will heal him of his self-centeredness and teach him to give himself self-sacrificially to others. The paradoxical consequence of the dragon sickness is that the things possessed possess the possessor, much as the possession of the Ring in the later book leads to those who wear it becoming possessed by their possession. In the case of the Ring, the bearer of it can resist its power only by refusing to succumb to the temptation to wield its power by wearing it. In other words, the Ring’s malevolent