One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them

The phrase 'One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them' is a direct quotation from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which Ralph Roberts repeatedly uses as a mental touchstone to understand the supernatural power of Ed Deepneau's wedding ring. The ring, stolen by Atropos and later recovered by Ralph, functions as a master-cord binding the lives of those destined to die at the Civic Center, and Ralph's invocation of Tolkien's verse frames his struggle as a mythic battle against a dark, binding force.

Origin and First Appearance

The quotation first surfaces in Ralph's mind as he kneels in Atropos's underground den, staring at the gold wedding band engraved 'HD – ED 5–8–87' that lies at the center of a shrieking deathbag. The memory of Tolkien's lines — 'One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, / One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them / In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie' — comes to him unbidden, almost thirty years after he last read the book. The verse crystallizes his intuitive grasp of the ring's function: it is not merely a sentimental keepsake but a token that binds the fates of the two thousand people gathered at the Civic Center, just as the One Ring in Tolkien's story binds the races of Middle-earth to the Dark Lord Sauron.

The Ring as a Master-Cord

Ralph's identification of the ring with Tolkien's 'One Ring' is not a casual literary allusion but a precise metaphysical insight. Clotho and Lachesis have explained that Ed Deepneau is an 'undesignated' person — neither of the Random nor the Purpose — and that Atropos's severing of his life-cord has set a terrible chain of events in motion. The ring, Ralph realizes, is the hub of a wheel whose spokes are the replicas that keep appearing each time he or Lois picks one up. 'The replacements – the false rings – are spokes, but this one is the hub,' he tells Lois. 'Take away the hub, and a wheel can't turn.' The original ring, the one that was inside the deathbag when he cut it open, is alive with a faint echo of the deathbag's final scream; the others are silent counterfeits. This distinction confirms his conviction that the ring is the master-cord, the object that binds the crowd to their doom.

The Ring's Power and Ralph's Choice

Ralph's repeated mental recitation of the Tolkien verse — 'One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them' — accompanies his most critical decisions. When Atropos threatens to kill Lois unless Ralph surrenders the ring, Ralph hides it in his back pocket and refuses, understanding that giving it up would doom everyone. Later, as he slips the ring onto his own finger, it fits perfectly, clinking against Carolyn's wedding band. This act of wearing the ring is not an assumption of power but an acceptance of responsibility: he becomes the ring's bearer, the one who must carry it to its final destination. The verse echoes in his mind as he steps into the Portosan to teleport into Ed's plane, and again as he prepares to sacrifice himself to save Natalie Deepneau. The ring, like Tolkien's One Ring, is a burden that must be carried to the point of destruction.

The Ring's Fate

After Ralph's death, the ring does not remain with him. It reappears in Strawford Park, lying on top of the snow, where a wino picks it up. The wino, hurrying to pawn it, is struck and killed by a Green Line bus, and the ring rolls into a sewer grate. The narrator notes that it remains there 'for a long, long time' but not forever, hinting that in Derry, things that disappear into the sewer system have a way of turning up. This open-ended fate mirrors the unresolved nature of the ring's power: it is not destroyed, only lost, and its potential to bind and rule remains latent. Ralph's invocation of Tolkien's verse thus serves as both a guide to understanding the ring's function and a prophecy of its enduring, dangerous legacy.