Oh, How The Mighty Fall...

into the fires of mount doom, RIP

Warning! This post contains spoilers for the ENTIRE Lord of the Rings Trilogy!

One thing we know for certain about me is that I love to humanize things. I love to take characters that maybe don’t deserve much sympathy and figure out how to feel bad about them. You already know that my favorite member of the fellowship is Boromir, and I’ve got a particular soft spot for the likes of Grendel and his mother. So that’s exactly what we’re doing this week!

I’ll begin with an anecdote.

My lovely partner, Riley, watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy (the movies, she’s never read the books) for the first time about two years ago. Over all, she loved them. She cried like a baby at the end (and various parts throughout), and feels genuinely more satisfied with herself after having seen them.

The one thing she simply could not get over was our dear friend Sméagol. Gollum. The irredeemable (?). Literally every time he came on screen, she would be immediately overcome with anger in an almost hilarious way. When asked to provide a quote for today’s Substack, she had the following to say:

“I hate him. I hate him so much. When he fell into that fucking lava, I have never felt more joy. I savor the thought of his flesh melting away. He’s so ugly and stupid, good riddance.” - Riley Kinard

So naturally, I had to spend this post talking about Gollum.

(But also my GOD isn’t Andy Serkis just amazing?)

What follows will be a brief examination of Gollum’s life, followed by some thoughts about why I think Gollum deserves more credit than he receives. Will Riley ever agree with me? Absolutely not. I have no hopes for that. But I hope that this post will bring to light some alternative opinions on everyone’s least favorite little dude, and answer the question:

Is Gollum actually the most successful ring-bearer simply due to the combination of his Hobbit lineage in addition to his selfishness?

• We know that our man was born a Hobbit, despite his appearance and general…shitty personality.

• One day in his sad little life, he was given birthday present by his friend Déagol. This was purportedly a very cheap present that he was greatly disappointed by, but took it anyway. because we know our man loves presents and trinkets like any Hobbit would!

• Later on, Sméagol and Déagol went fishing together! Déagol fell in, where he found the ring at the bottom of the lake.

• When Déagol came back up, Sméagol saw the ring and demanded it as a birthday present (the first sign of the Ring’s influence on him) and then murdered the shit out of Déagol when he said no (Holy Strangulation, Batman!)

• Sméagol used the ring in malicious ways, to steal from other Hobbits and generally act like a shithead. They exiled him for this, because, I mean, yeah. If someone’s being a shit, block them. They also gave him the nickname Gollum here.

• Four hundred years of exile and influence from the ring and the ring alone twisted his psyche and his physicality, turning him into the Gollum we know today. He lived on a small island in a subterranean lake, eating raw fish and sometimes Goblins!

• After a while, the ring gets stolen by our boy Bilbo. You can read a whole book about this.

• Gollum/Sméagol tried to follow Bilbo, which led to various other adventures! He met Shelob (icon of a woman), and was captured by Sauron for a brief period of time, where he went even MORE mad (if you can conceive of it!)

• He escaped, only to be captured by Aragorn, who turned him over to Gandalf, who tried to get answers out of him but because Gollum is crazy and lonely, he got nothing. Gollum got away.

• After that, he hid in Moria until he picked up the scent of the new ring-bearer, Frodo! He followed them for a while, Frodo spared his life, more things happened, you’re aware of all of this (I hope.)

• Frodo’s kindness shifted something in him, letting him become more Sméagol than Gollum.

• More things happen, there’s a little more back and forth, he continues to follow Sam and Frodo to try to get the ring back, until eventually he leads Frodo and Sam to Shelob’s lair (my queen).

• They fight, but eventually Frodo and Sam escape Shelob’s lair and against all odds make it up Mount Doom. Gollum follows them, because of course he does.

• They fight for the ring at the top of Mount Doom, and Gollum technically gets it, but he falls into the fires of Mount Doom with the ring on his finger.

Does Gollum get what he wants? Does he win in the end? And back to my first question: Is Gollum actually the most successful ring-bearer simply due to the combination of his Hobbit lineage in addition to his selfishness?

I think the answer is actually yes?

Hear me out, okay.

For the most part, the ring-bearers have been overcome with the desire to corrupt. It turns you into something like Sauron over a prolonged period of time, and, like men and elves and dwarves, causes you to seek more and more power.

But that didn’t happen to Sméagol. Simply because of his exile and his selfishness, instead of seeking more power, he just wanted the ring all to himself. He didn’t want anyone to know that he had it. He was exiled, which wasn’t a problem because he was able to sustain himself, and he didn’t really want to bother anyone as long as they didn’t bother him (I’m looking at you, Bilbo).

We know that Hobbits are historically good ring-bearers because of their ability to resist temptation, but I’m arguing here that Sméagol was actually the perfect ring-bearer, because not only was he a Hobbit, but the only nastiness within him that the ring could exploit was his selfish nature.

I think that while most people might think that Gollum is terrible and nasty and awful, maybe he’s somewhere in the middle on the whole spectrum of Good to Evil. He’s capable of selfish, terrible actions, (RIP our boy Déagol, who haunted Sméagol’s mind until the day Sméagol died) but over all, he’s capable of good, and even becomes more of himself with Frodo’s kindness.

I’m not quite sure of how to conclude this particular post, but I hope that maybe it expands your mind past what you might’ve thought about this poor creature. At the very least, I do pity him.

---

Thanks for reading! This week, I’ll leave you a really fun behind-the-scenes video of the creation of Gollum on camera. I hope you like it!