Now, I know we've gone over the 'Tolkien and Eastern thought' thing a lot, most recently in
A hint of Buddhism?
But I was looking at some other examples of the Trickster archetype, and one that really supports the Gollum case is the Chinese Trickster and Monkey King Sun Wukong. The was a pretty typical malific trickster figure until the Gods implored Buddha to do something about him. Buddha stuck him under a mountain. (quote following from
Wikipedia.org
Quote:
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There he remained imprisoned for five centuries until he offered to serveSanzang, the Tang Priest, who was destined to make the journey to the West to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures for China. The bodisattva Guanyin helped Sanzang by giving him a magical headband which Sanzang tricked Monkey into wearing. With a special chant Sanzang is able to tighten the band until Monkey cannot bear the pain. In that way he is brought to his true calling as a disciple of Buddha. For the rest of the epic Sun Wukong faithfully helps the Tang Priest on his journey to the west.
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This bears some startling (albeit probably unintentional) similarities to Gollum's journey, especially if you subscribe to the opinion that he was redeemed by his mis-step at the Crack of Doom.