Quote:
Originally Posted by Rikae
"A mean soul", I wonder...mean as in cruel, or as in poor? At any rate, once he has murdered Deagol and taken the ring, he's under its influence more powerfully than either Bilbo or Frodo ever were. I also wonder how many people (especially social outcasts), if they had a ring of invisibility, wouldn't use it to spy (and quite a few even to steal). There is also the question of the influence of guilt on his psyche. We know he was tormented by guilt, since Tolkien tells us. I really don't see a description of an evil being; a pathetically weak one who knew he was weak and hated his weakness, knew, eventually, the ring influenced him and hated its influence even though he loved it.
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Going off of what Rikae said...
I don't necessarily think that Smeagol was heartless, but was (to put it in terms my dad would understand) a follower, and what I mean by that is he would follow any idea that seemed good to him and go with it. That is why the Ring had such a big hold on Smeagol is because it had the skills to mess with your mind and was easily talked into many things. I don't thing that the reason that Smeagol killed Deagol was because he was a cruel person, but just because he felt a great need to have it (like a drug addict) and his weak soul that was probably searching for something more and couldn't resist. I'm not saying that he wasn't a social outcast, because he very well might have been, and if he was then that would've been a contributer to how he acted at the river when he first acquired the Ring and also later on when he was spying and stealing things from his grandmother. And I think (I'm pretty sure it was mentioned somewhere) that his grandmother kicked
him out of their village because of his strange behavior due to his being left out of his family functions and probably having little to no friends in life. And that is why, when he was kicked out of his village Smeagol fled to the mountains into solitary confinement, because he hated all beings, even himself and the Ring. After that he was in the caves wallowing when Bilbo came along. When Bilbo came along Smeagol's old anger that had been brewing for a long time had woken up again because Bilbo is like what Smeagol had once been, a hobbit. Once Bilbo had taken the Ring Smeagol was furious, so he obviously went out to find it (as written in the books) and when he did, he actually tried to get over his addiction, but his weak spirit didn't have what it took to get rid of the need for it and when he finally got to the mountain with Frodo and Sam, Smeagol couldn't help himself due to his originally weak and even weaker still since the Ring took over spirit. So he took the Ring and fell over the edge, which was (I think) fate as chosen by the Illuvatar himself.
But Smeagol being the hero of the age, I think he was. Frodo
did fail due to the fact that he claimed the Ring for his own at the end of the quest. So all in all, the residents of Middle-Earth shouldn't have celebrated Frodo at all, but Sam and Gollum, because in the end it was really Gollum who competed the quest and destroyed the Ring.
(If you do not want to read the whole post, just read the bottom paragraph)