August 10, 2002

Gollum Tragic?
Danny

I think the question posed of wether you can or can't debat Gollum being tragic is largely up to a personal interpetation. Macbeth was a murderer, but his story is considered by literary experts to be a tragedy. Many tragic characters are not ones you can really identify with or feel too much empathy with.

Gollum certainly was a tragic victim of the ring. One could argue that the will of the Ring grabbed Smeagol and darkened his heart and filled him with a lust for it. Deagol was not a corruptible enough hobbit to serve the ring. Smeagol's vulnerability to the ring's first beconings is in its own way tragic and sad. I don't think many people, (or Hobbits in this case) would kill someone for a small gold ring, even if they were devious and cunning without some outside influence. I don't however wish to absolve Gollum of any responsability for the murders he committed.

It is tragic in the sense, that a Hobbit who, despite being cunning and devious, was still more likely a Hobbit with their repugnance of adventure, and violence, and that a power he didn't understand came into his life and attacked at his achiles heal.

I personally do feel a pitty for Gollum. I pity the way his life was destroyed by choices that I feel he would not have made without the ring's influence. I pitty someone who was unfortunate enough to come across the one thing powerful enough to amplify his weaknesses until he became consumed by them. I pitty a being who lived a tortured existence, both craving and hating the thing that gave him that living death. I even felt a mix of pitty and releif when I first read of Gollums death. To me his last squeal, "Precious," was pathetic and sad.

So to me Gollum is tragic just like Macbeth is. I didn't like Macbeth, and despised the murders he committed, but the tragedy is in the choices that lead to his fall. I feel that Gollum can be considered even more tragic because the influence of the ring amplified the greed and cunning he was succeptible to, while Macbeth was only corrupted by his own greed without any outside influence.