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Originally Posted by davem
Yet Tolkien does not want us to do either. He wants us to know Gollum is a wicked monster. He also wants us to be clear that he is also a broken soul, an an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing. This is the clearest demonstration I can think of of Tolkien's humanity, & of his refusal to take the easy way out when it comes to the darker side of humanity. Tolkien hates the sin, but refuses to simply hate the sinner. But his response is not so simple as to 'love' the sinner. He shows us that for all Gollum is a monster he is a human monster. He is not an Orc - though he may do Orcish things. A human being who does terrible things is still a human being, & we are all our brother's keeper. We cannot simply execute, remove, the Gollums - that's too simple. Actually, its a way of avoiding our own responsibility, a way of pretending that that aspect of the human doesn't exist. Tolkien tells us that it does exist & forces us to think about it by not having Gollum executed.
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And therein lies something that so many readers have simply missed. For Tolkien, as a Catholic, it would be impossible to view Gollum as simply 'evil', as he is a human being. For Tolkien, even the most 'evil' human would always retain some goodness. It's perfectly allowable to dislike the deeds that someone does, but it is not permissible to hate the person for what they do, that is going beyond the pale.
In many ways Gollum exists as a character to shoulder the burden of Sauron's supernatural evil. He demonstrates just how evil Sauron is by showing us what his craft can and does do to people. He shows us what unnatural long life does to a mortal, in a far more comprehensive and effective way than any Numenorean king can do. Gollum was once an ordinary Hobbit like us and then he sees this beautiful, shiny thing and kills for it; the shadow latent within him, within everybody (certainly according to both the Catholic and oddly enough the Jungian viewpoint), is stirred by the sight of a beautiful yet perilous object. Doesn't Tolkien tell us that all that is gold does not glitter? That's a warning - beauty does not always mean goodness! It's all too easy, as a humble human being, to be stirred by such things to wrongdoing.
You could say that most of the evils of the modern world are due to Rings of power, beautiful, blinging objects that we all want - 4x4s, big mansions, plasma TVs, i-Pods, fancy trainers etc - we want this stuff, it's tempting. We might not kill for it (though some do) but we certainly get ourselves into debt for them, submit ourselves to virtual slavery to earn the money for them, are blinded by the sight of celebrities and the urge to live in at least some small way their lifestyle, even if it is just having a shinier car or faster internet connection so we too can use YouTube, because that's what we are. Humans. And we are by nature greedy. That celebrity we see is like Annatar, tempting us.
Anyway, back off the mad rambling stuff...Gollum maybe scares us and we shout "He's evil!" because frankly, any one of us could end up like him if driven mad by greed. Just as much as we have potential for good, we have potential for greed.
The Ring too, symbolises corruption, things of such unutterable power that many simply cannot resist them. I'm not surprised that so many see the Ring as symbolic of nuclear weapons - there is a strong resemblance in the symbolism. These are things of great terror and power (and not a little terrible beauty too in their capabilities) and possessing one confers the owner with immense bargaining power. Then once you have one, it's just about impossible to get rid of it, as who wants to get rid of their power? I'm someone who is against nuclear weapons, but I have to admit that even I feel a bit scared at the prospect of my country not having them when others do. The Ring works in that way - having it gives you power, potential, protection, no matter how evil it is.
Gollum doesn't know any of this when he gets the Ring, but nor did governments when they first got their warheads really realise what a "terrible beauty they had unleashed onto the world". The Ring is merely utterly beautiful, and it exerts a pull on Gollum, the human with his shadow, his sin, his potential for doing wrong like any of us. Would you cut off your own hand if offered a billion pounds? You might say of course not, but until put into that situation, none of us can really answer that. That's the warning Tolkien, as a Catholic, gives us, that we all have the potential to be Gollums, so be careful, and don't judge what you do not and cannot understand.