Gollum -- Adilbrand Noblesword's Hall of Warriors

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Date Posted: 16:26:01 12/20/01 Thu
Author: Adilbrand
Subject: Gollum
In reply to: mt. healthy mountaineer 's message, "Re: gollum - another conclusion I disagree with" on 15:34:24 12/20/01 Thu

I've read those books (and the appendix books) so many times...

Yeah, Gollum was a nasty character. Gollum murdered his cousin D�agol for it. He became odious to his family and was driven out of the Stoor community, where he then hid in the Misty Mountains.

Gollum originally looked like a normal Hobbit, but his long years in dark and damp under the influence of the Ring drastically affected his appearence. The descriptions of him by Tolkien vary somewhat (not even Tolkien was immune to some inconsistencies in his writings...), but for the most part he was extremely thin and wiry, with black skin, flat feet, long thin hands, and large pale eyes.

Again, the movie showed this transformation visually, by showing a normal colored hand that then changed to a blackened, thin hand... but they left out the narration that might have explained that to someone who hadn't read the books. I don't think it is critical knowledge, anyway. The important point was that Isildur lost the Ring, Gollum got it, and Bilbo took it. And that point was made just fine by the movie.

The fact that Gollum was once a Hobbit is actually unimportant to the story. (Indeed, since the books and the movie show Hobbits as more likely to resist the lure of the Ring than other races, the fact that Gollum was once a Hobbit rather undermines that theory nicely.)

The Hobbit doesn't actually mention much about Gollum's past. His past is made clear in The Lord of the Rings, NOT in The Hobbit. In The Hobbit, Tolkien is quite ready to let Gollum just be Gollum, an unknown monster. Why? Because ultimately it is unimportant that he was a Hobbit. And the movie makes things very clear that the Ring has a detrimental effect on its wearers.

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