The foundation and transformation of Sméagol's character and the role of the Ring

[Leaf]

I'd like to continue the ongoing discussion in the Bilbo's treachery -thread. Since our discussion went into off topic territory I opened this new thread, as Pitchwife suggested.

We were discussing the nature the importance of the Ring in Sméagol's transformation into Gollum. Here's the original thread and the last post on this topic for future reference:

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

You're right to disagree with me, Leaf ; in my desire to stress the element of contest I neglected the element of first sight vs having been under the influence of the Ring for months.


Inzil, I'm not sure there is such a thing as a person's nature divorced of all environmental influences, but I won't belabour that point. I did, however, look up what Gandalf has to say about Sméagol's character before the finding of the Ring:

None of these interests of Sméagol's seem particulary evil to me - aren't tunnelling and burrowing pretty normal hobbitish activities? It is, of course, to be noted that he lost interest in the beauty of nature, which is never a good sign in Tolkien. But it's a long way from there to murdering his best friend over a ring, isn't it?

I'm not sure we should keep discussing this here (if at all), because, well, once upon a time this thread used to have a topic, but I think Leaf has hit on a question that is not as easy as it looks.

[Leaf]

My original point was that it was mainly Sméagol's character, and not the influence of Ring, which triggered Sméagol's decision to murder his companion, Déagol, immediately after seeing the Ring for the first time. I came to this conclusion because I found it to be odd, that this is indeed the only case of holdup murder in the history of the Ring.

This make sense if you look at it at a contentual point of view. I compared different scenarios of people meeting the current ring-bearer and their outcome purely on a innerwordly basis. But there's a problem: This method necessarily tries to level out contradictions to archive a logical harmony, of sorts, for the events within the fictional world.

If you look at the Sméagol/Déagol-incident from more of a literarily point of view, one might come to a different conclusion. The function of Gandalf's account on Gollum's back-story (The shadow of the past) of how he acquired the Ring might very well have been to illustrate the corrupting and dangerous nature of the Ring. The reader gets a very good impression of the evil nature of the power of the Ring. After all the chapter is about this very subject. It is only consistent that the Ring seems to be so much more powerful, in that regard.

The problem is that this concept would directly contradict a story about a Fellowhip, at it's core. If Tolkien would have kept this level of intensity no story about friendship and holding together would have been possible. Frodo, essentially, would have to be on his own from the very beginning.

[Inziladun]

Gandalf makes it clear that Gollum is to be pitied, but he does not offer him absolution.

He said to Frodo that the prime reason Bilbo had been able to resist the Ring's influence as long as he did was because he had begun his "ownership" of it with pity and mercy, not killing Gollum. Bilbo, though of the same kind as Gollum, had a very different reaction to choices given him when the Ring crossed his path. Bilbo could have easily killed Gollum, destroying the one witness who could ever have contradicted any story Bilbo chose to concoct. But he did not, and character must be the answer why.

[Pitchwife]

It's quite obviously in my opinion that Tolkien meant to juxtapose Sméagol taking the Ring by murder and Bilbo beginning his ownership with mercy, and that he expected us to chalk the difference up to their respective characters, as you say, Inzil; and I always assumed that Sméagol was a rather rotten tomato before he ever touched the Ring. I was therefore quite surprised to find that what little we're told about Sméagol the Stoor preceding first Ring contact in the passage I quoted in the post Leaf linked doesn't quite bear this out as far as I can see.

So either Tolkien always imagined Sméagol as a morally depraved individual who only needed a little external stimulus to commit murder but failed to describe him so, or he wrote the murder scene to illustrate the evil power of the Ring, as Leaf suggests, but seeing that a Ring this powerful would collide with the rest of the story he came to see Sméagol as increasingly evil to begin with and coloured him so in later notes and letters.

Originally Posted by Leaf

The problem is that this concept would directly contradict a story about a Fellowhip, at it's core. If Tolkien would have kept this level of intensity no story about friendship and holding together would have been possible. Frodo, essentially, would have to be on his own from the very beginning.

You know, I could imagine a story about a Fellowship that would be like movie-Frodo's nightmare: a Fellowship where every member is tempted by the Ring and scheming against the others, some of them maybe pulling themselves back from the brink of betrayal and forming shaky alliances to protect the Ringbearer from the others... but in the end he would have to leave them for their own good. It would have been a much different story from the one Tolkien wrote, and I'm glad he gave us the story he did instead, but it could be a hell of a yarn if done by the right author.

(The somewhat reduced population of active Downers these days makes it a little difficult to spread out reputation enough to rep every post I'd like to, but I really like your thinking in this post and some other recent ones, Leaf.)

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Tolkien

The domination of the Ring was much too strong for the mean soul of Sméagol. But he would have never had to endure it if he had not become a mean sort of thief before it crossed his path.

--Letter to Michael Straight, 1956

Originally Posted by Tolkien

A trace of this can be seen in the account of Sméagol and Déagol – modified by the individual characters of these rather miserable specimens. Déagol, evidently a relative (as no doubt all the members of the small community were), had already given his customary present to Sméagol, he grudged it. Sméagol, being meaner and greedier, tried to use the 'birthday' as an excuse for an act of tyranny. 'Because I wants it' was his frank statement of his chief claim. But he also implied that D's gift was a poor and insufficient token: hence D's retort that on the contrary it was more than he could afford.

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I do not suppose that [Sméagol] gave any presents on his birthday, save (grudgingly) the tribute to his 'grandmother'. Fish probably. One of the reasons, maybe, for the expedition. It would have been just like Sméagol to give fish, actually caught by Déagol!

-- Letter to A.C. Nunn, 1958/9