V. interesting. But I don't understand why Frodo's using the ring would "blow
out the moral center" from the book. He's struggling hard against using it,
even though his fibre is weakening, rather than deliberately appropriating it
as part of a stepped plan of domination & conquest. And after this moment he
continues to struggle against using the Ring. He is torn - to say the least.
Psychologically, too, this passage is a very acute look at how a good person
would begin to be seduced - he would first attempt to use the Ring to help him
on the quest to destroy it. Just as Gandalf says at the outset of FotR - ("Yet
the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of
strength to do good.") - and Galadriel reiterates in her words to Sam in Lorien
("That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas!")
Nonetheless it would seem, at moments, just what the "moral" person would need
to do, to avert a greater evil.
So that's one counterargument.
Opinions?
