The mystery of Gollum...

[ArwenStar]

Hi. Gollum comes to mind when you think of villains in LoTR. I always have niggling questions about him, and I bet you do too. I need answers!!!😡
Here are some questions I have. Please answer if possible and give me more questions to ponder!😀

• Gandalf says Gollum wasn’t to different from a hobbit once. There is evidence that as soon as he saw the ring, Sméagol killed Deagol to get it. Why then, was Frodo able to bear Sam having the ring after the incident with Shelob and only get angry? What made Sméagol so susseptable to corruption?
• Gollum had the ring for 500 years. (I think). I am not sure, but I think in the prologue to FotR(is that good acronym?) but were hobbits around for longer actually I just remembered shire reckoning dates are at least in the thousands during LoTR and that hobbits were well established in y1 S.R. Gandalf said Sméagol was like a hobbit, but not that he was one. Are hobbits decended from the people of Sméagol, or the other way round? Or are they just decended from a group of hobbits who wandered off into the woods one day? Or even just the rarest subspecies of hobbit, as mentioned in the prologue of LoTR? (It says in Wikipedia “he had once been a member of the secluded branch of the early Stoorish Hobbits”)(Sorry about all the questions(again!😄).
• Also, are the people of Sméagol water hobbits, almost? Cause in LoTR, in mentions that few hobbits like water, especially swimming and boating. But in LoTR(movie) deagol found the ring in a river, while he and Sméagol were fishing. And Gollum liked water, because he was found in Ithilien, in the forbidden pool, saying “The rock and pool, Is nice and cool, So juicy-sweet!, Our only wish, To catch a fish, So juicy-sweet!”. He is also described in There and Back Again as “He was Gollum — as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking.”.
• Why does Gollum say Gollum?

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

A lot of questions!
Several can be answered by further reading; the wanderings and migrations of the hobbits, for instance, are too complicated to go into here, but you'll find information in the Appendices, particularly in the Tale of Years.

It's important to keep in mind that the Ring plays upon the weaknesses and desires of any who come in contact with it; general opinion seems to be that Smeagol had a greedy and covetous nature to begin with.

Although Gandalf says "I guess they were of hobbit-kind", it appears clear that Gollum is a hobbit; aside from the textual statements in various places, it's important structurally: Gollum is Frodo's doppelganger figure, showing what he would become, had he claimed the Ring as his own. It's one of many symmetries, or as T.A.Shippey calls them, "contrasted parallels" in the book.

And "Gollum" is, as Gandalf says, what he was called by his own people, after he began "going about muttering to himself, and gurgling in his throat". So "gollum" is a sort of representation of the gurgling sound he makes.

I would invite you to dig through some of the older threads here; I think you'll find answers to many of your questions -- and perhaps raise some new ones!

 

[Olorgando]

Of course this was construed by JRRT after the fact of publication of TH (and much more so after LoTR).
Five Hobbits caused the destruction of Sauron:
Déagol (original finder of the One Ring after about 500 years)
Sméagol (killing Déagol and becoming after a while Gollum)
Bilbo (getting the One Ring from Gollum)
Frodo (getting the One Ring from Bilbo after the latter's 111th birthday party)
Sam (keeping the One Ring away from the Orcs capturing Frodo at Cirith Ungol, and without whom Frodo would never have gotten even near the Cracks of Doom)
Frodo again
Gollum again, destroying the One Ring inadvertently (some place a BIG question mark here!) at the Cracks of Doom.

 

[ArwenStar]

thanks! still, gollum is super confusing!

 

[Licky Linguist]

Of course this was construed by JRRT after the fact of publication of TH (and much more so after LoTR).
Five Hobbits caused the destruction of Sauron:
Déagol (original finder of the One Ring after about 500 years)
Sméagol (killing Déagol and becoming after a while Gollum)
Bilbo (getting the One Ring from Gollum)
Frodo (getting the One Ring from Bilbo after the latter's 111th birthday party)
Sam (keeping the One Ring away from the Orcs capturing Frodo at Cirith Ungol, and without whom Frodo would never have gotten even near the Cracks of Doom)
Frodo again
Gollum again, destroying the One Ring inadvertently (some place a BIG question mark here!) at the Cracks of Doom.

And perhaps Pippin and Merry, for if they weren't captured Aragorn and the others might not have been able get the 'create a diversion' idea, and would probably have gone to Mordor with Frodo and Sam. That just might have worked out though, who knows?

 

[Olorgando]

I'm only counting those through whose hands the One Ring Actually passed. There is a very short interlude with Tom Bombadil, but I'm inclined to see him as almost an "honorary Hobbit" among all of the supernatural beings in JRRT's legendarium; perhaps even by conscious choice after the Hobbits "moved next door" into what became the Shire in 1601 Third Age. TB's outward appearance earlier in the Third Age, or in even earlier Ages, might have been different.