Is it just hypnotizing everyone into thinking it will give them great power? Because as far as I can see, it only gives you the power to turn invisible to people around you, while making you even more visible to Sauron. Why do people think this is going to make their kingdom the strongest or whatever?
sharePartly because it's lying. Anyone who takes the One Ring is tempted by it, although not all dream of power. Gollum, for instance, seems only to dwell on the advantages of being invisible, and while this is power to some extent, he never seems to think he can dominate Middle Earth, just steal things and throttle people he doesn't like.
The power of the Ring isn't readily accessible to the people we see use the it. Frodo, Bilbo, Gollum, and Sam (briefly) are all Hobbits, or Hobbit-like, and don't have the knowledge or abilities of others. I suspect that if Gandalf or Galadriel had accepted and succumbed to the Ring, we would have seen what that powers that thing really had.
Sauron put some of his essence - quite a bit, actually - into the Ring. That means some of his Mayar spirit power is in there, his magic so to speak, as well as his life force, and of course, his evil.
The evil is what hypnotizes people and wrings their souls into evil, spectral things, slowly over time. It is their own delusions of grandeur, but yes, in a nutshell, people think they will command great power, when in fact, the Ring will be ruling them. When Evil wins, it controls you.
Actually I don't remember that Gollum ever used the ring for turning invisible. My take: The ring makes people (and Hobbits) just greedy for the power it is promising. And it is that greed that makes them controllable.
shareGollum definitely uses the Ring that way. It's referenced in The Hobbit when he'd use it to sneak up on goblins and kill them to eat them when he grew tired of fish (and bold enough). He also used it to spy and sneak on his neighbours and (former) friends.
Exactly. The Ring seems to call to selfish desires and such nasty, evil impulses and thoughts.
Interesting.
share