"In Tolkien’s books, the Ring does not just tempt; it damns. It does not merely whisper; it deforms the world. To wear the Ring is to exist out of phase with the created order. That is why it draws the Nazgûl and why it torments Frodo more the longer he bears it, enacting a slow warping of the soul.

"But Late Modern minds don’t have a category for that kind of evil. And so the Ring gets projected through whatever lens the critic already favors.

"Are you an academic enamored of Foucault? The Ring is hegemonic power. Are you a 1960s hippie posturing against the Cold War? The Ring is nuclear deterrence. Are you a Libertarian? The Ring is the state. That’s not literary interpretation; it’s projection.

"Tolkien understood that tendency and rejected it. That’s why he refused to let allegory reduce his story to a tract. He didn’t want the reader to "decode" the story. He wanted the reader to inhabit it.

"The Ring’s primary function is not to represent power but to test the soul. That is why it tempts each character differently. For Boromir, it’s military victory. For Galadriel, forcibly halting the fading of the Eldar. For Gollum, a grotesque self-love indistinguishable from self-hatred."