Poor Gollum

The Ring of Power was the ultimate weapon of Sauron, originally a Maia, servant and protege' of Morgoth. He was one of the Ainur, the original creatures of Iluvatar. Morgoth's dissonant song among those in praise of Iluvatar brought discord and evil into being.

The Children of Iluvatar were Elves and Men, members of both of whose species became ancestors of Elrond and his brother Elros. Their ancestry also included Melian the Maia. By her grace, Elrond and Elros were given their choice to which kindred they would belong. Elrond chose to be Elvenkind, but Elros chose to be mortal. Taking the name Tar-Minyatur, he founded the Kings of Numenor, a realm that had been given by the Maiar to those Men who had fought alongside the Elves to expel Morgoth from the Kingdom of Arda, which the song of the Ainur had brought into being.

After Morgoth's expulsion, Sauron fled to Middle Earth, where he hid his true nature, taking on the form of a friend and advisor to the Elves. He taught them to forge Rings of Power, "Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, nine for mortal Men doomed to die," each giving its wearer the power and will to govern each race.

But they were all of them deceived by Sauron's ultimate goal, to conquer all of Middle Earth by binding the ringbearers to his will. To this end, he forged in secret in the fires of Mount Doom a Master Ring to rule all the others, "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them," and into this Ring, he poured all his cruelty, his malice, his will to dominate all life. "One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them!"

But Sauron's plan failed. The Elves had made their Rings so fair and powerful that they immediately perceived the evil influence of the One Ring! They took them off and hid them, foregoing the use of the power that they commanded. The Dwarves, having more interest in riches than power, allowed their Rings to be lost, and ultimately recovered by Sauron, or consumed by dragons. Seduced by the false promise of freedom from old age and death, the "Gift of Men," only the nine kings of Men to whom Sauron had given Rings allowed their hearts to be corrupted. They became the Nazgul, neither alive nor dead, but utterly enslaved by Sauron to do his bidding. With this power, Sauron perverted the last king of Numenor, Ar-Pharazon, and brought about the complete destruction of Numenor itself.

Elendil was a distant cousin of Ar-Pharazon. He and his sons Isildur and Anarion, and a handful of others, escaped the fall of Numenor in nine ships and arrived in Middle Earth. There, they allied themselves with the Elven king Gil-galad against Sauron. They founded two great kingdoms of Middle Earth, Arnor and Gondor, the armies of which, along with those of the Elves, met in a Last Alliance on the slopes of Mount Doom, the Siege of Barad-dur, to challenge Sauron for the freedom of Middle Earth. Victory was near, but the power of the Ring could not be undone! Elendil and Gil-galad, and too many of their followers, were slain!

It was in this moment, when all hope faded, that Isildur, son of the fallen King, took up his father's broken sword, and, with his last strength, cut the Ring from Sauron's hand. Sauron, the enemy of the free peoples of Middle Earth, was defeated! Thus the Ring passed to Isildur, who had this one chance to destroy evil forever by casting the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom where it had been forged. But the hearts of Men are easily corrupted, and the Ring has a will of its own!

It betrayed Isildur to his death! He was waylaid by orcs on a journey in the Gladden Fields. Putting on the Ring, he jumped into the River Anduin, where the Ring slipped from his hand. When the orcs saw him appear in the water, they killed him with many arrows. Three of his four sons, Elendur, Aratan and Ciryon were also slain. Isildur's body was recovered, but the Ring was not! Thenceforth, for two and a half thousand years, it passed out of all knowledge, and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost!

Isildur had become the first victim of the Ring. His father's death had made him king of all Men in Middle Earth, and he likely thought himself superior even to Sauron, whom he had, in fact, defeated in combat. To his way of thinking, he deserved to possess the Ring and make it an heirloom of his house in honor and memory of his kingdom and his father. But with the fall of Sauron, the Ring had almost certainly chosen Isildur as its instrument to subvert the entire kingdom of man and those whom Men might eventually come to command in Middle Earth!

It is here that the story of Gollum begins.

No record exists of Gollum's immediate relatives. Gandalf maintained that he was from a wealthy family of hobbit ancestors, ruled by a wise and stern matriarch. What was most recognized about Gollum, originally called Smeagol, was that he manifested a combination of what today would be called autism spectrum disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and paranoid schizophrenia - a sick individual indeed! He was known to be interested in roots and beginnings, diving into deep pools, burrowing under trees and growing plants, and tunneling into green mounds. He lost interest in the grassy hill-tops, the leafy trees and forests, the fields of flowers or any of the other beautiful growing things in Middle Earth. His head and his eyes were ever downward, with not the faintest hope of love, friendship or acceptance from anyone.

Gollum's ultimate downfall began when his only known companion, Deagol, was dragged underwater while fishing near the Gladden Fields. He had hooked a great fish that pulled him right out of his boat. Seeing something shining on the river bottom, he released his fishing pole, grabbed the glinting object, and rose, coughing and sputtering, to the river bank. He shook off the water and mud and beheld a shining object, the One Ring!

Smeagol's fractured and vulnerable personality was at once overcome with jealousy and overwhelming desire for the shining object! After demanding that Deagol give it to him as a "birthday present," he strangled and murdered Deagol, cleverly hid his body, and took the Ring for himself, putting it on his finger. Returning home, he found that his relatives could not see him when he was wearing the Ring. Thus, he quickly descended into villainy, stealing, spying out others' secrets, and working all sorts of mischief. He took to talking to himself and gurgling in his throat, so he became known as Gollum, and was cast out from his family.

The Ring's 2500 year loss was only a minor interruption of its plan. Its finding by Deagol was fortuitous, for it put the Ring in intimate association with a perfect victim once again. Like Isildur, Gollum's already depraved nature was instantly ready to believe that the Ring should be his; it was his birthday, Deagol was intolerably selfish for not giving it to him; he deserved to die! It was only just that Gollum should acquire a means to repay all those who had misunderstood, tormented and bullied him! He was greater than they were, for he was the only one who possessed "The Precious."

Alone and friendless, Gollum wandered the wilderness of Rhovanion until he found an opening into the caverns under the Misty Mountains, away from the sunlight and the warmth of potential companionship. There, in the darkness, the Ring consumed him! It gave to Gollum unnatural long life, and for five hundred years it poisoned his mind, feeding on his split and broken personality, driving him completely and utterly mad. Gollum's schizophrenia was now complete, with his totally recessive personality only a suppressed sputtering spark of reason and the overwhelmingly dominant personality totally corrupted by the Ring. Gollum began to identify himself with The Ring itself, his only possession, referring both to it and himself as "My Precious!"

But its sequestration under the Misty Mountains did not suit the Ring's ultimate goal at all, separated as it was from all other potential victims. In the gloom of Gollum's cave, it bided its time as darkness crept back into the world, Rumor grew of a shadow in the east, whispers of a nameless fear, and, when chance came, the Ring perceived that its time had come. It abandoned Gollum!

Perhaps the Ring did not foresee, or originally intend, to be picked up by the most unlikely creature of all, Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit of the Shire. Yet once again, it was able to ensnare a particularly auspicious third victim. Bilbo had just betrayed his dwarf companions in the goblin cave and forsaken his duties under his contract with them. He cheated in the riddle game with Gollum, a deeply embarrassing fact that he only reluctantly revealed after Gandalf's inquisition got the true tale after much questioning, which for a while strained their friendship. Perhaps under the influence of strong drink, he eventually repudiated the lie about how he came by the Ring to the Council of Elrond.

Bilbo initially claimed that Gollum had promised to give him a present if he won the game; but when Gollum went to fetch it from his island he found the treasure was gone: a magic Ring, which had been "given to him long ago on his birthday." Bilbo correctly guessed that this was the very Ring that he had found and had in his pocket, which Gollum had failed to guess. As he had won the game, albeit somewhat unfairly, he felt that it was already his by right. But being in a tight place, he said nothing about it, and made Gollum show him the way out, as Gollum had promised. Bilbo knew, or should have known, that Gollum would never voluntarily give up the Precious, his only possession other than his ragged and filthy loin cloth, and that Bilbo therefore was in very truth the thief that Gollum named him. Yet he made no attempt to return the Ring, or to leave it where Gollum might find it, keeping it for himself and his own use. The Ring had already corrupted his mind and enticed the normally upright Bilbo to do its malicious will.

Bilbo's later adventures, with some emendation, were set down in the Red Book of Westmarch. He used the Ring only sparingly, to escape Gollum, to free the Dwarves from imprisonment by the spiders and Elves of Mirkwood, to sneak into the vast treasure chamber in Erebor to confront Smaug, to shamefully enhance his reputation as an accomplished burglar and, eventually, occasionally to escape being bothered by pesky relatives. He kept it secret from the Dwarves and never spoke of it again to anyone, save Gandalf and Frodo; and no one else in the Shire had reason to know of its existence. Secured by a fine chain, it ever remained in his possession.

Actually, Bilbo had lost the Ring at least once! His first use of the Ring after escaping from Gollum was to free the Dwarves from certain death from the spiders of Mirkwood. The Ring itself was so repulsed by this courageous and altruistic act of its new victim that it abandoned Bilbo as it had Gollum only a short time before. But it was only slightly less likely to find a new bearer on the dark and almost abandoned Old Forest Road as it had been in Gollum's lonely cave, so the Ring quickly arranged for itself to be found again by Bilbo and carried out into the wider world once more.

Meanwhile, far away in Rhovanion, Gollum searched in vain for his Precious until he was finally abducted by the servants of Sauron. For unmeasured time, the orcs sadistically tortured and cruelly mutilated Gollum, partly for sport, and partly to gain information for their Dark Lord. Eventually, they learned everything Gollum knew, suspected or assumed. They discovered that the Ring had been taken by a "Baggins," from a place called "Shire," and to this unknown place the Nazgul were dispatched to recover the Ring and murder its bearer. By this time, of course, the Ring had passed to Frodo, who even then was on his way to Bree to find Gandalf and decide what to do about the Ring.

Gollum's fate in the realm of Sauron was discovered by Gandalf and Aragorn, who captured him and left him in the keeping of the Elves of Mirkwood. Through a combination of pity and lack of diligence, they allowed him to escape with the help of Sauron's minions, who no doubt hoped that he would lead them and the Nazgul to the Shire. Yet Gollum did not know where the Shire was, being unfamiliar with the land west of the Misty Mountains. So he returned to his old haunts, eventually encountering the Fellowship in the ruined kingdom of Moria. From there, he doggedly followed the irresistible lure of the Ring, now in the keeping of Frodo, out of Moria, down the Anduin, and into the Emyn Muil, where he attacked and was captured by Frodo and Sam, who unmercifully mistreated, assaulted, belittled, and threatened him.

But the Ring itself was not idle during this time. Having failed to seduce Galadriel in Lorien, it corrupted Boromir, its fourth victim, to betray Frodo for long enough to allow the Uruk-hai to capture Merry and Pippin. Boromir redeemed himself by giving Frodo and Sam enough time to escape across the Anduin to the Emyn Muil, even as he was dying from poisoned orc arrows. When Frodo and Sam encountered Gollum, they overpowered him, and forcibly extracted his oath on the Ring that he would lead them to Mordor. Utterly under control of the Ring, Gollum had no strength whatever to turn aside from this mission. He actually rescued Frodo from drowning in the Dead Marshes, and faithfully led him and Sam to the Black Gate of Mordor as he promised. Yet so thorough was his indoctrination to evil that he was able to fulfill his promise and then lead them into Shelob's lair, where they were saved only by the courage of Sam and the light of Earendil from the Phial of Galadriel.

Gollum was no doubt utterly terrified of passing through Mordor, the place where he had been brutally abused, yet so insidious was the summons of the Ring that he could not resist tracking Frodo to the entrance to the Cracks of Doom itself. There, at peril of its very existence, the Ring put forth all its power and finally succeeded in seducing Frodo, its fifth and final victim, as it had Isildur three thousand years before, to its unyielding will.

"'I have come,' Frodo said. 'But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!' And suddenly, as he set it on his finger, he vanished from Sam's sight."

But the Ring had made a fatal error! So thoroughly had it destroyed Gollum's mind that he completely lost control as he bit the Ring off Frodo's hand and retrieved it with the finger still attached. Totally heedless of his danger, he stepped away too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell! Out of the depths came his last wail, "Precious," and he and the Ring were gone forever!

The Return of the King tells the story of what happened to Frodo after that. He was treated with highest honor, even by Aragorn, King of Gondor and Middle Earth. He returned to the Shire a hero, and was given the grace by the Valar to enter the Undying Lands as the savior of the world. His maimed hand was an everlasting reminder of the sacrifice he had made in pursuit of his quest.

Yet Frodo's suffering and sacrifice were as nothing compared to those of Gollum. Frodo had possessed the Ring for less than eighteen years, living in luxury, surrounded by friends and companions in the beautiful and tranquil Shire. Gollum had born the influence of the Ring for five centuries, alone in his dark, damp, miserable cave. Frodo had been sustained at first by the Fellowship of the Ring and thereafter by his faithful friend Sam; Gollum had no one at all. Frodo had wealth and honor; Gollum had poverty, ridicule and scorn. Frodo lost his finger; Gollum lost his life!

And in the final analysis, it was not Frodo, or any companion or virtue of his, that had saved Middle Earth from falling into shadow under the dominion of Sauron. Frodo ultimately failed in his quest!

It was Gollum, poor, tortured, broken, lonely, abandoned, despised Gollum, who, by himself alone, destroyed the One Ring and saved Middle Earth and all its inhabitants!

John Lindorfer