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Originally Posted by Raynor
Would you care to address my point about his conscience instead of simply stating your opinion, in a going-in-circles way?
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I have no idea what Gollum's conscience told him - no-one can have. Which is my point. You are speculating & speculation (on your part or Tolkien's) is not 'fact',
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It could have been an actual, significant turn towards good; the only one we know that he had. Tolkien himself speculated that if allowed, his dawning change could have matched, if not surpassed in the end, the mastery of the ring.
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'speculated', 'could have', I don't see where this is going at all. Sam 'could have' 'speculated' that Gollum merely had indigestion at that point. Tolkien's 'speculating' & 'theorising' in the Letters is neither here nor there, given that we do not have the context (ie the letter he is responding to), that we do not know whether the 'speculation' in the letter is simply the way he felt at that time & whether he would have thought differently ten minutes later. The Letters were not intended for publication. They were not written to be read by you. You are taking bits of them out of context & treating those bits as 'holy writ', as some kind of final, definitive statement on questions about the novel. They are not. They were never intended to be that. The novel itself is what we are dealing with.