Gollum: Unsung Hero of LOTR?

Is Gollum the unsung hero of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit? I’m going to say yes.

Gollum is, hands down, my favorite character in the entire Tolkien universe. And I’m here to defend his reputation.

You see, he gets an unfairly bad reputation as, well, bad. He does. What is he remembered as? The emaciated creature with a twisted lust for the Ring. And oh yeah, and he has his own brand of speaking. Which I love and have mastered emulating, oh yes precious.

I’m an unashamed fan of Gollum. When I read the Two Towers for the first time (and every time after) I would skip over Rohan and Helm’s Deep and all the dudes-with-swords parts (maybe I would pause and read the Treebeard sections) just to get some more of the “my precious” crack. After I had read the entirety of that part, I’d go back and read about Rohan. I have my literary priorities, and I stick to them.

Since I learned how to speak his voice the same way Andy Serkis did in the movies, I used to perform whole “my precious” monologues for the entertainment of friends and strangers alike. To clarify, only for the strangers if they asked. I’m not quite creepy enough to do an unsolicited round of “they stole it from usss” to my college’s design class. When my sister and I videoed (with our home camcorder, no less) our own personal remake of Lord of the Rings, my favorite character to play was Gollum (I’m convinced there is a deleted scene somewhere where he escapes Rivendell when his Elvish psychiatrist gets distracted).

Yet my favorite 500-something-year-old hobbit is constantly thought of as the villain. Why?  Because he’s stuck on the Ring and it makes him do some pretty awful stuff. Do you know who else was stuck on the Ring and did awful stuff? Boromir. Yet, the good old boy of Gondor had a hankering for some shiny cursed gold, and he didn’t even get a chance to hold it. Boromir never even possessed it, as Gollum had (and nothing else, not even a pair of pants, I might add) for 500 years, and it still got him.

What I’m saying is:

Gollum: Ring had no competition of other possessions, and the crazy happened.

Boromir: Ring had competition of Horn of Gondor, pants, amazing city, other manly sword gear, food that wasn’t raw meat, and people who actually spoke to him. And the crazy happened.

See where I’m going with this? So that makes Gollum one resilient little bugger.

This brings me to my second point: he helped Frodo and Sam out of a pretty tight spot. The Dead Marshes isn’t exactly populated with guides, but there he was, knowing the way around and handy in a pinch! Yes, the bad Gollum side won out in the end, but Smeagol did do some serious serious good when he was on top. Let’s take a look:

He kept the two hobbits upon whom the fate of the world rested from dying in the marshes.

He kept Sauron from knowing where the ring was for 500 years, which could have been more if Bilbo hadn’t come along. He was the pivoting point of the whole series.

He gave Sam rabbits to eat.

He gave Frodo perspective on what the Ring does to its keeper.

Faramir bonded with the hobbits over him (book version).

He saved Frodo directly in the marshes (movie version).

He made the Two Towers 100% better.

He did show them the way into Mordor (even though they had to go through Shelob; yuck).

So there you have it. A good guy in a twisted way. An anti-hero. A sympathetic, complex character fighting an inner battle.

And isn’t that what we all want from the characters in the books we read?

Yours,

Stephanie Void