The Dark Moral Of Gollum's Tale

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Of all the many strange and fascinating characters created by JR or Tolken, I've often felt that the most morally complex character is Gollum. On the one hand, he's a villain scheming to take back the ring and ultimately betraying his only friend. On the other hand, he's a victim, more a casualty of evil than its source. Given his role in the story, he might be the most consequential character in The Lord of the Rings after Frodo, especially when you consider how the story ends. And yet, the moral of Gollum's tale is actually very open-ended. What lesson are we meant to take from the story of this pitiable creature and his need to possess the one ring? As we'll see, the deeper you delve into Tolken's own writings about the development of this character, the more you realize that the moral of Gollum's story might actually be the most profound part of Tolken's tale.

[00:00:54]Now, anytime we talk about The Lord of the Rings, it's important to clarify that I'm talking about the book and the movie, each of which imagines the character Gollum in different ways. And actually, this is probably the best place to start because Jackson made a few very interesting changes to Gollum's story when adapting it for the big screen. What's especially different is how we learn about Gollum. The sequence of Smeaggel taking the ring from Deagle is actually the prologue of the third film. In the books, Gandalf recounts this tale to Froto in Bag End before the quest even begins. So, the mystery of who and what Gollum is unfolds very differently in each case. And this really changes how we read Gollum's character. Another big change that Jackson made is in the particular dynamic between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum as they venture into Mordor. In the films, Gollum actually succeeds in manipulating Frodo into telling Sam to go home. This separation does not occur in the books. But probably the biggest and most morally consequential change Jackson made was having Gollum and Frodo fighting for the ring in the cracks of doom. And it's this struggle that causes both of them to fall over the edge. In the book, Gollum bites Froto's finger off, gets the ring, dances with joy, and then he just kind of trips and falls over the edge by accident. Sam doesn't save Frodo or anything like that. Now, of course, one can understand why Jackson made the kind of changes that he made. Unlike a novel, a movie really needs that sort of dramatic tension. So, most of Jackson's changes make sense, but they do change the moral of the story in interesting ways. And this is especially the case for our friend Gollum/Smegaggle.

[00:02:39]So, let's rewind back to the very first time we actually meet the character Gollum. His first appearance is, of course, in the famous chapter in The Hobbit, Riddles in the Dark, when Bilbo finds a golden ring while crawling blindly through the caves of the Misty Mountains. This version of Gollum is not yet the tragic figure he will later become. He's much more of a playful trickster. He's a minor character in an adventure story mainly intended for children. Tolkien had not yet conceived any broader meaning for the character nor even for the ring itself whose importance was only decided after Tolkien's publishers convinced him to write a sequel to The Hobbit. In fact, Tolken has said that connecting the events of Gollum's Cave to the story of The Lord of the Rings was one of the biggest challenges of writing the book.

[00:03:25]I didn't realize until I researched this video that Tolken actually rewrote entire sections of Riddles in the Dark to make Gollum's character more consistent with the Lord of the Rings.

[00:03:35]In the original version of The Hobbit, Gollum actually offers the ring as a present to Bilbo if he can correctly guess his riddle. Tolken changes this to showing him the way out among other changes that make it more clear that Column is much more corrupted by the ring. You can see here in blue all the sections that Tolken revised and in true Tolken form there is an in-world explanation for this revision because don't forget canonically the Hobbit is written by Bilbo. So the idea is that the earlier edition of the Hobbit was intentionally fabricated by Bilbo in order to disguise the true power of the ring which makes perfect sense. What this shows is that Tolken really cared about Gollum's character. The revised version of Riddles in the Dark takes great care to make him more malevolent and also more pitiable. And that word pity, by the way, is very important because after the Hobbit, the next time a Baggin encounters Gollum is back under the Misty Mountains during the fellowship's journey through the minds of Moria. And this scene when Froto first notices that he's being followed must be understood in order to make any sense of Gollum and his role in the story. This is where Gandalf gives his famous speech about how Bilbo's pity may rule the fate of many. Now, he's referring to the fact that Bilbo had a chance to kill Gollum, but after seeing what a sad creature he was, he instead spared Gollum's life. And that decision, it turns out, might have had biblical consequences for Middle Earth. Because as Gandalf rightly supposes, the long-term effect of letting Gollum live is that he eventually becomes Froto's guide into Mordor, without whom Frodo would likely not have succeeded. I always love the fact that Gollum doesn't really make an appearance in Fellowship of the Ring, except for this little reveal in Moria and in the extended edition when he's found to be floating on a log on the Anduan River, both of which are in the book. His total absence from the first installment of the trilogy wasn't exactly a conscious choice on Tolken's part because the story was written as a single book and only broken up into three volumes after writing was complete. Tolken was against this and never liked the titles that were chosen by his publisher. In any case, this little quirk of Gollum's near total absence in Fellowship meant that Jackson and his team had a little extra runway for designing Gollum. If you ever thought that Gollum in the first film looked a little different, you're not crazy. He was actually very different.

[00:06:07]Check out the difference in his eyes.

[00:06:09]That first shot of him in Moria is way spookier. In the prologue, he's still got his famous reflective eyes, and he looks more blue. His whole body just seems different, too. And that's because this 3D model was completely redesigned for the second film. Now, why does any of this matter for the moral of Gollum's story? Because everything matters in good storytelling. See, the filmmakers realized that their creepy Gollum would not be capable of the expressivity that was needed for the character. Audiences would eventually need to like Gollum just as Froto does. And for that to happen, they needed to humanize the character. They had plenty of artwork to use for inspiration. And it's pretty interesting to see just how differently Gollum has been imagined by visual artists over the years. He's generally portrayed as creepy and you don't often see his cute side, which Jackson's team realized was necessary. Ultimately, they decided that Gollum's face should be modeled to look like Andy Circus, who was doing all the voice and performance capture. And this had the added benefit of letting Circus portray Smeaggel, giving the character a really great sense of visual continuity. The fact that you can really see Smeaggel in Gollum's face, that's the point. That's what gives him Tolken's essential quality of being pitiable because we can all see traces of humanity behind his eyes just as Frodo does and that's really important. This brings me to what I think is one of the most fascinating moral decisions that Tolken makes in this story and that is the fact that Sam Wise Gamji who is in many ways the kindest and most admirable character in the story never sees the good in Gollum.

[00:07:48]In fact, while I was researching this video, I found something really interesting in this beautiful edition of Tolken's letters. In letter 96, he reveals the part of the story that he thinks is the most tragic. And that is the short scene on the stairs of Kirath Unal when Gollum quote came within a hair of repentance, but for one rough word from Sam. This is when Froto and Sam are sleeping. It's a long passage, but it must be read in full. Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean, hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and gray, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly, putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously, he touched Froto's knee, but almost the touch was a caress.

[00:08:39]For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him? They would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old, starved, pitiable thing. Some people claim that Tolken wept when he wrote this passage, though I couldn't find any proof of that. In any case, Sam wakes up and immediately accuses Gollum of sneaking, which in this case is actually not true.

[00:09:10]And this is the critical turning point for Gollum's character in the book. Kind of interesting that it's Sam who prevents Gollum from repenting, thus ensuring his own prediction that Gollum will ultimately betray them. It's the classic self-fulfilling prophecy that is often at the heart of great tragic tales. This, I would say, is one of the key moral differences between the books and the movies. Jackson positions Gollum's internal struggle much earlier in the story. There's that famous scene in which Gollum argues with Smeaggel and genuinely seems to change. The character kind of forks from this point on. Gollum becomes the villain. Smeaggel becomes the victim and something of a lovable sidekick. So, there's a brief period where it seems as though Smeaggel is truly free of his alter ego. But that hope vanishes pretty soon after. Not because of anything Sam does though, but because he gets roughed up by Phamir's men in a perceived act of betrayal by Froto. So, in the films, this is probably the most tragic moment for Gollum, and it's his point of no return.

[00:10:14]After this, we the audience are clued into the fact that Gollum fully intends to lead Sam and Froto into Sheilob's layer. So, I think it's an interesting question whether Jackson's changes to this aspect of Gollum's story were an improvement. By the way, if you like nerdy debates, I challenge you to join my Patreon and make your voice heard.

[00:10:32]And while we're imagining what might have been for Gollum's story, there's another fascinating letter from Tolken in which he does just that. He asks, "How would the story have changed if Sam had seen the good in Gollum in that moment on the stairs of Kirathunal?

[00:10:48]Would Gollum have still betrayed them?"

[00:10:50]In other words, would he prioritize his love for his new master, Frodo, or would he still be inexurably captivated by the ring? Well, Tolken writes, "I think that in some queer, twisted, impitiable way, Gollum would have tried, not maybe with conscious design, to satisfy both.

[00:11:06]Certainly, at some point, not long before the end, he would have stolen the ring or taken it by violence as he does in the actual tale. So, that makes sense. Even if he was redeemed, he would still not be able to escape the power of the ring. But, and this is so interesting, the very ending, the scene in the cracks of doom would have been very different for Gollum." So Tolken writes, and I quote, "Possession satisfied. I think he would have sacrificed himself for Frodo's sake and have voluntarily cast himself into the fiery abyss." So if Sam had been a little nicer to Smeiggel, he still would have taken the ring from Froo, but he would also have sacrificed himself for Frodo. It's really interesting to hear Tolken's own thoughts on how things could have gone differently. If you're wondering, by the way, whether Tolkien had the whole story mapped out and knew what the ending would be, the answer is no, he did not. He claims to have roughly sketched out the ending, but he didn't know with certainty how it would unfold until he had actually written the full story leading up to it. Once Tolken arrived at Mount Doom, he realized that Frodo would need to fail in destroying the ring. Otherwise, the whole spiritual burden would feel trivial. This meant there had to be a kind of reversal of the traditional heroic climax wherein the destruction of evil is not a triumphal act of defiance against Sauron, but it's the farreaching consequence of Bilbo's mercy and in turn Froto's mercy towards Gollum. Without that, Gollum wouldn't be there to bite the ring off Froto's hand, and Frodo might have escaped with the ring, likely becoming another Gollum himself. You know, I always felt the ending of the book was kind of anticlimactic in a way because after all Frodo, Sam, and Gollum had been through. There was no epic struggle. Gollum just kind of gets too excited and steps too close to the edge and falls in. Oops. But there is a reason that Tolken ends the story this way. Because the moral order of his universe isn't quite as simple as good guys beat bad guys. Gollum's little slip of the foot might be interpreted as providential. It's a little dash of cosmic randomness that tips the moral scale in favor of good. In which case, Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, each by his own different path, created the conditions for providence to occur. In fact, if I had to summarize the moral of Gollum's story in a single sentence, I'd say Gandalf actually says it directly in his advice to Froto in Moria. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. See, the reason Gollum is such a compelling character is that we are all in one way or another tempted to judge people and to prescribe justice. Who among us doesn't know somebody like Gollum, someone whose internal struggle makes them difficult to trust, or someone who seems captured by some vain obsession that we may find contemptable, or worse, someone who just lies or manipulates for their own selfish gain. I'm sure everyone watching this can think of someone in their own life with whom they've had this sort of conflict. So, Gollum confronts us with one of the deepest and most ancient moral questions ever debated. The question of how we ought to judge the misdeeds of others and further who should render upon them a verdict or a sentence. So, does Tolkien give us an answer to these moral questions? Is there anything in Gollum's story we can point to and say, "Look, here's Tolkien's message about what is right and what is wrong?" Well, the short answer is no. Tolkien's writing doesn't reduce to simplistic answers.

[00:14:43]But if we look at Gollum's story in the grand scheme of the tale, then I think we can tease out a general moral outlook and that is that evil is selfdefeating.

[00:14:53]So Sauron's greatest strength is his fatal vulnerability. He never imagines that someone would seek to destroy the ring and that blindness is his ultimate undoing. Saramon is betrayed by Worm Tongue, his abused servant. Orcs and Urukai cannot be created. They are only a corruption of something that was once good. The dominion of evil rots and decays any landscape that it touches and so on. Evil is unstable. It cannot last because it contains already the seeds of its own destruction. of Gollum. Tolken writes, "The ring was much too strong for the mean soul of Smeaggel, but he would have never had to endure it if he had not become a mean sort of thief before it crossed his path. Fate may have intervened to bring the ring to Smeaggel, just as it did when he fell over the edge. But ultimately, it was something in Smeaggel, not in Gollum, that set him on the path of his own destruction. It was a small decision to take the ring from Deagle. It was a small decision for Bilbo to spare Gollum, and it was a small decision for Sam to accuse Gollum of sneaking. None of these on its own is the single reason things turn out the way they do. The point is that every small decision is a minor inflection point in the cosmic drama between good and evil. Now, I won't presume to make any sort of conclusion about Tolkien's meaning in telling Gollum's tale the way that he did. I'll leave that up to you. But one thing that we can conclude is that Gollums is one of the most interesting and complex moral arcs ever written. One that judging by Tolken's own reflections is meant to be debated. So let's make him proud in the comments section down below. Thank you for watching. Check out my Patreon if you'd like to support this channel, and I'll see you on the next one.