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Formed in the crucible of the Great War, the creatures of J.R.R. Tolkien’s imagination inhabit very different realms and teach very different lessons.
Dragons and orcs, trolls, fell beasts, and oliphaunts, the epic landscape of Middle Earth is rife with monsters—and heroes—of every shape, size, and disposition. Despite their diversity, most of these beings fit neatly into a black/white fantasy paradigm and are defined—at least on first meeting—by the moral allegiance of their race and the empathy they engender.[1] Nazgûl and wargs are bad; elves and hobbits are good. It’s a simple, useful rule to follow, lest one thinks it might be fun to invite a Balrog to dinner.
Then, all shadowy grey, there is Gollum.
In the pantheon of literary monsters, Gollum is, at first glance, quite unremarkable. He’s not huge or retchingly ugly; he does not go on murderous rampages across the Wilderland or even conspire with the Dark Lord in his bloody campaign to tyrannize Middle Earth. Where Shelley’s creature is all Romantic passions and damaged virtue, Gollum is manic appetites and recreant vice. Totally consumed by his own needs, his Ring-induced self-destruction makes him the 12-step poster boy of fantasy fiction and a very modern monster.
Gollum of The Hobbit is a minor—if instrumental—character, and at first meet, little more than an unpleasant, slimy cypher.
I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum—as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. (The Hobbit, p. 77)
He paddles around the underground island he calls home, dining on blind fish and runty goblins, and talking to himself. Mad as a hatter from isolation and the influence of the One Ring—his Precious[2]—his life is one of relentlessly uneventful survival. As long as he has his Precious and a juicy fish for dinner, he could care less about affairs in the sunny world above.
Then Bilbo Baggins, hobbit and burglar, blunders into his cavernous abode, steals the Ring, and changes everything.
Though Gollum’s present is murky and his future unknown, [3] Tolkien gives us glimmers of a past in what were arguably better times. As he and Bilbo test their wits with riddles, the creature remembers flashes of long ago, of life in the sun, of the taste of chestnuts and smell of daisies, “of days when he had been less lonely and sneaky and nasty.” Most of us would treasure such nostalgic memories, yet they only pain our monster and put him “out of temper.”
Winning at riddles may earn Bilbo directions into the light, but Gollum knows the hobbit cheated[4] and stole his Precious, to boot. He would kill Bilbo for a thief and have him for lunch without a second thought. For his part, Bilbo would spit the creature on his elvish blade if for no other reason than that he’s creepy and uncivilized. But Gollum, “miserable, alone, lost,” is unarmed. For heroes, there are rules about such things.
A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror welled up in Bilbo’s heart; a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking, and whispering. (The Hobbit, p. 93)
Rather than take the creature’s life, Bilbo sheathes his blade. With a great leap, he escapes, the only thing that gave meaning to the monster’s miserable existence tight around his finger. One can argue that hobbit mercy did Gollum no favors.
Which brings us to Tolkien’s magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings.
Like all great epics, Lord of the Rings is a veritable baklava of layered tales. On the one hand, there is the overarching chronicle of the Great Years of the Third Age: destroy the One Ring, defeat Sauron and his legions, and restore Aragorn to the throne of Gondor. Then there are the smaller stories, the human stories of destiny and kinship, courage and foolishness, betrayal and redemption, which put flesh on the bones and make us care. One of those is the story of Gollum and his Precious.
In The Fellowship of the Ring, before Frodo sets a shaggy foot outside the Shire, Gandalf prepares the young hobbit’s way by telling him the tale of the Ring he inherited from his Uncle Bilbo, including what he knows of its previous keeper, Gollum. Forewarned is forearmed, after all, and considering the danger the hobbit is about to face, it is the least a wizard can do.
Briefly, the story goes like this: Over 500 years ago, a simple Stoor hobbit named Sméagol lived with his grandmother, on the banks of the Great River. He was bright and curious, always looking down at roots and deep pools, into the beginnings of things. One year, on his birthday, he and his best friend, Deogol, went down to the river by Gladden Fields. While Sméagol explored the banks, Deogol angled the afternoon away until a great fish took hold of his line and pulled him into the water. There, shimmering in the riverbed, he finds, the long-lost Ring of Power. Now, the Ring makes people do terrible things, and, within minutes of being in its presence, Sméagol murders his friend and seizes the gold band for himself. After all, he’s the birthday-hobbit and it’s his present. His Precious. But there are consequences to these actions, as Gollum explains with pained, cinematic concision in Peter Jackson’s epic adaptation:[5]
…They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone…And we forgot the taste of bread…the sound of trees…the softness of the wind. We even forgot our own name. My Precious. (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003)
This is Monster Devolution 101. Shunned by his nearest and dearest, the hobbit becomes a junkie slave to the coercive force of the Ring. As Gandalf explains, it eats into his soul; he hates his Precious and loves it, just as he hates and loves himself. Bit by bit, Sméagol disappears—transformed body and spirit—and a monster emerges: Gollum. “Gollum.” It’s not even a name, just an absonant croak—“gollum, gollum”—as if something foul got stuck in his throat. Surrendering his identity is the ultimate severance from his past, the culmination of his metamorphosis. From that point on, Gollum is the face of weakness, evil, and lies. He is the personification of addiction and the madness that comes from the attendant loss of will. Yet Gandalf suggests that even one as wretched as Gollum has a part to play in the monumental events about to unfold, and the wizard is always right.
Since his run-in with Bilbo, Gollum has spent decades stoking a powerful—literal—hunger for Bagginses. In the throes of full-blown Precious-withdrawal, he’s scoured the caves and crannies of Middle Earth, searching for the slightest trace of his Ring. Or the furry-footed thief who took it. By the time he meets up with Frodo and Sam, he’s lived on Baggins-hate for so many years, that he’s jonesing to rip the Ring from Frodo’s neck and feast on raw halfling liver! The hobbit may not be Bilbo, but, as long as Gollum gets his Precious, any Baggins will do.
So, how do you solve a problem like a Gollum?
For Sam, Frodo’s protector, it is simple: run him through. Even at his most obsequious—and Gollum is nothing if not toady—the creature is as repulsive and dangerous as he was when Bilbo met him. It doesn’t matter who he was centuries before or how pathetic he seems now, Gollum is a monster and that’s all he ever will be to Samwise Gamgee. This may be a very black/white perspective, uncomplicated by the toxic touch of the Ring, but if it keeps Frodo safe, that’s all that matters. With death lurking behind every rock, you do unto monsters before they do unto you.
Once upon a time, in the snug certainty of the Shire, Frodo would have agreed with Sam, but our hero no longer has the luxury of such dichromatic thinking.[6] He is the Ring Bearer, now. The savior of Middle Earth. He looks at this wizened, tortured monster and sees not a foul devil, scraggy and bug-eyed with vile cravings, but a cursed hobbit, tormented and alone, changed under the bane of the Ring. He sees…himself. They are fellow travelers at different points on the same destructive journey, and Frodo is only a dwarf-toss away from being just as broken as Gollum. But for the constant support of Sam, the faith of Gandalf and the fellowship of the Ring, and the warm memories of Shire life, he too could lose his hobbitness.
Frodo needs Gollum, not just as a guide through the Dead Marshes, but as a guide through the hazards of the Ring. He needs to believe that some bit of Sméagol survived the Ring[7] so he can believe he can survive it, too. Save Gollum, save himself. If he can only reawaken the creature’s inner hobbit!
To this end—and over Sam’s many objections—Frodo decides to put Gollum through monster rehab. Treat Gollum like Sméagol, he presumes, and Sméagol might return. He calls him by his proper name, handles him with patience, mercy, and as much trust and kindness as he can muster, all in effort to tame the beast. For a while, the plan seems to be working. Though hardly fit to invite for a pint at The Green Dragon, there are moments in Frodo’s company when glimmers of the old Sméagol break through. When he recalls how good it is to not be alone.
Unfortunately, weakness defines Gollum’s monstrosity, and his hunger proves stronger than the kindest word or warmest memory. Like peat-laced Scotch placed smelling distance from an alcoholic, proximity to the Ring whets his addiction with a wicked contact high. Despite Frodo’s worthy efforts, the creature’s loss of will and hatred of ‘hobbitses,’ come flooding back with a vengeance, turning Gollum/Sméagol into a textbook dissociative personality. Under less Tolkienesque circumstances, an intervention followed by lengthy stay at Austen Riggs would be in order, but there is no such healing on the trail to Mordor, The monster is on his own, slouching towards his inevitable destruction.
Sam is right: the creature’s murderous duplicity remains unchanged, while the conflict between inner hobbit and outer monster makes him crazier than ever. Gollum doesn’t care about good or evil, old battles or future world orders. He only cares to seize his Precious and survive. That means he must suppress Sméagol and separate Frodo from the “nassty hobbit,” Sam. And he almost gets away with it, in part because Frodo so desperately needs to believe Gollum has been tamed, his inner hobbit restored. The more we need our monsters, the blinder we are to their dangers.
Luckily, Frodo has the best subaltern in Middle Earth, Sam Gamgee, watching his back. Neither gulled by Sméagol’s deceits, nor doubting the innate strength and rightness of Bagginses, Sam never gives up on Frodo no matter how wild-eyed and distant he becomes. He tells stories, sings songs, lights every shadow on their journey with memories of hearth and home and the convivial camaraderie of Hobbiton. With uncomplicated devotion, he refuses to let Frodo be alone in the dark.
Yet even the healing remembrance of days past fails under the continued burden of the Ring, becoming more and more fleeting until, at the base of Mount Doom, it abandons Frodo entirely.
…I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me. I am naked in the dark, Sam, and there is no veil between me and the wheel of fire. (The Return of the King, p. 264)
This is the legacy of the Ring: the divorce from all things human, the gnawing hunger, and growing lack of will. It places Frodo at the tipping point of monster devolution. Only one more lost than he can halt his descent. Once again, he needs Gollum.
The Gollum who stands at the Cracks of Doom is a monster transformed. His once formidable physical strength has left him. Mad with desperation, he is a strung-out, skeletal creature, his “shrivelled mind and body” tortured by the agony of his addiction, “driven by a devouring desire and a terrible fear.” Running out of time and patience, he will do anything to wrest the band from the halfling’s possession and get his fix. Ultimately, this blind determination—coupled with a set of very sharp incisors—breaks the Ring’s hold on the hobbit and frees Frodo from the growing monster within.[8]
With a fiercesome chomp, Gollum takes the decision to destroy the Ring out of Frodo’s hands. Pathetic, amoral,[9] and rabid with nihilistic abandon, the monster lifts the impossible onus from the hobbit’s shoulders then tumbles into unintentional heroics. Alone in fiery death, he fulfills Gandalf’s judgment and his own redemption.
But for him, Sam, I could not have destroyed the Ring. The Quest would have been in vain, even at the bitter end. So let us forgive him! For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over. (The Return of the King, p. 277)
No life, however tortured, is a failure if it ends in forgiveness.
Over the past few decades, smaller, more egocentric woes have replaced the primordial struggles and grand romantic dreams of yore, and our monsters have shrunk accordingly, fitting neatly into the mote in our neighbor’s eye. Ancient though he seems, Gollum is a monster for this new age. Flawed and vulnerable, with the fortitude of a jellyfish and a Me-Generation sensibility, he is the fleeting image we catch in the mirror, the dread grotesque lurking inside us all.
The modern world is awash with Frodos and Gollums, ever vigilant lest the darkness of the one subsume the light of the other. They’re easy prey, more scared than scary: the bullied outsider at school, the parent with three kids, no job, and an eviction notice in hand, the misanthrope who lives at the end of the lane; people damaged, humiliated, driven to the outskirts of life, looking for fairness in an unfair world. Alone at the crack of doom. It doesn’t take a magic ring to nudge them over the edge into doing terrible things. Not today.
And when one falls, when the darkness wins out, we hang the epithet “monster” about their neck, and throw up our hands in horror. They were our coworkers and classmates one minute, aberrant beasts the next. It’s a comforting way to order the world. We don’t have to look within, to admit our kinship or question our hand in monster-making. Simply deny them their humanity and the solace of moral superiority is ours. We could never be like them. We are the white hats, the God-fearing “good guys with guns,” loved by family and friends, respected by society, safe from our inner daemons. We’re not other. Not evil. That’s our story and we’re sticking by it.
Tolkien has presented us with a template for our future monsters, for those that fester within, pustules of malevolence simmering just beneath our frail human skin. The Gollums of the world are a challenge to our humanity, and if they teach us anything, it is that modern evil, much as we want to call it beastly and thus divorce ourselves from its reality, is, at heart, not monstrous at all. As Hannah Arendt insisted during the Eichmann trial of 1961, the true danger of evil is that it’s human and common as dirt. Violence, regardless of its jingoistic spangles, is the eternal curse of our species. It is reflexive, unimaginative, and utterly banal. [10] It is Us, in all its Pogo-esque glory.
So. These are our monsters, gargantuan and puny, human and divine. We carved their bones in solitude and layered them with the flesh of hostility and disaffection, each generation getting not only the monsters it needed but also those it deserved. When headlines erupt with the latest atrocity, and a new crop of monsters claim their fifteen minutes of fame, we hug our loved ones a little closer and promise to be better people. And in the shadows before sleep, we pray to gods—old and new—that, in the end, we can remain the Frodos of our imagining, standing in the light.
Only then can we welcome monsters into our hearts where they belong, where they can teach us their final lesson: that we alone must bear the moral burden of our actions.
[1] As in any tale, perspective has its place, too: orcs, for example, always consider ents monstrous, but only a psychopath would agree with them.
[2] Note: “Precious” is also how he refers to himself and occasionally others.
[3] What we know of Gollum today is considerably more than was found in the original manuscript. As The Lord of the Rings took shape, Tolkien rewrote parts of The Hobbit to bring the mythos and characters more in line with their later incarnations. Gollum’s chapter, “Riddles in the Dark,” was noticeably altered, with bits of the original kept as a lie Bilbo tells Gandalf and the dwarves to explain his having the Ring.
[4] Likely the first sign of the Ring’s corruption. The riddle game is sacred among hobbits. While Frodo later insists that Gollum was surely planning on cheating all along, it was Bilbo who actually did.
[5] Jackson chose to put this at the beginning of the last part of the trilogy, The Return of the King, instead of in The Fellowship of the Ring. In the gamut of directorial choices, this is relatively minor and might even make sense, though I can’t help wondering if Frodo and Sam would have treated Gollum differently had they known his story before meeting him.
[6] In his most recent cinematic incarnation, Frodo is much more generous to Gollum than in Tolkien’s books. Though not the doubting Thomas Sam is, Frodo of the page uses the creature but remains skeptical. Sméagol did, after all, begin his ring-tenure with murder.
[7] It helps that Gandalf put such great stock in the solid goodness and slow incorruptibility of hobbits; that the wizard held out hope, slim though it might be, for Gollum to be cured of the Ring’s hold before the end. To play a part in the battle for Middle Earth.
[8] Of course, fighting monsters, especially those so close to us, has its cost, and Frodo pays heavily. He carries scars inside and out and pains gripping his heart with a perpetual shadow for all his days. Some lessons are harder to bear than others.
[9] Gollum does not have sufficient volition to be actively evil.
[10] See Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963).