tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548876397286393746.post4733031025768881199..comments2024-03-22T08:47:33.246-04:00Comments on Alas, not me: Gollum before The Taming of Sméagol (V)Thomas Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11645380693097266173noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548876397286393746.post-41662907191525983242017-08-11T10:08:11.920-04:002017-08-11T10:08:11.920-04:00Hi Tom,
Coming back to this over a year later, tw...Hi Tom,<br /><br />Coming back to this over a year later, two quibbles.<br /><br />(1) "he [Gollum] does not seem to be one of the original residents of the tunnels". I think this incorrect in light of this sentence from the original edition:<br /><br />"Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before the goblins came, and he was cut off from his friends far under under the mountains."<br /><br />(2) I think I disagree with this:<br /><br />"...there is a severe dissonance between the two parts of the wager: Bilbo is supper, or gets a present; Bilbo is supper, or gets shown out. Having introduced us to Gollum by first indicating his strangeness and monstrosity, and by then tempering that impression through the suggestion that he and Bilbo are not so different after all, Tolkien now brings that strangeness and monstrosity rushing back again with the shockingly unequal terms of the contest."<br /><br />Original edition: Gollum is a miserable creature who lives alone on a slimy rock. But he has one - and only one - wonderful possession - his magical ring, which makes one invisible. His terms for the contest are: supper (i.e. your life) or the only thing of value I have in all the world. It is not so unequal.<br /><br />Revised edition: is even less unequal because, unless Gollum shows Bilbo the way out, Bilbo will die in the goblin tunnels. So the wager = your life, or your life.<br /><br />Simon J. Cookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01308432070465418339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548876397286393746.post-22040670392949420862016-04-25T18:34:47.739-04:002016-04-25T18:34:47.739-04:00Thank you, Simon. I was also thinking about Grende...Thank you, Simon. I was also thinking about Grendel as a descendant of Cain, but I had not considered it the way you have done. Interesting. I think what you suggest works much better once Gollum becomes a hobbit.Tom Hillmanhttp://alasnotme.blogspot.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7548876397286393746.post-8702470808906268642016-04-25T08:58:48.286-04:002016-04-25T08:58:48.286-04:00Wonderful stuff, as always TH. I'm still diges...Wonderful stuff, as always TH. I'm still digesting the above thoughts on how the different versions bring out the nature of the Ring, so please forgive the following, which thoughts were awoken by, but is really a digression from your post. Your early discussion of Gollum as, but not quite a monster brought to mind Grendel and the idea in Beowulf that the monsters are descended from Cain - that would actually make the monsters a cast out branch of the human family. But what then struck me - and it is such an obvious thought that it cannot be new - is that Gollum is like Cain, that is, a murderer of his kin who is cast out from his family (if not exactly for the crime of murder, which is not discovered, but at least in the wake of it). So - to bring this back to your own themes above - Bilbo's meeting with Gollum has something in of our meeting a long lost branch of the family descended from a notorious black sheep (who we can perhaps have pity upon and embrace) and our meeting with the likes of Grendel (with whom there can only be a fight to the death).Simon Cookhttp://yemachine.com/noreply@blogger.com