Bramblethorn
Sleep-deprived
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2012
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"Accident" isn't much of a thing in LotR, particularly not where the Ring is concerned. The story really hammers on the point that a lot of things which might look like accident are actually some more intentional fate, in some cases Sauron's evil will at work, in others a greater power working against him.
In the prelude of LotR, recapping events of The Hobbit:
"Yet, though before all was won the Battle of Five Armies was fought ... the matter would scarcely have concerned later history ... but for an 'accident' on the way. The party was assailed by Orcs in a high pass of the Misty Mountains as they went towards Wilderland; and so it happened that Bilbo was lost for a while in the black orc-mines deep under the mountains, and there, as he groped in vain in the dark, he put his hand on a ring, lying on the floor of a tunnel. He put it in his pocket. It seemed then like mere luck. ... in the end Bilbo won the game, more by luck (as it seemed) than by wits..."
Note the scare quotes on "accident" and the repeated implication that what Bilbo saw as "mere luck" was something more.
Later, Gandalf talks to Frodo about how Bilbo came to find the Ring:
"It was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far: Bilbo's arrival just at that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark. There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur's hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum...when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the unlikeliest person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire! Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it."
Isildur dropping the ring at just the wrong moment? Déagol and then Gollum finding it? Gollum losing it, and Bilbo stumbling across it, and winning the riddle game? None of these are accidents in Gandalf's view, and Gandalf isn't just some amateur philosopher who thinks he understands how the world works; he literally helped make the world. Gandalf goes on to say that he believes Gollum "has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least".
