“I am da Law”

[Lalwendë]

First off, I think that the depth of Gollum's 'addiction' to the Ring shows just how sinister an object it was, that it could totally ensnare someone. What happened to Gollum says more to me about The Ring than it does about Gollum and his personality or predisposition to evil or not. Especially when set against what happened to Frodo and how he failed to do the deed of throwing the Ring away and how broken he was.

But anyway. I agree that many (maybe even the majority) of Men would have believed on a most basic level that wrongdoers should get their 'deserts'. In the real world if you do polls on if people agree with things like capital punishment the majority always says 'yes' but it still remains firmly off the statute books; that's because we give over the making of serious decisions of that level to law makers and experts, who we expect to act in a level-headed way. You do not expect a lawyer's decisions to be swayed by things that have happened in his or her personal life - they are expected to be professional in making all decisions, to simply weigh up evidence dispassionately. That also holds for Middle-earth. An ordinary Gondorian might think a criminal who knicks his armour deserves a good kicking, but the rulers of Gondor would say otherwise - they are there to take a professional overview.

I hope that makes sense.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

It makes sense The responsible is what the leaders need to be, being honest, incorruptible, just, and so on - and as I think I have mentioned somewhere earlier, Gondor (and Arnor) are portrayed as places where the leaders more or less are up to this standard (no "Black Númenorean" trait here).

To that Gollum thing, I believe Tolkien actually did not know - maybe until the last part - what would become of Gollum. I don't know if he mentioned this in the letters, but even if he did, maybe he did know it "conciously", as a Writer, but not as someone who lived the story as it formed... as he himself is saying, "I didn't know what happened to Gandalf and who Strider was", so perhaps, even the fate of Gollum "just came" in the end; and if we consider the story "living", as the Professor himself definitely did, this is how Gollum acted - at that point. His choice, that's all.