Recently I was asked to present a 30 minute talk on the first five chapters of Book 4 of The Lord of the Rings. (When? Later in the summer. Where? That would be telling.) So, last night I was reading "The Taming of Sméagol" and "The Passage of the Marshes" and giving the matter some thought. I've thought about these chapters a lot over the years. In addition to being just so good they are essential for understanding Gollum, since Book IV is the reader's longest exposure to him.
A thought struck me as I was looking at the moment when Frodo starts calling Gollum Sméagol, after which Gollum begins using it to refer to himself. Even Sam uses it a few times. I wondered whether the narrator ever called him Sméagol when telling the story in his own voice. So, not in the speech or thoughts of the characters. Since Frodo is supposed to be the main writer of this story, what he does here might be revealing.
I first searched for "Sméagol" plain and simple, and discovered 155 instances, not counting appendices, tables of contents, indices, etc. Scanning through these I didn't see a single instance where the narrator calls him Sméagol in direct narration. (The debate Sam overhears between Sméagol and Gollum not only represents Sam's thoughts, but also helps to distinguish for the reader which of them is speaking at a given moment.)
Without going too far down this rabbit hole, I conducted four more searches I thought could be useful. I searched:
- "said Gollum"
- "Gollum said"
- "Sméagol said"
- "said Sméagol"
The first, "said Gollum," appears forty-five times, all in Book IV. There's nothing unusual here. It's exactly what we might expect.
The second, "Gollum said," is a bit trickier, since the search ignores punctuation. Of six results, only two represent the voice of the narrator.
- 1.i.33: "Even if Gollum said the same once," said Bilbo
- 3.iii.456: "Gollum, gollum!" said Pippin
- 4.ii.624: Gollum said nothing to them -- spoken by the narrator
- 4.iv.652: "Gollum!" said Sam
- 4.ix.717: As Gollum said -- spoken by the narrator
- 5.iv.815: "Gollum," said Pippin
The third, "Sméagol said" is much the same as the second and for the same reason. Of twelve occurrences, all in Book IV, the voice we hear is always Frodo's, Sam's, or Gollum's.
- 4.i.616 "Sméagol," said Frodo
- 4.i.618 "Sméagol," said Gollum
- 4.ii.633 "But Sméagol said..." spoken by Gollum
- 4.iii.637 "Sméagol said so" -- spoken by Gollum
- 4.iv.655 "A present from Sméagol," said Sam
- 4.vi.687 "Sméagol," said Frodo
- 4.vi.687 "Sméagol," said Frodo
- 4.vi.689 "Sméagol!" said Frodo
- 4.viii.715 "Sméagol," said Gollum
- 4.viii.715 "Sméagol," said Frodo
- 4.ix.717 "Sméagol?" said Frodo
- 4.ix.719 "Sméagol!" said Frodo
The fourth and last, "said Sméagol," is found just three times, all on 1.ii.53, when Gandalf is recounting for Frodo the conversation Sméagol had with Déagol just before he murdered him. It worth noting that Gandalf will call Gollum "Sméagol" six more times in this chapter of the The Lord of the Rings (1.ii.53, 56). Everywhere else he calls him Gollum. In this chapter, "The Shadow of the Past," Gandalf is trying to get Frodo to pity Sméagol before Frodo learns that Sméagol is Gollum.
Now I believe that, since the story of The Lord of the Rings claims to be written largely by Frodo, we should take that seriously enough to consider the implications of that assertion. This is not to say that we should think that no changes were made in later years long after Frodo and Sam were gone. But the pervasiveness of "said Gollum" versus the rarity of "said Sméagol," together with the narrator's exclusive use "Gollum" when speaking of this character, makes clear where the narrator stands on him. And this fits perfectly with the fact that Frodo may address him as "Sméagol" but, with only one exception, never speaks of him to others by any name but "Gollum."*
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The sole exception is when Frodo in Ithilien formally pledges to Faramir to take "this Sméagol" under his protection (TT 4.vi.690). The alternative was Gollum's execution.
Once again I am indebted to the indispensable James Tauber and The Digital Tolkien Project for their expertise and labor in the fields of Arda
