Wheel of fire

I realized last night that a dissertation is a lot like the One Ring, the ring of power from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Bear with me for a minute. At the beginning of the trilogy, the ring of power hasn't quite taken a hold of Frodo yet. He's near it constantly and yet he's separate from it, still his own person. But as the story goes on, his life becomes inseparable from that of the ring. He cannot wear it without enduring physical and psychological pain, nor without seeing the burning eye of the Dark Lord. The ring itself gradually takes power over him. It becomes heavier and heavier to bear. In the third book, as Frodo's strength has been sapped by the ring, he says to his friend Sam, "there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I begin to see it even with my waking eyes, and all else fades." It's the same with a dissertation, really. Like the ring, a dissertation is with you at all times. In the beginning, as you're just getting underway, you're free to think about other things. Thoughts of your dissertation don't grip you at all hours. But as time goes on, and you get deeper and deeper into the process, you find that you can no longer give your full attention to other things. You eat, sleep, and breathe your dissertation. And suddenly, your life is no longer your own. The dissertation of power has taken hold. (Though, admittedly, I'm not sure what to do with the metaphor when it comes to casting the ring into the fires of Mount Doom, to be destroyed. I guess it depends on how good or bad the dissertation is? Or maybe the dissertation defense is Mount Doom? Hard to say.) I suppose the only thing to do is to continue on, chipping away at deadlines and goals, until the project is finished. Hopefully there'll be a job waiting on the other end of the dissertation of power, but I'll come up with a metaphor for that when the time comes.