[Kiara]

I think each of the individuals confronted by the power and temptation of the ring only had as much propensity to do evil as their ambition would lead them to. For example, Galadriel would be an evil queen: lots of power and beauty, and then the twisting of it (which was was good when submitted to her role as given by Eru) to a greater evil. I don't think Smeagle ever had the same potential to do that kind of evil (let's think of Gandalf, Aragorn, and even Boromir as other examples of possilbe "Dark Lords"--and I use the term loosely, so don't berate me for it).

Once again, from my viewpoint, it has to do with choices made by the individuals. The end result for Gollum is he chose evil (as someone said before, it was consistent with his other choices). Frodo had a moment of weakness, but was redeemed....Boromir had a moment of major weakness (redeemed in a warrior's death?). My point is that: though no one can say who was ultimately "redeemed" or who was ultimately "condemned", I DO think that we can see by the character development Tolkien gave that there were people who chose evil and were evil, but because of a greater design than their own, good came of their evil intent. I do not think, however, that it means that they were ultimately GOOD.