A Long-Expected Party and The Shadow of the Past paint a very ugly portrait of Gollum. The one thing that runs counter to this is Gandalf's attempt, fiercely resisted by Frodo, to draw a line from one hobbit to the next, from Sméagol to Bilbo to Frodo, all linked inexorably by the devouring corruption of the Ring. Gollum's is a 'sad story...and it might have happened to others, even to some hobbits I have known' (FR 1.ii.54). By whom of course the wizard means Bilbo, but his concern is not limited to him alone. For years now he has been concerned for Frodo, since what might have happened to the elder Baggins may yet befall the younger (FR 1.ii.49). What saved Bilbo, Gandalf has no doubt, was the pity he showed Gollum, and so for Frodo's sake -- not solely but in particular: 'the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least' (emphasis added) -- he tries to evoke the same pity from him (FR 1.ii.59).
Yet Gandalf fails. Frodo neither feels pity nor wishes to. Even his concession that Gandalf may not be wrong about Bilbo's not killing Gollum is hedged about with qualifications: 'All the same...even if Bilbo could not kill Gollum...' (FR 1.ii.60). All the same? Even if? Could not? That's a bit of a dodgy retreat from '[w]hat a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!' (FR 1.ii.59, emphasis added). Frodo's fear of Sauron and loathing of Gollum prevail. The Tale moves on, and the subject of Gollum vanishes from it for a long time. Six months pass in narrative time, and 190 pages (FR 1.ii.60; 2.ii.249), before anyone mentions him again. In the press of events his image fades from the reader's mind.
Since, however, pity will prove to be of the greatest importance, we will do well to give it a moment's thought before we move on. In our world pity often comes as the harbinger of rationalization. 'Sad stories' like Gollum's are adduced to argue that the villain is also a victim whose own sufferings mitigate in some degree his guilt and fitness for punishment. Not so here. In this Tale, the Pity that really matters is not the kind that compassion beclouds or disgust taints -- of both of which we will see examples. Gandalf recognizes Gollum's crimes and admits the justice of Frodo's assertion that Gollum 'deserves death' (FR 1.ii.59).1 In the eyes of the wizard, it seems, all acts, just and unjust, are balanced against each other. If one cannot save from death those who do not deserve to die, it may be better to withhold the punishment of those who do not deserve to live. This is so even when the most his pity can say is that, because of the evil and malice within Gollum, there is little or no hope that he might be cured (FR 1.ii.55, 59). It is the pity of a clear vision undeceived. But it, too, will seem as forgotten as Gollum by the time he is next mentioned in The Council of Elrond.
There, in Rivendell, Bilbo speaks of him, and in doing so reminds us of the effect the Ring has had on them both.
'Very well,' said Bilbo. 'I will do as you bid. But I will now tell the true story, and if some have heard me tell it otherwise' -- he looked sidelong at Glóin -- 'I ask them to forget it and forgive me. I only wished to claim the treasure as my very own in those days, and to be rid of the name of thief that was put on me. But perhaps I understand things a little better now. Anyway, this is what happened.'
To some there Bilbo's tale was wholly new, and they listened with amazement while the old hobbit, actually not at all displeased, recounted his adventure with Gollum, at full length. He did not omit a single riddle, He would have given also an account of his party and disappearance from the Shire, if he had been allowed; but Elrond raised his hand.(FR 2.ii.249)
How different Bilbo is now from the night of his birthday party, seventeen years earlier in narrative time. Then, as we saw, he revealed much about Gollum by acting and speaking like him. He was full of the rationalizations which he now disavows -- that the Ring was his very own and he had not stolen it -- and of a rather savage willingness to defend his ownership, by murder if necessary. Now he complies with Elrond's bidding with a readiness, and apologizes to Glóin with a grace, that bear little resemblance to his behavior his last night in Bag End, when he accused Gandalf of wanting his Ring for himself and set his hand to the hilt of his sword. The difference is that now he is free of the Ring. The song and the laugh with which he left Bag End signaled more than a momentary relief.
'Have you got it here?' he asked in a whisper. 'I can't help feeling curious, you know, after all I've heard. I should very much like just to peep at it again.'
'Yes, I've got it,' answered Frodo, feeling a strange reluctance. 'It looks just the same as ever it did.'
'Well, I should just like to see it for a moment,' said Bilbo.
When he had dressed, Frodo found that while he slept the Ring had been hung about his neck on a new chain, light but strong. Slowly he drew it out. Bilbo put out his hand. But Frodo quickly drew back the Ring. To his distress and amazement he found that he was no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands. He felt a desire to strike him.
The music and singing round them seemed to falter and a silence fell. Bilbo looked quickly at Frodo's face and passed his hand across his eyes. 'I understand now,' he said. 'Put it away! I am sorry; sorry you have come in for this burden; sorry about everything. Don't adventures ever have an end? I suppose not. Someone else always has to carry on the story. Well, it can't be helped. I wonder if it's any good trying to finish my book? But don't let's worry about it now – let's have some real News! Tell me all about the Shire!'
Frodo hid the Ring away, and the shadow passed leaving hardly a shred of memory. The light and music of Rivendell was about him again. Bilbo smiled and laughed happily....(FR 2.i.232)
Since the scene is told from Frodo's perspective, we can only speculate on what Bilbo saw in his face in that moment. Perhaps a reflection of himself seventeen years earlier, perhaps of Gollum sixty years before that. But he seems to guess what Frodo is experiencing, from a telltale gesture: Frodo pulls his hand suddenly back rather than let Bilbo touch the Ring, almost the same movement Bilbo had made the very last instant he held it and was in the act of trying to let it go (FR 1.i.35).
What we don't need to speculate about is that, as Bilbo has grown less like Gollum through freedom from the Ring, possession of it has made Frodo resemble him more. He is at first reluctant to let Bilbo even see the Ring, but the instant Bilbo tries to do more than 'just peep at it again' and stretches out his hand to touch it, Frodo sees him as a 'creature' -- precisely what he had called Gollum (FR 1.ii.59) when he wished Bilbo had killed him -- Bilbo, whom he now sees as a threat, and feels the urge to strike.2 In fact the vision he sees of Bilbo, 'with a hungry face and bony, groping hands,' resembles no one so much as Gollum, though the first time reader of The Lord of the Rings who has not read The Hobbit does not know this yet.3
It is a moment of darkness in the House of Elrond, the last place we would expect it, but that only reveals more clearly the shadow the Ring casts over its bearer. As the music and light seem to die around them, the lesson we saw in A Long-Expected Party is repeated and extended. Not only will the ties of trust and old friendship fail if the ring-bearer feels the Ring is threatened, but so will the bonds of kinship and love. Pity saved Bilbo, just barely; murder doomed Sméagol, almost certainly. Frodo, who held it a pity that Bilbo had shown mercy, is somewhere in between. This not only bodes ill for Frodo, but indirectly helps to maintain the ugly portrait of Gollum we have already been shown. Putting both of Bilbo's statements together we may also see that his new understanding reaches all the way back to his earliest moments in possession of the Ring. It comprehends both his own behavior (even last night when he asked just to see the Ring, then reached for it at once), and Frodo's, which is so like his own, and evidently also Gollum's.4
When Elrond cuts Bilbo off, the old hobbit has just returned to the point in his tale where A Long-Expected Party begins. Perhaps it is no accident that the tale of Bilbo gives way to the tale of Gandalf and Aragorn's hunt for Gollum at this point rather than any other. For Bilbo is now as free from the Ring as he can ever be.5 It is time, as he put it to Frodo in the passage just quoted above, for 'someone else...to carry on the story.' For the reader Bilbo has come full circle back to the kindly and jocular character we met before he put on the Ring at the party and vanished, revealing the 'creature' who threatened Gandalf with a sword (FR 1.i.34) and whom Frodo thought he glimpsed just last night.6
It is also no accident that when Aragorn tells his part of the tale, he describes a Gollum we have seen before, in Gandalf's description of him to Frodo (FR 1.ii.52-55), head always down, eyes always down, 'nosing about the banks,' precisely what he was doing before Déagol found the Ring and he killed him for it.
There also seems little room for anything resembling pity, but again Aragorn surprises us. When Boromir comments that Gollum is 'small, but great in mischief,' and asks 'to what doom you put him,' Strider replies:
Nor should we neglect Strider's rebuke of Legolas in lofty, formal language as part of the portrayal of Gollum. Though it might come as a surprise, given Tolkien's love of words native and archaic, 'rue' is a word he uses sparingly, reserving it for matters of serious regret. The word appears only three more times in The Lord of the Rings, and not again after the present scene until The Return of the King. Speaking of the forlorn defense of Osgiliath, Faramir says: 'Today we may make the Enemy pay ten times our loss at the passage and yet rue the exchange' (5.iv.816). The Rohirrim on the Field of Pelennor, when they believe that Éowyn is dead, tell Prince Imrahil: '...we knew naught of her riding until this hour, and greatly we rue it' (5.vi.845). And Beregond, as he contemplates the body of the porter at the Steward's Door, states: 'This deed I shall ever rue...but a madness of haste was upon me, and he would not listen, but drew sword against me' (5.vii.855).
But the sting is in the tail. 'We shall rue it bitterly, I fear' expresses disappointment and the expectation of evil. But '[h]ow came the folk of Thranduil to fail in their trust?' is not merely an archaic way of saying 'oh, no, how did this happen? And after all the trouble I went through to catch him?' It's a reproach, and a demand for accountability. It reveals just how dangerous Aragorn thinks Gollum is.
And a significant part of this peril -- but one easily missed at this point because we have not seen him yet ourselves -- is the cunning with which Gollum tries to use the misery of his life to play upon the hearts of those inclined to pity him. We have seen hints of this in Gandalf's account of him to Frodo (FR 1.ii.54-57), and we will see it throughout Book 4. Here he treacherously uses the 'over-kindliness' of the Elves against them, who, hoping for his cure, allow him outside under guard. While there he somehow manages to contact spies of the Enemy and is rescued by Orcs in a bloody affray.
As if being rescued by Orcs weren't telling enough, two details are of particular note here. First, the notion that Gollum likes to climb trees in daylight and feel the breeze is almost wholly at odds with the portrait of him given by Gandalf. It is rather 'roots and beginnings' that interested him, and the secrets buried in darkness beneath the mountains (FR 1.ii.53-54). Second, Legolas' statement that by letting Gollum out of his dark cell the Elves were trying to keep him from 'fall[ing] back into his old black thoughts' (FR 2.ii.255), suggests that Gollum had shown improvement: 'fall back' makes no sense otherwise. But Gollum has that within which passeth show: an 'evil part' that would only become 'angrier' if any of this apparent change for the better in him were real (FR 1.ii.55). The details of Legolas' story make it seem far more likely that Gollum was telling the Elves what they wanted to hear in order to cozen them, but his character, as Book Four will reveal, is so complex that we cannot rule out the flicker of hope amid the darkness that Gandalf allowed for.
The final element here is Glóin's rebuke, which bookends Aragorn's, and by scornfully stressing the 'tenderness' of the Elves' treatment of Gollum underlines both the folly of pity beclouded by compassion and the hideous treachery of Gollum, who will twist the kindness of others to his own ends. That he might do so even when that kindness has had some positive effect on him is part of the dark complexity of his character. It has been suggested before. Consider Gandalf's statement that meeting Bilbo might have stirred pleasant memories for Gollum, memories of a time before the Ring (FR 1.ii.55). Yet he was ready to kill him to regain it (FR 1.i.34). Consider also how Bilbo acts towards Gandalf, with whom he has been friends for over sixty years, when he feels the Ring is threatened (FR 1.i.33-34), and Frodo's reaction when Bilbo tried to touch the Ring the night before this council. In their behavior we see reflections of Gollum's.9
In The Council of Elrond we see the portrait of Gollum begun in the first two chapters enlarged by added emphasis on his cunning and his treachery, on the strength his malice bestows upon him, on his links to the Enemy, and on the penalty one may have to pay for 'overkindliness' to a creature so corrupt. That Gollum is so clever he made fools of the Elves and escaped them must have come as a bit of a shock to Frodo, who was incredulous at the idea that the Elves had not put him to death.10 Another reliable witness with first hand experience of Gollum comes forward in Aragorn, to confirm what Gandalf has already said about him. Again, as in A Long-Expected Party we see Gollum's character illuminated by comparison with the changes in Bilbo, and now, too, Frodo.
If anything, the portrayal has grown darker since A Long-Expected Party and The Shadow of the Past. In a sense this is entirely fitting since Gollum first nears the stage in the darkness of Moria, to which we shall next turn our attention.
When Elrond cuts Bilbo off, the old hobbit has just returned to the point in his tale where A Long-Expected Party begins. Perhaps it is no accident that the tale of Bilbo gives way to the tale of Gandalf and Aragorn's hunt for Gollum at this point rather than any other. For Bilbo is now as free from the Ring as he can ever be.5 It is time, as he put it to Frodo in the passage just quoted above, for 'someone else...to carry on the story.' For the reader Bilbo has come full circle back to the kindly and jocular character we met before he put on the Ring at the party and vanished, revealing the 'creature' who threatened Gandalf with a sword (FR 1.i.34) and whom Frodo thought he glimpsed just last night.6
It is also no accident that when Aragorn tells his part of the tale, he describes a Gollum we have seen before, in Gandalf's description of him to Frodo (FR 1.ii.52-55), head always down, eyes always down, 'nosing about the banks,' precisely what he was doing before Déagol found the Ring and he killed him for it.
'At once I took my leave of Denethor, [said Gandalf,] but even as I went northwards, messages came to me out of Lorien that Aragorn had passed that way, and that he had found the creature called Gollum. Therefore I went first to meet him and hear his tale. Into what deadly perils he had gone alone I dared not
guess.'
'There is little need to tell of them,' said Aragorn. 'If a man must needs walk in sight of the Black Gate, or tread the deadly flowers of Morgul Vale, then perils he will have. I, too, despaired at last, and I began my homeward journey. And then, by fortune, I came suddenly on what I sought: the marks of soft feet beside a muddy pool. But now the trail was fresh and swift, and it led not to Mordor but away. Along the skirts of the Dead Marshes I followed it, and then I had him. Lurking by a stagnant mere, peering in the water as the dark eve fell, I caught him, Gollum. He was covered with green slime. He will never love me, I fear; for he bit me, and I was not gentle. Nothing more did I ever get from his mouth than the marks of his teeth. I deemed it the worst part of all my journey, the road back, watching him day and night, making him walk before me with a halter on his neck, gagged, until he was tamed by lack of drink and food, driving him ever towards Mirkwood. I brought him there at last and gave him to the Elves, for we had agreed that this should be done; and I was glad to be rid of his company, for he stank. For my part I hope never to look upon him again; but Gandalf came and endured long speech with him.'From beginning to end Strider's loathing for Gollum is made clear. Nothing in it inclines us to disagree with him; and all we have learned of Aragorn so far tells us to trust what he says. With his first hand account, he corroborates Gandalf's damning assertion that Gollum had been to Mordor and was on his way back, on some errand of mischief as the wizard thought (FR 1.ii.59). The time Aragorn spent with Gollum on the way to Mirkwood was 'the worst part of all my journey,' worse, that is, than 'walk[ing] in sight of the Black Gate, or tread[ing] the deadly flowers of Morgul Vale.' And after Gollum bit him, Aragorn began to treat him as if he were an animal, using a 'halter' to 'drive' him, and using hunger and thirst to 'tame' him.7 The harshness, indeed the brutality, of Aragorn's treatment of Gollum is surprising, but such is the opinion that the narrative has given us of him and of Gollum that there seems scant room for doubting that Gollum deserved what he got.8
(FR 2.ii.253)
There also seems little room for anything resembling pity, but again Aragorn surprises us. When Boromir comments that Gollum is 'small, but great in mischief,' and asks 'to what doom you put him,' Strider replies:
'He is in prison, but no worse,' said Aragorn. 'He had suffered much. There is no doubt that he was tormented, and the fear of Sauron lies black on his heart. Still I for one am glad that he is safely kept by the watchful Elves of Mirkwood. His malice is great and gives him a strength hardly to be believed in one so lean and withered. He could work much mischief still, if he were free. And I do not doubt that he was allowed to leave Mordor on some evil errand.'
'Alas! alas!' cried Legolas, and in his fair elvish face there was great distress. 'The tidings that I was sent to bring must now be told. They are not good, but only here have I learned how evil they may seem to this company. Sméagol, who is now called Gollum, has escaped.'
'Escaped?' cried Aragorn. 'That is ill news indeed. We shall all rue it bitterly, I fear. How came the folk of Thranduil to fail in their trust?'
'Not through lack of watchfulness,' said Legolas; 'but perhaps through over-kindliness. And we fear that the prisoner had aid from others, and that more is known of our doings than we could wish. We guarded this creature day and night, at Gandalf's bidding, much though we wearied of the task. But Gandalf bade us hope still for his cure, and we had not the heart to keep him ever in dungeons under the earth, where he would fall back into his old black thoughts.
'You were less tender to me,' said Glóin with a flash of his eyes as old memories were stirred of his imprisonment in the deep places of the Elven-king's halls.Like Gandalf, Aragorn can see the suffering Gollum has endured. Perhaps he would even call it 'a sad story' as Gandalf has done, but he is also in no way deceived about the 'malice' that drives and strengthens him, and the evil he could yet do. Just as Gandalf did in The Shadow of the Past Strider mentions Gollum in close connection with Sauron. In his eyes, Gollum's suffering at Sauron's hands and black fear of him made him more than just a prisoner. To some extent he had become a servant of Mordor, set loose for an evil purpose. And the statement Aragorn makes, finding the source of Gollum's strength in his malice, echoes words that Gandalf had only just uttered about The Dark Lord himself: '[this Ring is] the treasure of the Enemy, fraught with all his malice, and in it lies a great part of his strength of old' (FR 2.ii.254).
(FR 2.ii.255)
Nor should we neglect Strider's rebuke of Legolas in lofty, formal language as part of the portrayal of Gollum. Though it might come as a surprise, given Tolkien's love of words native and archaic, 'rue' is a word he uses sparingly, reserving it for matters of serious regret. The word appears only three more times in The Lord of the Rings, and not again after the present scene until The Return of the King. Speaking of the forlorn defense of Osgiliath, Faramir says: 'Today we may make the Enemy pay ten times our loss at the passage and yet rue the exchange' (5.iv.816). The Rohirrim on the Field of Pelennor, when they believe that Éowyn is dead, tell Prince Imrahil: '...we knew naught of her riding until this hour, and greatly we rue it' (5.vi.845). And Beregond, as he contemplates the body of the porter at the Steward's Door, states: 'This deed I shall ever rue...but a madness of haste was upon me, and he would not listen, but drew sword against me' (5.vii.855).
But the sting is in the tail. 'We shall rue it bitterly, I fear' expresses disappointment and the expectation of evil. But '[h]ow came the folk of Thranduil to fail in their trust?' is not merely an archaic way of saying 'oh, no, how did this happen? And after all the trouble I went through to catch him?' It's a reproach, and a demand for accountability. It reveals just how dangerous Aragorn thinks Gollum is.
And a significant part of this peril -- but one easily missed at this point because we have not seen him yet ourselves -- is the cunning with which Gollum tries to use the misery of his life to play upon the hearts of those inclined to pity him. We have seen hints of this in Gandalf's account of him to Frodo (FR 1.ii.54-57), and we will see it throughout Book 4. Here he treacherously uses the 'over-kindliness' of the Elves against them, who, hoping for his cure, allow him outside under guard. While there he somehow manages to contact spies of the Enemy and is rescued by Orcs in a bloody affray.
As if being rescued by Orcs weren't telling enough, two details are of particular note here. First, the notion that Gollum likes to climb trees in daylight and feel the breeze is almost wholly at odds with the portrait of him given by Gandalf. It is rather 'roots and beginnings' that interested him, and the secrets buried in darkness beneath the mountains (FR 1.ii.53-54). Second, Legolas' statement that by letting Gollum out of his dark cell the Elves were trying to keep him from 'fall[ing] back into his old black thoughts' (FR 2.ii.255), suggests that Gollum had shown improvement: 'fall back' makes no sense otherwise. But Gollum has that within which passeth show: an 'evil part' that would only become 'angrier' if any of this apparent change for the better in him were real (FR 1.ii.55). The details of Legolas' story make it seem far more likely that Gollum was telling the Elves what they wanted to hear in order to cozen them, but his character, as Book Four will reveal, is so complex that we cannot rule out the flicker of hope amid the darkness that Gandalf allowed for.
The final element here is Glóin's rebuke, which bookends Aragorn's, and by scornfully stressing the 'tenderness' of the Elves' treatment of Gollum underlines both the folly of pity beclouded by compassion and the hideous treachery of Gollum, who will twist the kindness of others to his own ends. That he might do so even when that kindness has had some positive effect on him is part of the dark complexity of his character. It has been suggested before. Consider Gandalf's statement that meeting Bilbo might have stirred pleasant memories for Gollum, memories of a time before the Ring (FR 1.ii.55). Yet he was ready to kill him to regain it (FR 1.i.34). Consider also how Bilbo acts towards Gandalf, with whom he has been friends for over sixty years, when he feels the Ring is threatened (FR 1.i.33-34), and Frodo's reaction when Bilbo tried to touch the Ring the night before this council. In their behavior we see reflections of Gollum's.9
In The Council of Elrond we see the portrait of Gollum begun in the first two chapters enlarged by added emphasis on his cunning and his treachery, on the strength his malice bestows upon him, on his links to the Enemy, and on the penalty one may have to pay for 'overkindliness' to a creature so corrupt. That Gollum is so clever he made fools of the Elves and escaped them must have come as a bit of a shock to Frodo, who was incredulous at the idea that the Elves had not put him to death.10 Another reliable witness with first hand experience of Gollum comes forward in Aragorn, to confirm what Gandalf has already said about him. Again, as in A Long-Expected Party we see Gollum's character illuminated by comparison with the changes in Bilbo, and now, too, Frodo.
If anything, the portrayal has grown darker since A Long-Expected Party and The Shadow of the Past. In a sense this is entirely fitting since Gollum first nears the stage in the darkness of Moria, to which we shall next turn our attention.
_________________________________
2 'Creature' is a word used of Gollum far more often than of any other being in The Lord of the Rings. See Again That Vile Creature, With A Special Appearance by Grendel. Frodo has a similar experience with Sam in The Tower of Cirith Ungol (RK 6.i.911-912).
3 As I discussed elsewhere, the portrayal of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings must stand on its own merits. Nor can we assume that the first time reader will have read The Hobbit or even the parts of the prologue that mention Gollum. I will be discussing The Hobbit and the Prologue in Gollum before The Taming of Sméagol (V) later this year.
4 Does his understanding here reach back to his moment of pity for Gollum, which began with 'a sudden understanding' (The Hobbit 97)?
5 Even near the end, after the Ring has gone into the fire, Bilbo is not finally and wholly free of the it. He again expresses a desire to see it when Frodo stops in Rivendell on his way back to the Shire (RK 6.vi.987).
6 In The Shadow of the Past (FR i.ii.48-49) Gandalf says that Bilbo felt better as soon as he gave up the Ring and that he stopped worrying about him once he did so. He also points out, however, that 'a lot of time' would have to go by before he could safely look upon it, and that Bilbo's giving up the Ring of his own free will made a crucial difference. Obviously Gollum did not do so, nor in the end will Frodo. This does not augur well for their chances of recovery.
7 That he says he 'tamed' him is interesting in view of Frodo's later attempt to do the same in Book Four. As the testimony of Legolas will reveal, Aragorn, like Frodo, never did more than subdue him.
8 I have always taken the words 'I was not gentle' to imply that he beat Gollum, since they seem to describe his immediate response to being bitten rather than to look forward to what he did later. With '[n]othing more did I ever get from him....' Aragorn seems to begin a new thought. Marching someone hundreds of miles, bound and gagged, and withholding food and water to make them compliant is extremely harsh treatment. Gollum had no fond memory of Aragorn (TT 4.iii.643). For more on this journey, described as 'not much short of nine hundred miles, and this Aragorn accomplished with weariness in fifty days,' see UT 342-43. With weariness indeed.
9 As Gandalf clearly suggests when Bilbo calls the Ring his Precious: 'It has been called that before...but not by you' (FR 1.i.33). For discussion see here.
10 'Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live after all those horrible deeds?' (FR 1.ii.59). Note how the commas set off and emphasize 'and the Elves' by introducing the pause of incredulity.
