‘You cannot press the One Ring too hard’: Tolkien, Ethics, and the Ambiguities of Magic (original) (raw)

2024, Magic in Fantasy Literature: Definitions, Manifestations, Functions]. Eds. Tetiana Riazantseva and Yevheniia Kanchura

Responding to a query about Sauron’s power, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote: “You cannot press the One Ring too hard,” explaining that it is a “mythical way of representing the truth that potency (or perhaps rather potentiality) if it is to be exercised, and produce results, has to be externalized and so as it were passes, to a greater or less degree, out of one’s direct control.” For all the influence he has had over the fantasy genre, especially its “sword-and-sorcery” variety, Tolkien was always somewhat leery of magic, and even his wizards perform very little of what we would call “magic.” Elsewhere Tolkien likens magic to “the Machine,” thus preemptively dismissing the magic-vs.-technology divide. This essay examines Tolkien’s ambivalence toward the ethics of the magical in his writings.