The extended edition of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring sets the tone of the Lord of the Rings cinematic trilogy with an incredible prologue: Galadriel, wise Elf descended from Feanor, maker of the Silmarils, proclaiming the history of the One Ring.
During the prologue, Galadriel comes to the tale of Isildur, the last of the great kings descended from Numenor; how he cut the One Ring from the hand of Sauron, thereby defeating the dark lord, and then claimed the ring for himself. But during an attack by Orc forces, the ring slipped off Isildur’s finger. With its departure Isildur lost the power of invisibility it granted him. Open and exposed, Isildur was slain by the Orcs.
When the ring abandoned Isildur, it fell into the river Anduin whose waters carried it far away. Thus it hid itself away and was forgotten by the world for a time. Too long a time.
Galadriel describes this part in the ring’s history as follows:
“…And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.”
The first line in that quote, “And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost,” haunts me. Not just because of how it hints at impending doom, as the viewer will soon find out that the ring is the key to Sauron’s return to power in Middle Earth. Rather because it is just as prescient of the current cultural clime of our world, where past evils are are still our present, and blind eyes are continuously cast upon the truth.
How many evils have we let rest under the false assumption that they would never rise again? How many have we let ourselves forget – or even tried on purpose to forget – instead of keeping them as a reminder to improve and never let it happen again?
Nearly a century after the horrible event, we remember the Holocaust with the phrase, “Never again.” To say that, we have to know what it is that we will never repeat. Otherwise the phrase is empty, meaningless. This is one of the reasons we cannot forget the Holocaust, or any of the other countless genocides and acts of putrid cruelty in human history. We cannot let evil ebb quiet and unobtrusive in the dark corners of the world. We have to take it up and destroy it.
This is a neverending process, a cyclical constant, and not all of us are strong enough to do it every time we are faced with the challenge. We are all Isildur: weak and greedy cowards.
But let’s get back to Galadriel.
After being lost for two and half thousand years and then brooded over by a pathetic, warped creature called Gollum for another few centuries, what happened to the ring?
“…something happened then the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable: a hobbit, Bilbo Baggins of the Shire. For the time will soon come when hobbits will shape the fortunes of all.”
As evil endures, goodhearted people do likewise. And with them, the opportunity to right our wrongs and change the world for the better.
Sabers & Sensibility 