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What do you mean by dark side? If I understand what you mean by it, everybody has a dark side, but is it realistic to speak of any of the characters having LOST it?
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In response to Littlemanpoet, I think the idea of any definite "dark" or "light" side came into play when we discussed Sméagol/Gollum's relationship with Frodo. We noted that Frodo possessed a kind, caring, and alltogether good nature. Sméagol, on the other hand, was the absolute polar opposite of Frodo, the antithesis, if you will. In a cut and dried sense, they bear likeness to night and day. We made the conjecture that these characters, absolute foils of each other, balanced each other out, only Tolkien interwove the relationship with trust, treachery, and sudden turns in a much grander sense than the blatently obvious observations we made.
So, to answer the question at hand, I suppose that by "dark side" or "light side," we meant the character traits being portrayed in each character as being their distinguishing qualities that mark them as "good" or "bad."
[ March 30, 2002: Message edited by: Shadowfax Clawson ]