July 24, 2002

News Just In: Gollum Was Pushed!
Brett C.

This is one of those interesting little details in LOTR which leaps out at you like a thunderbolt one day, but fades away in your mind until suddenly your reading the book again and you come across the same piece of text and remember that blinding revelation: towit, Gollum did not fall or stumble into the Cracks of Doom, he was 'pushed' by Frodo.

In TTT: The Black Gate is Closed, on learning finally that Frodo intends to take the Ring into Mordor, Gollum despeartely tries to dissaude him, at first tryiing to convince Frodo to keep the Ring, but also offering that Frodo should go away "and give it back to little Smeagol." Frodo eventually takes the third alternative, to let Golum guiide him to Cirith Ungol, but also says...

"You revealed yourself to me just now, foolishly. 'Give it back to Smeagol' you said. Do not say that again! Do not let that thought grow in you! You will never get it back. But the desire of it may betray you to a bitter end...In the last need, Smeagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it , were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or cast yourself into the fire. and such would be my commmand."

Now, jump to the final ascent up the slopes of Mount Doom. Sam and Frodo are set upon by the now starving but desperate Gollum. As he is attacked Frodo manages to pull free[ROTK: p.195]...

"Down,down,' he gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leathe shirt he clapsed the Ring. 'Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot betray or slay me now!'

Then suddenly...Sam saw the two rivals with another vision. A crouching shape...filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robbed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commmanding voice.

'Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom."

Who is actually commanding Gollum here? Frodo, or is perhaps the Ring expressing itself through him. Whether it is Frodo doing as he said he would before the Black Gate, or the Ring recognizing that Frodo would utimatley lack the strength to cast it away and would reveal hmself to Sauron, the result would seen the same. A Doom has been invoked through the Ring's power, and in seizing the Ring Gollum brings that Doom down upon himself. This doesn't quite dissovle the arguement that in the end Sauron by defeated by luck, but it does make his overthrow seem less the result of coincidence and random chance than may originally have seemed.