When Gandalf first speaks to Frodo about Gollum, once called Smèagol, Frodo has nothing but disgust. What he knows about the creature comes from Bilbo, and it is all loathsome. “I can’t believe that Gollum was connected with hobbits, however distantly. What an abominable notion,” said Frodo.
Already, in the earliest thoughts of these innocent and yet untraveled hobbits, Gollum is utterly dehumanized. Or, in this case, de-hobbitized. He is hated from the start, such that he cannot be acknowledged as a being of even remote equality to a meager hobbit.
Frodo says Gollum “deserves death.”
Aragorn, too, who in the books catches Gollum in the Dead Marshes and brings him to Mirkwood to be kept by the elves and interrogated by Gandalf, says that traveling with Gollum is “the worst part of all my journey.”
Aragorn seems to have no sympathy for the creature. “[He] stank. For my part I hope never to look upon him again.”
Gandalf says, “I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it.”
Though at least the White Wizard admits some semblance of possible sanctification. “There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as through a chink in the dark: light out of the past.”
Samwise’s ‘Stinker’
In The Two Towers, Sam has the strongest, most damning language for Gollum.
The miserable slinker. Gollum! I’ll give him gollum in his throat, if ever I get my hands on his neck.
When Frodo and Sam finally encounter Gollum on the outskirts of Mordor, both are at first repulsed by the creature. Frodo comes quickly to pity him and cautiously seek his aid. Sam still has nothing but name-calling and suspicion. He wants to tie him up and leave him for dead. He readily accuses Gollum of premeditating hobbit-cide.
While Frodo, the burdened Ring-Bearer, comes to sympathize with Gollum—even imagining that Gollum can return to his more innocent Smèagol self—Sam still wants him dead. It is Sam who ties the elven noose around Gollum’s neck, dragging him to Mordor. Sam abuses and harasses their prisoner relentlessly.
At a turning point when Gollum swears on the One Ring—the Precious—to be obedient to Frodo, an empathetic bond forms between Ring-Bearers, past and present. Somehow, Sam only despises the creature more. “He suspected him more deeply than ever, and if possible liked the new Gollum, the Smèagol, less than the old.”
Even after Gollum proves himself a faithful guide, Sam wishes him only death, having to restrain his thoughts of sword and noose. “And if I was like Gollum, he wouldn’t wake up never again.”
Tolkien writes of Sam on the approach to Mordor with Gollum leading the way: a “dark cloud” had fallen on his heart. While Frodo is preoccupied with the weight of the Ring and Gollum is still battling his lusts, Sam is blinded by hatred for Gollum.
Sam continues to call Gollum “Stinker,” a harassment Frodo can no longer bear.
“Why do you do that? Run him down all the time?” Frodo asks.
“Because that’s what he is,” says Sam.
Samwise’s Sin
All of this might be chalked up to annoyance and distrust, were it not for the vitriol that leads to Sam’s utter dismissal and demonization of Gollum.
At the Black Gate, when Gollum proposes Frodo and Sam take an alternate, allegedly safer route, we find that Sam cannot make a distinction between Gollum and Smèagol, between the being and his demons, old self and new. For Sam’s names for Gollum and Smèagol, the two halves of the torn creature, are Slinker and Stinker. Sam doubts everything Gollum says. He sees Slinker and Stinker as an alliance to survive and destroy, bent on laying his hands once again on the Ring of Power.
The closest Sam comes to kindness toward Gollum happens when he asks the poor servant guide to rustle up some food. When Gollum returns with two rabbits, Sam accepts them, but offers no thanks or sign of gratitude. In fact, Sam sends Gollum on another errand—for water—and threatens, “Don’t you damage one of my pans, of I’ll carve you into mincemeat.”
Later, at the Forbidden Pool, when Gollum’s life is threatened by Faramir and his men, Frodo vies to save him. He protects Gollum, but Gollum is captured nonetheless by the men of Gondor. For his part, Frodo feels badly about the ordeal and tries to secure Gollum’s safety. Even now, seeing him tricked into captivity, Sam has no heart for him: “Nothing will ever be all right where that piece of misery is.”
Sam responds to Frodo’s salvation of Gollum with only unsympathetic sighs.
Samwise’s Blindness
How ironic that even as Frodo reminds Sam of the occasions on which Gollum saved their skins, Sam still cannot see a soul in Gollum. He only wishes to be rid of him. In the same moment as Sam preaches a lofty hope—“Where there’s life there’s hope,” said Sam—he can’t seem to see how obviously this applies to his sullen companion.
Sam can imagine an alternate reality in which Gollum is good, but he can’t apply it to the reality of Middle Earth. “Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you, anyway.” And yet, for Sam, with all possible universes in which Gollum could be a hero, he is the eternal villain in the universe that matters most.
It is true that Gollum betrays Frodo and Sam in the end. He leads them to the monster Shelob in hopes of their death, at which point he’ll go for the Ring. But it did not have to be this way. Gollum had a path to redemption. Transformation happened. Sanctification might not have been far off.
And yet Sam refused to see a soul in Gollum. In his own fallenness, when he looked upon Smèagol, he could only see Stinker.
True! In the story, it does seem at one point, Gollum is on the brink of changing, but Sam’s hatred of him drives that possibility away. Very sad.
Tolkein’s characters provide such great metaphors. I’ve thought about the first commandment, “You shall not have any gods before Me” in terms of how we are essentially created in God’s image—we can only reach the fullest potential of our humanity in loving our Creator above all else, and thus becoming more like Him. Anything else that we love more than God ultimately perverts and cripples and twists us, so that we become as far away from true humanity as Gollum changed from his “hobbit-ness” through his perverted love for the Ring.
Yes! I was struck anew with an empathy for Gollum that I don’t think is fully fleshed out in the films–or in popular culture. How did he become what he became? Surely many bad decisions, and also the hopelessness and given-up attitude from others. Even at the brink of transformation, he fell back into worse traps both through his own devices and through the antipathy of others.
I just read another author (this time Sam Storms) who, like John Piper, like Jonathan Edwards, talks about the revelation of Christian hedonism–of enjoying God, which glorifies him and changes us. God is the ultimate source of our enjoyment and our sanctification!
Yes, John Piper got it right, in explaining the first question of the Westminster as “man’s chief end is to glorify God BY enjoying Him forever.” Piper’s Future Grace is one of my favorite books of all time!
I agree. But to be honest, I’ve never shared in the view that Sam was wise and saintly and the epitome of the loyal-to-the-point-of-self-obliteration family retainer. To me he just seemed self-righteous and possessive, as if his feelings for Frodo somehow entitled him to control access to him: he can’t let go of Frodo even to get married.
I’ve also never been enraptured by people who demean and deride others but then demand help from them without so much as a word of acknowledgement, as if they were entitled to service, whether real people or literary
characters.
LSS, it was hard enough to swallow Frodo as the flawlessly pure Christ figure: it’s as if people miss the fact that the Ring got Frodo in the end as well and the only way that could happen was if there were flaws in him for it to exploit or qualities that it could turn against him, just as there were in all the others who’d felt its influence. But he at least could see the resemblance between himself and Smeagol and realize that if there was no hope for Smeagol, there might be none for him, either: he tells Sam “You have no idea what it’s done to him. What it’s still doing to him”, but Sam doesn’t even hear it: his response is on the order that Smeagol is beyond redemption, but Frodo — and he, since he’s so emotionally invested in himself as a part of Frodo — are a higher order of being who couldn’t possibly be reduced to that condition. Sam himself was entertaining fantasies of being an impressive figure very shortly after taking the Ring, but even that isn’t enough to make him realize that if he or Frodo had been under its influence as long as Smeagol had, there might have been very little difference beween them.
However unflattering it seems to Mr. Tolkien, I’m afraid Sam just reminded me of people I’ve known who are so convinced of their own righteousness that they not only assume that they’re better than the fallible people around them, but because of that conviction, manage to do more harm than good to the people around them who are struggling. The only religious comparison he brought to mind was “Thank you that I am not like that publican…”.