Did Gollum deserve death?

[Folwren]

Originally Posted by davem

Some readers do seem to prefer to divide the inhabitants of M-e into 'Good' & 'Evil', refusing to believe the 'Good' can do any evil & that the 'Evil' are capable of any attrocity imaginable. Personally, I find such an approach overly simplistic.

Some readers, p'raps, maybe, but who here has voiced such thoughts? To whom do you refer, sir? Everyone, so far as I know, evil or good, has some tendancy to both evil and good. Boromir, I strongly believe, was a very noble, very good character, but he definitely had his faults and was capable of doing evil. Frodo was an infinitely good character, and yet, he, too, made mistakes.

Gollum...yes, he was a terribly evil character, but no, I never, ever said in this thread that he did not have some good left in him. Every character worth writing about has some shred of goodness that could somehow be redeemed, if the author so wished.

Every murderer usually has some soft spot left in his heart, I don't deny, but that doesn't mean that he hasn't done a crime.

Gollum was evil, with perhaps some tiny shred of goodness left in him by the time of the LotR, and Gollum, with all his murders, his lies, his treachery, and his whole evil self deserved death.

Originally Posted by Mansun

I think you are hugely mistaken here. Read the quote carefully & explain where he says Gollum should die. At best, one can only make an opinion on what Gandalf meant, but as mentioned earlier in England the spoken word is often different in context to the written one.

I would say that Gandalf said he deserved to die when he said this:

Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death.

I would ask you to tell me what Gollum had done NOT to deserve death, but I won't, because I seriously am leaving this thread and this argument.

Saucepan Man is right. But I am guilty, I think, of what he accuses everyone of. Got too fierce and argument here. I do apologize. Of course everyone is entitled to their own interpretation of the story, but this question...! My word, it drives one nuts!

-- Folwren