Jacob Kolman: “It’s taken me ages to realise, but if Frodo had led a chicken along on a bit of string, and made the chicken carry the ring all the way, no risk of Frodo turning evil. Sure the chicken might turn nasty but realistically how much damage to middle earth can one evil chicken cause”
Comment: “The exact logic elves and wizards used when they let a hobbit carry it”
The comment is the entire post. The elves and wizards DID have this exact conversation — they didn’t trust men, dwarves, or each other with the Ring, and settled on hobbits because hobbits want nothing and are hard to corrupt. Frodo was the chicken. He just happened to be a very brave, very stubborn chicken who almost failed at the end anyway and needed Gollum to bite the finger off.
But the original post’s logic is airtight: an evil chicken cannot launch a military campaign, cannot raise an army of orcs, cannot forge alliances. Worst case: a hen with delusions of grandeur ruling a farmyard. The Ring’s corruption scales with ambition, and a chicken’s ambitions are pecking and maybe a nice spot to dust-bathe. Sauron would spend 60 years wondering why his Ring was sitting in a coop, surrounded by straw and a slowly descending psychological grip over a bird.
And this, friends, is why the elves lost: they underestimated the power of ‘realistically, how much damage can one evil chicken cause.’ The answer, as it turns out, is exactly the same amount of damage as one evil hobbit.
0 Comments