Sam and Gollum

“The Gleam Faded From His Eyes, and They Went Dim and Grey, Old and Tired.” Did Gollum Come Close to Repenting of The Evil He Planned to Do to Frodo and Sam?

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 935-937

Something happens when all the protective layers that surround us are pealed away. As our true self comes into view, vulnerable and undefended, it calls out to everything about it to respond. So when Frodo and Sam rested after the hard climb up the stairs of the Pass of Cirith Ungol before attempting to enter the land of Mordor they began to open their hearts to one another, and as they did so things began to change about them. The very rocks that Frodo had described as accursed seemed to reach out towards them at the sound of their merriment.

“To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them.”

And when Gollum returned later, finding Frodo at rest in Sam’s arms, a strange change seemed to take place within him.

“Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up 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 Frodo’s knee- but almost the touch was a caress.”

It is a deeply moving moment but a tragic one too. Tolkien later spoke of how he had tears in his eyes as he wrote this passage. As Gollum hesitantly reached out to Frodo so too did he reach back to the hobbit that he once was before the finding of the Ring, before the murder of Déagol, before his separation from his people and his journey into the hidden darkness at the roots of the Misty Mountains.

“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.”

But neither Frodo nor Sam ever saw this old and weary hobbit, one of their own, because when Sam saw Gollum reaching out towards Frodo he assumed the worst.

“What are you up to?”

And the moment was lost forever.

Had Gollum contemplated the possibility of repentance? We saw him looking back up the pass, shaking his head, engaged in some interior debate. Gollum had been to visit Shelob, the monstrous spirit in spider form with whom he had formed a relationship long before when Sauron had released him from captivity assuming that he would do some mischief in the world, even to bring the Ring to him. Gollum would bring Shelob, always ravenous, prey to consume. The purpose of Gollum’s visit was to inform her that he intended to bring her the hobbits, hoping that he might regain the Ring thereby; but when he saw Frodo and Sam so peacefully sleeping his heart went out to them just for a moment. Would he change his mind about the planned betrayal?

In a letter to Michael Straight, editor of New Republic, (The Letters of J.R.R Tolkien, Harper Collins 2006, pp. 232-237) Tolkien spoke about this moment. He spoke of how Gollum had repeatedly, consistently, given in to temptation, was already a thief when the Ring crossed his path, did not defeat the Stinker side of his character in the debate in the slag hole near to the Black Gate, and so “weakened himself for the final chance when dawning love for Frodo was too easily withered by the jealousy of Sam before Shelob’s Lair.”

That phrase, “too easily withered”, tells us Tolkien’s own thoughts about this. Frodo’s kindness had awoken feelings within Gollum that he had not known for many hundreds of years. Tolkien speaks of them as a “dawning love”. But Gollum had murdered a friend before, desiring the Ring above any love, and that desire, combined with his long held resentment against all who he felt had rejected and excluded him, proved to be greater than any affection that might have awoken within him. We too might shed tears for Gollum, for the Sméagol that he once was, but our tears will be for all who choose, often by sheer force of habit, to put themselves beyond the power of love to reach into their hearts.

“He Came to Me Because He Trusted Me at First, I’m Afraid.” Frodo and the Capture of Gollum in the Pool Beneath Henneth Annûn.

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The Two Towers by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991, 2007) pp. 893-902

There are passages in The Lord of the Rings that I do not enjoy reflecting upon and this is most certainly one of those passages. The chapter entitled The Window on the West with its revelation of the wisdom of Faramir is one of the most moving in the entire story, and its climactic ending as the exhausted Frodo finally reveals his mission to his astonished host is quite wonderful.

And then it is followed by this description of the capture of Gollum when one noble figure (that is Faramir) discusses the execution of Gollum in a quite manner of fact way, and another (that is Frodo) participates in Gollum’s capture by means of deception. When Frodo went to down to Gollum as the wretched creature hunted for fish in the pool beneath Henneth Annûn he knows that the only way in which he can save Gollum’s life is by lying to him. That is certainly how Gollum sees it.

“Wicked! Tricksy! False!”

Frodo may have saved Gollum’s life but he does so at the price of destroying what trust had been built up between them along the road from the Emyn Muil. After Gollum’s capture Frodo cries out to him: “I’ll go with you, and you shall come to no harm. Not unless they kill me too. Trust Master!”

Gollum’s response to these words is to turn and spit at him.

There have been critics over the years who have dismissed The Lord of the Rings as being morally simplistic, a story in which all the characters on one side are unambiguously good while those on the other are evil. One can only assume that these critics have never actually read the book and certainly not this chapter. There is nothing unambiguous about this incident and most certainly not in the relationship between Frodo and Gollum.

When Frodo first learnt from Gandalf that Gollum is searching for him and searching for the Ring his response was quite simple. It was a pity that Bilbo did not kill Gollum in the first place in the dark tunnels of the Misty Mountains when they first encountered one another. Gandalf responded that it was Pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand and when Frodo met Gollum himself for the first time he recalled these words when he said that now that he saw Gollum for himself he did pity him.

But Frodo’s pity never deflects him from his mission. The Ring must be destroyed and Gollum will guide Frodo and Sam to Mordor because he has been there before. Frodo always knows that he can never reveal his true purpose to Gollum because Gollum would not countenance it. When on the slopes of Mount Doom Gollum finally realises Frodo’s true purpose his response is to try to kill him. So at every step of the way Frodo is deceiving Gollum.

For Sam it is all much simpler. From the very first he wants to be rid of Gollum finding him utterly disgusting. When Faramir asks Frodo if he should shoot Gollum we read: “If Sam had dared, he would have said ‘Yes!’ quicker and louder.” Sam hates Gollum although when he finally has him at his mercy beneath the Cracks of Doom he finds that he cannot actually kill him in cold blood. He lets Gollum go and so allows the great moment to take place on the edge of abyss within the mountain when Gollum takes the Ring at last and falls with it into the fire.

The Lord of the Rings is shot through with moral ambiguity from beginning to end but that never means that it loses its profoundly moral centre. It does not give way to an amorality in which the only thing that matters is the goal and any means by which the goal can be achieved is justified. Nor does it descend into cynicism and a sense that there is no good nor any point in looking for it or trying to do it. We read that as Faramir’s men carry Gollum wrapped in a blanket up to their refuge behind the waterfall Frodo follows them “feeling very wretched”.

This wretchedness is not merely the unease that someone of liberal sentiments might feel in watching suffering from a safe distance. Frodo is as close to Gollum’s misery as he can possibly get without actually being Gollum. He will pay for the closeness of his relationship to Gollum many times; when Shelob stings him in his lair, in his misery as he lies naked and alone in the tower of Cirith Ungol and when Gollum bites off the finger on which he has placed the Ring in the Cracks of Doom. He will never be free in Middle-earth from the price of his closeness to this creature. We have to imagine in what way he is able to be healed in the Undying Lands. It gives us all hope that this is possible.