This is a chapter about temptation. In this chapter, the Lady Galadriel is offered a choice between preservation and destruction. The only price? That she claims a magical artifact that she knows will corrupt her and turn her into the very evil she is fighting. Galadriel knows that if she accepts this boon, she will fall.
I wonder if anyone considers considers themselves evil. I wonder if even Sauron does. Certainly people can admit they've done evil things. But I wonder if, in the real world, there's a single stereotypical James Bond villain who rubs his hands maniacally and cackles when the hero is cast into a tank of sharks. I suspect the truth is more complicated. In the real world, the Saurons think they're okay guys, not James Bond villains.
Lacking a concrete villain, it's difficult to know what Sauron has become, and why. (Perhaps you can fill the gaps with backstory, Ben. I don't remember how/why Sauron became evil, because if I remember he was a good guy too once.) What exactly does the Ring do to someone? For Sauron, it was an extension of himself -- he poured his own power into the Ring when forging it. That means that he had to become evil before making evil, right? Couldn't the good guys, then, have been able to craft another Ring of Power to defend against the One Ring? One that wasn't evil?
The real question is why is corruption inevitable from this Ring. The classic explanations of the Ring theme is that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that power is a form of drug addiction. The ring is described as a tool for the domination of others. This means that thematically we are dealing with a James Bond villain -- one that merely wants to conquer the world for the sake of conquering it. Maybe Sauron was just insecure and wanted to prove something to himself -- and everyone else?? Maybe he was a psychopath???
Again, all of this is just speculation because at this point we don't really know what Sauron is, other than an Eye. Sauron himself is merely an idea, while the fruits of the idea are manifested in grotesque orcs and goblins, his servants.
Galadriel -- at this point we only know she is pretty, and counsels Celeborn to take back fast spoken words of critique against the Dwarf. She admits that she considered taking the Ring by force from Frodo.
Sauron, then, as long as the ring lasts, exists as the ultimate extension of evil -- one that turns friends against each other. Yet when the Ring is destroyed at the end of the book, assuredly evil is not destroyed. Saruman and his orcs are still chopping up the Shire, and assuredly more evil will follow in the years to come in Middle Earth. The Ring is not the root of all evil, clearly.
So then what is this Ring?
Unfortunately the answer evades me. Except to say that perhaps it is merely a storytelling device, a McGuffin, that allows the characters to have a quest. Perhaps all of the prior analyses of what the Ring is are wrong, and it is what it is -- a Ring created by an evil spirit that wreaks mischief does as the spirit does. I know it's not as poetic, but perhaps the Ring doesn't bring out the worst in us? Perhaps the Ring isn't a metaphor for power at all, but is -- dum dum dum -- just a Ring?
What's interesting is that Galadriel says that in order for Frodo to read her mind is that he will have to grow in power, and train himself in the domination of others. That means that Frodo has a choice, in a sense, to avoid the Ring's power. But then why does he fall under it's spell in the end? Does that mean that no one can escape from the Ring? If cute little Frodo can't, surely very few (if any) of us can.
And for Galadriel, she passes the test of the Ring, and decides to leave it all behind, hopefully for better things in the life to come. And yet in her choice she does not sound certain that it is the right choice, and that is not a comforting thought.
This is not a happy chapter.
Maybe, based on your comments, the Ring is less a metaphor than a scapegoat--it is neither the root nor the end of evil (for historically, as you astutely pointed out, evil both precedes and succeeds it), but the object upon which everyone else projects and displaces their own evil impulses. The Ring, then, is *how* everyone gets to consider themselves the good guy--it represents evil for them in a gross, material way, so that none need face the evil festering within themselves. This was the logic, after all, of all those animal sacrifices in ancient religions, and in the crucifixion of Christ, too (and given Tolkien's own Christianity, I wouldn't put it past him). The Ring's destruction, then, really is a *sacrifice*, in that we lose the ability to project our sins on to something else, and from henceforth have to face our own sins for ourselves. That prospect may not be any more pleasant or happy, but it *is* more productive and constructive.
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