Gollum questions.

[TheLostPilgrim]

It is said that prolonged ownership of the Ring will eventually turn one into a wraith. Yet Gollum had the Ring for around 400 years and I am sure used it numerous times in that time--to sneak, to explore, to kill and eat--yet he never became a wraith. Why did he never become a wraith?

Also, was Gollum a Hobbit, or were the Stoors simply the forefathers or cousins of Hobbits in the way that Neanderthals were like humans, but were cousins of us? Or were they actually Hobbits?

Was Gollum at all aware that there was some racial kinship between him and the Hobbits? Or had he even forgotten what exactly he was?

Finally, was there any hope for him to be saved? Was he evil to begin with, or simply weak that the Ring took hold of him so quickly?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

I would say all of your questions are more or less exactly the same as the ones Gandalf answers to Frodo in the second chapter of the Fellowship of the Ring. Especially your questions 1, 3 and 4 are the ones Frodo asks him, or implicitely asks him, and Gandalf replies precisely these exact questions. I think the book, or Gandalf, answers it much better than anyone here could, because if you paraphrase it, you're certain to leave something out.

Your question #2 is effectively answered too, although not as openly... the main trouble comes, I believe, from understanding what one means by the term "Hobbit". If by "Hobbit" you understand only the Hobbits from the Shire, then obviously there is a difference. But effectively, there were the halflings - the Hobbits - who had three branches, one of which were the Stoors, and another were the Harfoots (the Shire-Hobbits). Imagine it the same way there were several kinds of Elves: the High-Elves (Noldor), the Grey Elves, the Wood-elves... yet all were Elves.

The differentiation of the Hobbits into several groups happened only a couple of thousand years before the War of the Ring, so I think you can't even think about the distance similar to Neanderthalians and such.

[jallanite]

Legate of Ammon Lanc well points out where the answers to three of TheLostPilgrim’s questions may be found.

As to the question of whether Sméagol was a Hobbit, Gandalf in his explanation of Sméagol’s origin says:

Long after, but still very long ago, there lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of Wilderland a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind; akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors, for they loved the River, and often swam in it, or made little boats of reeds.

Gandalf is represented here as being somewhat pedantic in his choice of words. Earlier when asked by Frodo how long Gandalf has known what he has related about the Ring, Tolkien gives to Gandalf this reply:

‘Known?’ said Gandalf. ‘I have known much that only the Wise know, Frodo, But if you mean “known about this ring”, well I still do not know, one might say. There is a last test to make. But I no longer doubt my guess.’

Similarly there is no reason to think that Gandalf doubts his guess about Sméagol’s origin. Of course the possibility exists that Sméagol might be of Orkish kindred, or even possibly of another branch of hobitkind than the Stoors, but of a clan who, though not closely related to the Stoors, had developed customs in respect to swimming and boating similar to the later Stoors.

Whether Sméagol thought of himself as a hobbit is doubtful. In Appendix F Tolkien writes:

The origin of the word hobbit was by most forgotten. It seems, however to have been at first a name given to the Harfoots by the Fallohides and Stoors, and to be a worn-down form of a word preserved more fully in Rohan: holbytla ‘hole-builder’.

Sméagol might have thought of himself primarily as a Stoor or a Halfling, Halfling being the normal English version of the true Westron name used for all the folk that were later came to be called hobbits in the Shire and in Buckland and in Breeland.

[Mithalwen]

Would they have referred to themselves as halflings? I suppose it depends on their proximity to other races but I wonder if they thought they were normal and the other races giants.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Would they have referred to themselves as halflings? I suppose it depends on their proximity to other races but I wonder if they thought they were normal and the other races giants.

For what it's worth, the UT section The Hunt For the Ring says that Gollum's perception of his own race was a factor in Sauron not knowing precisely who or where "Baggins" was.

Gollum would not know the term "Hobbit," which was local and not a universal Westron word. He would probably not use "Halfling" since he was one himself, and Hobbits disliked the name.

[Mithalwen]

Thanks inzil, I had an idea there was an issue with the term.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I recalled this statement from Unfinished Tales but did not remember that it occurred there. A search through the indices of some volumes of HoME proved fruitless, so I gave up the search.

Thanks.

Note that in Bree Men were known as “Big Folk” and Hobbits were often known as “Little Folk”. The same terms appear to be sometimes used in the Shire. At least when discussing the Black Rider in the chapter “Three Is Company” Pippin and Frodo both use the term “Big People” and Sam recalls his father using the term “Big Folk”. In the chapter “The Scouring of the Shire” one of the ruffians uses the term “little folk”.