[Child of the 7th Age]

Remember that there was one hobbit who actually had the Ring for many, many years. And he certainly wasn't a "good" hobbit even to begin with because he had murdered one of his own kind. Yet good or not, this hobbit had very simple ambitions.

When Gollum spoke with Frodo how they might have a happy life, he didn't talk about ruling or controlling or buiding a big empire. He described his great desire to have lovely big fish for three meals a day! Gollum's "sin" was in his desire for possession of the Ring, not in wanting to become a world ruler. In this desire for posession, Gollum and Bilbo were actually quite similar. Perhaps this possessiveness is more characteristic of hobbits, rather than a desire to rule their neighbors. (Lobelia's sins also seem to fall in this same category of greediness and possesiveness.)

So don't forget there were actually four hobbit Ringbearers of modest ambitions, not just three. If an Elf or Man had found the Ring in the river, rather than Smeagol, I dread to think what might have happened to Middle-earth, and how quickly Sauron might have recovered the Ring. So even Gollum, with his evil ways, was more resitent to the pull of the Ring than a Gandalf or Galadriel or Aragorn may have been.

Actually, if you stop and think about it, Bilbo and Gollum were also not too different in how they treated the Ring. They both kept it hidden at home and used it for their own little schemes. The difference lay not in how they used it or the size of their ambitions, but in how they acquired it and the extent of good or evil already in their soul.

sharon, the 7th age hobbit

[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: Child of the 7th Age ]