I’ve just received an e-mail from a high school student who is writing a paper on the character of Smeagol in Tolkien’s work. He asked me to reply to a few questions to fulfill the interview component of the paper assignment. I was happy to oblige. Here are his questions and my replies:
4. 1. Do you believe that smeagol is important to JRR Tolkiens Novels? Why?
Smeagol is crucial to the fullest and deepest meaning of Tolkien’s work, especially in The Lord of the Rings. Since the Ring in The Lord of the Rings is symbolic of sin (hence its destruction on March 25th, the date of both the Annunciation and the Crucifixion), Gollum exemplifies what happens to the soul of a person once they surrender to their addicition to sin. The physical shrivelling of Smeagol into Gollum is a mirror of the metaphysical shrivelling of the soul of the unrepentant sinner.
2. What message do you think Tolkien was trying to convey with the character?
As a lifelong practising Catholic, Tolkien is showing us our potential selves in the character of Smeagol/Gollum. He wrote in his seminal essay On Fairy Stories that fairy tales hold up a mirror to man, i.e. that they show us ourselves. Clearly Tolkien is doing the same thing in his characterization of Smeagol.
3. What do you think was the most important part of his life.
As with all serious, practising Catholics, Tolkien saw his faith as the most important thing in his life. This is reflected in his work. Hence Tolkien’s insistence that “The Lord of the Rings is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”. He stated specifically that the fact that he was “a Christian, and in fact a Roman Catholic” was the most significant influence on The Lord of the Rings. He was also a pater familias, a husband and father. He was originally inspired to write The Hobbit merely so that he could read it to his own children.
4. What do you think that smeagol as a character tells us about good, evil, redemption, and temptation.
Smeagol shows us that freedom is not free and that there is a high price to pay for the abuse of the freedom of our will by choosing evil over good, sin over virtue. We must either grow in virtue through the sufferings and struggle of our journey through life, like Bilbo, Frodo and Sam, or we will inevitable shrivel and shrink into pathetic parodies of the good hobbits we were meant to be!
And…Sam is the opposite of Smeagol. Frodo and Bilbo as ring bearers use the ring for personal purposes. They take advantage of the ring’s powers while it eats away at their souls. Sam alone never uses the ring except to save Frodo. His brief time of carrying the ring is completely selfless. He remains untouched by the ring’s power, and is therefore able to return to the Shire to rebuild and live in peace. He is Christ as servant. Of course, this is only expressed fully in the books, not the films.