LotR -- Book 4 - Chapter 01 - The Taming of Sméagol

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Nurumaiel

I'm unsure if there is anything else about Gollum's life before the Ring besides that which is told in LotR, so I don't know if there is something about him I've missed, but a possibility is that Gollum did know something of Light, and that was what made him so averse to it.

Of course, we don't know what sort of life Gollum had as innocent Smeagol the fisherman, but we could surely assume it was a quite one, untroubled by dilemmas of good and evil. Some might say Gollum was inherently evil for killing Deagol in order to get the ring. I don't think he was. My take is that the sight of the ring filled him with desire for the thing, and it was due to this that he went on to commit evil. But I agree wholeheartedly that Gollum may have known something of Light in the past, whether he knew it as Light I could not say, but the knowledge and memory of what he had turned away from must have remained within him, and so to be reminded of this would quite literally be painful to him. He has now gone so far that he possibly knows that there is little or no chance of his ever successfully returning to the Light. This is possibly what drives his hatred of Light, his anger, he is downtrodden by the Ring and almost displays a feeling of shame which drives his hurt pride to rail against Light.