Subject: Re: Comments from 2nd viewing From: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Barb Miller) Date: 1992-09-13, 19:30 Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks Reply-to: barb@zurich.ai.mit.edu In article rhaller@oregon.uoregon.edu (Rich Haller) writes: * (S. A. Wilson) wrote: * > * > Question about the various rings.... * > * > Now, since there are "good" and "evil" versions of Coop, Laura, etc., * > could there not be also "good" and "evil" version of objects, such * > as the ring. Thereby, it would explain why Laura was told not to * > put on the ring, yet offered a ring. There are different rings floating * > about: on of these rings is some bond between the werarer and the * > Black Lodge, another is a gift of protection from the White Lodge? * * Another explanation is that the ring was good and it was the 'bad' Cooper * in her dream telling her not to take it. It might be argued that it has to * be the good Coop because that is the one in the lodge, but don't forget * that Leland/BOB enter the lodge at the end of FWWM, so Coop/BOB could also. * That said, I'm not as happy with this theory as I would like to be. Well, one possibility is that it is not time for her to accept the ring yet. I don't remember the chronology well enough to know just exactly what all happens to her after that warning not to take the ring, but possibly she has to fall "faster and faster" than she's doing now in order to acquire enough knowledge, or precipitate enough events, or come into contact with enough people, so that everything that needs to happen does happen before she is killed. Another possibility to think about is that this ring could be like the ring in Wagner's opera cycle, which confers both great power and great loss upon its owner (in the opera, the owner of the ring becomes lord of all the world, but this ring can only be forged by someone willing to renounce all love [this person turns out to be a dwarf, BTW]. Because the ring is stolen from its first owner, a curse is put upon it that anyone who owns it will become so possessed emotionally by the riches that the ring brings that it will bring no joy, only death). It may have been that Laura didn't yet need the ring's power (had the angel disappeared yet?) and Cooper was trying to warn her against its negative side. The ring in Tolkien's _The Lord of the Rings_ is another example of a very powerful ring that also has its very dark side. In both Wagner and Tolkien, the ring has the power to posses its possessor, taking that person away from humanity and into a prison of one's own desire for the ring, the soul trapped inside the boundaries of that golden circle. But rather than the ring, Laura's emblem was the broken-heart necklace, with James holding the other half, so she was not closed off from others in the way that she would be if she possessed the ring. Presumably once she developed a concrete fear that her connection with James would prove fatal to him, she felt that the power of his love to save her would not stand up to Bob's power to destroy her, so she decided to keep her rendezvous with darkness. Both ring and necklace are left behind after their owners are killed, although finding the ring seems to zap one into another realm, whereas finding the necklace seems to correspond to discovering aspects of the dark side of Laura that may be buried by grieving friends, dug up by a probing psychiatrist, or simply sensed in a vision by Laura's mother. Perhaps the "pure" half of her heart had been entrusted to James, and the "dark" half was what was sacrificed by Bob in the train car. Even if she did accept the ring in the train car (and I only remember seeing it thrown in at her, not whether she actually accepted it), perhaps it could not encircle her entire heart, only the dark half. Barb Miller
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