Or do you think he's more of a victim, a hero in a very weird way, or something else entirely? I have my own opinion on this, but I want to hear what you think!
Or do you think he's more of a victim, a hero in a very weird way, or something else entirely? I have my own opinion on this, but I want to hear what you think!
He's a hero because he clashed with the Ring for 500 years.
This is a complicated question. I do not think that Tolkien saw him as a hero, and I think that he did in fact see him as evil. That said, Tolkien was an old-school Catholic who believed in that time-honored paradox of pre-destiny and Free Will. I do see Gollum as a villain, but also as a victim. We do know that nobody could have resisted the Ring forever, but Gollum was not only one of the characters who was weakest against it, it made him into a murderer on Day 1. Did he ever consciously choose to become that weak? No, I don't believe so, so I can't see quite eye to eye with Tolkien. I see Gollum (and all who were tormented or maimed by Melkor) as more of a victim of the all-powerful Eru's negligence or lack of empathy, but we also don't know very much about Gollum's early life....he might've been even more terrible a person than Gandalf's investigations might lead us to think, but maybe he was just an ordinary and fairly innocent child of the Riverfolk. I'm not sure which idea I like less.
How do we know nobody could resist it forever?
Tolkien said so.
Xcept for Tom Bombadil?
After 5 centuries of corruption, his Smeagol side still esurvived. Btw, he is really horrible to look at.
ChXiZh, I'm not so sure. I'm pretty sure that Tom Bombadil actually was the spirit of his land, as Tolkien outlined in his original letters to the publisher, and he simply didn't know that those letters would ever again see the light of day. So, I don't think that the rules about temptation even would have applied to Bombadil. He couldn't 'resist' the ring because there was no actual free will. The only way the Ring could impact Bombadil was by the will of someone who used it.
I consider Gollum to be a villain. Even before he ever laid eyes on the Ring, he was a crafty, cunning sort of creature, and those traits are already easily corruptible. That's why the Ring instantly corrupted him on first sight, whereas for others such as Bilbo and Frodo they were able to resist the Ring for much longer. But Gollum was instantly affected because those tendencies for evil traits were already there.
I don't think that there's one human trait, good or bad, which isn't easily corruptible in some way. Even some of people's noblest tendencies can be used against them, as we saw with characters like Boromir, Turin, and Saruman. Even Galadriel was barely able to turn the Ring down, and Gandalf noted that an otherwise deeply honest Bilbo lying to the Dwarves about how he got the Ring from Day 1 suggested that it was already starting to take hold. The corruption did always seem to start as soon as the person got a hold of the Ring, or perhaps even on exposure, regardless of whom the person was. I would say that genuine craft and cunning are empowering, in general, and there were some other personality traits on which the Ring capititalized. Ambition seemed to be one of its favorites, but it also went after weakness, greed, and (ironically) the desire to protect others. From what we know of Gollum, though, we can summise that the last one probably is not the case, at least not to a large degree. Gollum was implied to be sort of a loner even before he got the Ring, and probably partly because of social deficits, but that question is technically unanswered within the story. We do know that he murdered Deagol, but we also know that he taught his grandmother to suck eggs, which implies (but does not prove) that he actually did care about her to a certain degree. I think that he did, or else why think of it 500 years later? On the other hand, he might have done it simply because it entertained and/or self-validated him to do so. This grandmother was apparently also the one who finally ordered him out of his home, though, so why hold onto a bittersweet memory of being kind to her in an apparently vulnerable position five centuries later if he was only willing to make someone else the bad guy, or if there was nothing in him that deserved something better than being exposed to or corrupted by the One Ring?
I don't think Gollum's a hero, but he's certainly a victim and misunderstood creature. I don't think that he can be painted purely as a villain because Tolkien's cosmology is more complex than that.
JamesBardine, when my mother worked in community health, she would literally visit homes where people put alcohol in their children's bottles to keep them quiet or make them sleep. They've done a lot of research on addiction, showing that there are genetic tendencies to it, and also that lab animals who are kept in healthy conditions are significantly less likely to become addicted to a substance than those which are not. In some cases, people are actually born addicted to substances which their parents used, only they are too young to understand that they are addicted, and it is obviously easier to treat at that developmental stage. Some people also get greater or lesser effect from one substance than others do, and some brains are more resilient than others. I'm not so sure that addiction as a choice, or even evil as a choice, is a useful social model anymore. There are some things which healthy brains at specific developmental stages simply do not do, although a mental illness will not necessarily (and does not usually) create evil behavior. Nobody really free wills their way into being an addict, though.
What do you think?