at some point, but I wasn't in a space to appreciate the dry, not-at-all-novelistic tone of the book. I wonder if I'd get more out of it now.
Anyway, the point here is to establish my experience with these works. I'm not a Tolkien scholar, but merely someone who loved the books and the movies, and wanted to get some thoughts down.
As the poem tells us, there are a total of 20 Rings of Power - Nine for humans, seven for dwarves, three for elves, and one made in secret by Sauron for his own uses.
But one of the things Tolkien was never really explicit about was what these rings actually did.
In practice, the One Ring when used by Bilbo, Frodo, Gollum, and briefly Sam, makes them invisible. As dramatized in Peter Jackson's movies, this also appears to be the effect it has on Isildur.
In Rings of Power, the power that Sauron is searching for, and the one the rings seem to be tied to, is the "power of the unseen world," and I think that the "invisibility" is more of a shift into that unseen world - which is why beings who already exist there, like the Ringwraiths, have no problem seeing someone wearing the Ring.
But the One Ring is kind of the big exception. It's there to tap into the others and connect Sauron to greater power - kind of pulling half of him into that unseen world, and thus when it is taken from him, he loses his connection to the physical world.
The other rings, though, are not as well-defined. In terms of specific effects, we really only see the results of using the nine rings for humans. These extend the humans lives beyond their natural spans, and as such, their bodies wither away until all that remains is the twisted, invisible wraiths that remain of their spirits.
In Tolkien's world, mortality is actually a "gift" from Eru Iluvatar - the thing that distinguishes elves and humans, and in fact a sign that Eru actually considers humans his favorite creation.
Which is weird.
Humans are shown to be far more fallible, ugly, and corruptible than elves. Indeed, I believe Tolkien conceived of his elves as what humanity would be like without Original Sin (though Tolkien's world doesn't have any religious practice as we'd understand it, Tolkien's own Catholic views were written into the source code of the world). Now, here my Tolkien knowledge is a bit spotty, but beyond the elves ageless form of immortality, in which they can only die from injury or heartache, but otherwise just stop aging after a certain point, I think that even if they do die, they are reborn in Valinor, eternally returning to the world (even if Valinor is arguably not really "in the world" anymore).
Humans die, though. They grow old and weak and eventually succumb.
Now, philosophically, I know there are some who argue that having a limited time to exist is a positive thing, granting meaning to one's life by its bounds (something of the argument that was made in the end of The Good Place,) but I imagine that Tolkien's reasoning for making mortality a good thing was likely instead that, ultimately, humans would be able to ascend beyond anything like the physical world, and join Eru at the pinnacle of reality (in other words, they get to go to heaven while the elves are simply reborn endlessly).
This, then, is quite a boon.
One of Sauron's means of manipulating humans is to stoke fear in humanity of their own mortality. The thing that was meant to be a gift to them from Eru is thus cultivated as humanity's greatest fear. Hence, the promise of longevity or even immortality is a powerful tool Sauron uses to get humans to join him.
As someone who would love to know that there's a benevolent God and a happy afterlife waiting for me, but who by no means feels certain or even confident that there is, the threat of dark oblivion being the form death takes would certainly make me receptive to someone who could promise that I'd be able to live forever.
Another way that people have described the Rings of Power is that they supercharge the inherent nature of the people wearing them. For the elves, the rings were there to allow them to preserve the life they had, and keep the vivid lands they held from growing dull and losing their supernatural beauty. The eternal nature of elves, and their fear of change, gets enhanced and manifested by the rings.
The dwarves' rings push them to greater search for riches. Again, I don't think the dwarves are "greedy," (while Tolkien said some progressive things about Jews during his life, I also can't help but notice that the people with a Semitic-based language are also obsessed with gems and gold and feel a little wary of his biases, but I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt - there's plenty of other racial and especially classist things that are much easier to criticize) their drive to mine and craft and build gets supercharged. Dwarves are not as fleshed out as the other cultures in Middle Earth, and the dwarf rings are also the ones that aren't all accounted for. But you could imagine that a ring might have driven the dwarves of Khazad-Dum to delve deep and mine mithril without checking for the signs of some ancient evil like the Balrog beneath them.
Humans, we know, get the curse/benefit of not dying from their rings. But what is the defining trait for humans in Tolkien's Legendarium? If the elves were created to be caretakers of the world, their eternal, conservative and conservationist nature makes perfect sense. Aulë made the dwarves, but Eru gave them sentience because Eru's humility and genuine empathy for what Aulë was trying to do allowed Him to share the glory, and as the creation of a craftsman, the dwarves were dedicated to that. So, what is the purpose for humans?
That's obviously a question that I imagine Tolkien felt was for Eru to know and for mere mortals to have to merely contemplate. But to look at what humans are supposed to be, let's look at how they fail.
After all, the problematic behaviors of the other races are born out of their initial purposes. The rings supercharge elements of their natures that are meant to be for good, but pushes them into the extremes.
And the evil of humanity? It's generally tied up in ambition. Humans are driven to greatness, to become legends, and kings, and powerful. Their corruptibility is their willingness to accept evil if it grants them power.
But what if that means that power is, in fact, humanity's birthright?
Where I differ significantly from Tolkien is my total rejection of the legitimacy of monarchs. But in his fiction, Tolkien makes Aragorn something of a messianic figure - in a way, a more literal messiah than the one at the center of Christianity, because the concept of messiah in Judaism is a King who will return to lead the Jewish people. Gondor, and really humanity in general on Middle-Earth, has been waiting for the King to return, and Aragorn's return means the salvation of humanity on Middle-Earth.
But while, as a proud American, I spit on the concept of being ruled by a King (whether literal or figurative,) Tolkien takes great effort to show that Aragorn is the ideal king. Power is his right, and Tolkien shows that it's not just because of who his parents are, but also the way that he conducts himself. The thing that proves him to be the rightful king is not his victories on the battlefield, but when he manages to heal Eowyn and Merry after they are injured/cursed killing the Witch King of Angmar.
In other words, Tolkien attempts to write a character who is the person for whom humanity's will to power and ambition is meant - one who will use that power for good, and whose ambition is to make a better world.
And by "make a better world," I'm being quite literal.
Eru created the Ainur - the Valar and Maiar - and conducted the "Music of Ainur," which is how reality was created in the first place. Melkor, the most powerful of the Valar, introduced discord into that music, putting evil into the world in an attempt to wrest control of the Music for himself (again, I think Tolkien uses collaboration versus selfishness as a basis for his concept of good and evil).
But if humans, after their deaths, are brought to Eru (perhaps only the worthy ones, but for the sake of argument let's say all of them,) perhaps the reason is that Eru is looking for new collaborators for a new Music. Perhaps that is why humans are his favorite - or rather, they were created for this highest of all purposes, and thus Eru poured his greatest favor into them.
I might have this wrong, but I think in Norse myth, the aftermath of Ragnarok sees humans and the few surviving gods collectively creating the next world together. Tolkien took a lot from Norse myth along with other influences, so it would fit.
Anyway, it really puts the elves' somewhat superior attitude toward humans into an interesting context. Do they not realize that humans are set above them? Or perhaps are the growing pains that humans are going through just so frustrating when elves have been so good for thousands of years, not quite comprehending that the process of humanity coming into their own is going to be more difficult, messier, and more dangerous?
