The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy
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We are also told that he used to like tales, as Sam and other hobbits do (TT, p. 364; FR, p. 70). And Gollum, on at least one occasion, withstood great pain, “as a hobbit might” (FR, p. 60). So Sam and Gollum have much in common, and this is why it makes sense for us to ask how they can be happy and whether we can follow a similar path.
The Pursuit of Happiness
Let us begin with an assumption that does not seem far-fetched, namely, that we all want to be happy. It is not far-fetched because a good number of philosophers, beginning perhaps with Aristotle, have in fact pointed out that this is exactly what we all want. When it comes to living well, Aristotle writes, “the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and faring well with being happy . . .”1 True, if we ask ordinary persons what their aims in life are, what they ultimately desire, not all are likely to say happiness. Some might say that they want power, others that it is fame, others pleasure, still others money, and a few, I am sure, will say that they want to be virtuous. There might even be some who speak about a desire to serve God, to conquer the world, to advance science, or to know as much as there is to know. But if we prod them further, I think they will come around to Aristotle’s conclusion, namely, that what they really want is to be happy. Their disagreement is not about this ultimate end, but rather about what it means to be happy and how one gets to be so.
So let us assume that Sam and Gollum both want to be happy. What we need to know, then, is what they think this consists in, how they think they can get there, and whether in fact they do. Moreover, whether they reach their goal or not, we need to know why they succeed or fail. Here we shall find the moral of the story and what we hope to learn from this tale.
We know that Sam ends up happy, and Gollum ends up not just in misery but in destruction. Indeed, it is one of the interesting facts about Tolkien’s tale that, even though he undergoes all kinds of travails, Sam is not unhappy. At times, Sam is troubled, worried, hungry, exhausted, afraid, sad, frustrated, and even in pain. But Tolkien never tells us that he is unhappy or that he is ever seriously tempted to turn back from the Quest that brought him into difficulties. Just the contrary. He is single minded and steadfast. And even in the greatest crisis he faces, when he thinks Frodo is dead and he is all alone, rather than considering cutting his losses and running, his main thought is to complete the task he and Frodo had undertaken, to “see it through” (TT, p. 386).
The situation with Gollum is just the reverse. He seems to be in a permanent state of unhappiness. He suffers, like Sam, from all sorts of difficulties, but the source of his misery is not these. He is dissatisfied, vulnerable, and unable to find peace and relief in life (RK, p. 238). Gandalf describes him to Frodo as “altogether wretched,” and this even when he had the Ring, which for him was the ultimate object of desire. He lives a lonely, sneaky, miserable life, which arouses pity mixed with horror in Bilbo when he first encounters him. It is a life constituted of “endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment . . .” (H, p. 87).
So what is it that Sam and Gollum consider their overall aim, the goal that they think will bring them happiness? Consider Gollum first: What does he want? The answer is unambiguous: the Ring of Power, his Precious. “We wants it, we wants it, we wants it!” he repeats to himself in a kind of frenzy (TT, p. 268), an expression of his insatiable desire and lust for it. And what does the Ring provide? One thing is escape from Him, Sauron, who had subjected Gollum to torture in Mordor, and who also wants the Ring (FR, p. 64). “He’ll eat us, if he gets it, eat all the world” (TT, p. 273). Regaining the Ring would give Gollum strength to fight Ringwraiths, and thus presumably security; prestige and fame, which being Lord Sméagol, Gollum the Great, and The Gollum would bring; and food, particularly fresh fish from the sea, juicy and sweet (TT, p. 268). But above all he just wants to have the Ring, for without it he feels lost. Life without the Ring is nothing. Close to his destruction, he confesses that “when Precious goes” he will “die, yes, into the dust” (RK, p. 237).
And what does Sam want? He wants neither to be a wizard nor a warrior. Originally, before he and Frodo set out on their quest, he wanted adventure and to see elves and exotic creatures like Oliphaunts (FR, p. 70; TT, p. 283). But more deeply, what he really wants is to be back in the Shire, the place he cares for more than any other. This is what he is “hoping for all the time” (TT, p. 363), for then he can see Rosie again, and share a life with her and his friends. The Shire is never very far from his mind, and is the only place where he would like to be. When Lady Galadriel looks into his innermost desires, they are revealed to consist in “flying back home to the Shire to a nice little hole—with a bit of garden . . .” (FR, p. 401).
A most important difference between the desires of Gollum and Sam, then, is that Gollum wishes for the possession of his Precious by himself, alone, whereas Sam’s desires involve others: Frodo, Rosie, and his friends in the Shire. There is a social dimension to the happiness of Sam that is completely lacking in the happiness that Gollum pursues. Sam’s happiness includes others of his kind, but Gollum’s happiness excludes everyone. Gollum hides in an isolated place at the roots of the Misty Mountains, at the bottom of a tunnel, in a solitary island of rock in a cold lake frequented only by occasional goblins, which he eats when he gets the opportunity by catching them by surprise. His very survival depends on the destruction of others and his enjoyment of solitude, since he was “driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains” (H, p. 73). He lives away from his land, time, and kin. After finding the Ring, he became unpopular and was finally expelled from the community on orders from his own grandmother. So “He wandered in loneliness” (FR, p. 59), having as his only companion the thing he coveted and hid because of the fear that someone else would take it away from him.
By contrast, Sam is always giving. We should not be surprised at his attitude toward the master he loves, but his generosity does not stop with him. His loving nature is revealed when Sam realizes the power of the seed-box Lady Galadriel had given him at Lothlórien. Instead of keeping it for his garden, as even Frodo suggests, he uses it for the restoration of the whole Shire to its former splendor after it had been devastated by Saruman and his minions (RK, p. 330). His thought is always for others.
There are consequences to the desires of Gollum and Sam. Gollum’s condition deteriorates. He becomes dark and slimy. His eyes enlarge and become pale and luminous to allow him to see in the dark and catch the blind fish that live in the lake. He talks to himself and sometimes makes no distinction between himself and his precious Ring. The confusion about who he is goes even deeper, for at times there seem to be two halves of one person, conversing with each other. One is Sméagol, the remnants of the old hobbit, where there is still some good left; the other is Gollum, the slave of the Ring who will do anything to have it and keep it and is consumed with wickedness. Sam calls these two halves Slinker and Stinker (TT, p. 274). Neither name is flattering, for Sam dislikes and is suspicious of both, but the Sméagol half is not altogether lost to evil and treachery. He wants to save his “nice master,” Frodo, and when Faramir says that Gollum is wicked, Frodo responds: “No, not altogether wicked” (TT, p. 338). Indeed, when Gollum uses “I” to refer to himself, this “seem[s] usually to be a sign, on its rare appearances, that some remnants of the old truth and sincerity were for the moment on top” (TT, p. 280).
The consequences of Sam’s desires are of a different sort. He is slowly transformed from a rather immature and simple hobbit in search of adventure into a resourceful servant, a loyal companion, a fierce guardian, and a loving friend. There is also an important difference between how Sam and Gollum pursue their respective goals. Because Gollum’s mind is set on recovering the Ring which in his view was first stolen by Bilbo, he puts no conditions on this task. He engages in whatever activity he thinks will bring about the desired effect. And treachery against Frodo and Sam is never far from his
mind. Director Peter Jackson emphasizes this point by choosing to end The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers with Gollum’s treacherous plans rather than Tolkien’s ending in Shelob’s cave.
The case with Sam is very different. He also has an ultimate goal—to live in the Shire with those he loves. But this goal is mediated by another goal that he puts in between: helping Frodo destroy the Ring. He never considers leaving Frodo alone and going back to his dear country. Indeed, although he is not particularly smart, he outwits Frodo in order to accompany him when Frodo decides to abandon the other members of the Fellowship (FR, p. 456). Why? Because his first and foremost attachment is not to an object, but to a person. His goal is not possession, but fellowship. He loves Frodo. And this love translates into loyalty, unlike Gollum’s distorted “love” for Déagol and weak feeling for Frodo, which both end up in betrayal.
Like Gollum, Sam also has two halves between which he feels “torn.” But the two halves in question have to do with his relation to the two people he loves most, Rosie and Frodo. And when Frodo tells him that he is “as happy as anyone can be,” this refers to the fact that Sam is engaged in the life of the Shire, surrounded by his family and friends (RK, p. 338).
Sam’s happiness is not unmixed with sadness. He, like his friends Merry and Pippin, is “sorrowful” at Frodo’s parting. But, like them, he has “great comfort in his friends” on his way back from the Grey Havens (RK, p. 340). Upon his return, “Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said” (RK, p. 340). These lines close Tolkien’s story, because Sam, like Aragorn, is a wanderer who has returned to his land, and his return is the end of his quest, a quest for happiness which is answered with the fellowship of family and friends.
Gollum also loves something. He loves the Ring, but the Ring is the only thing he loves. The Ring is “the only thing he had ever cared for, his precious” (H, p. 87). And this is not a person; it is merely a thing, even if it is magical and possessed of extraordinary powers. Indeed, Gollum’s desire for the Ring makes him betray the love he was supposed to have for his friend Déagol, whom he murders in order to steal the Ring (FR, p. 58). His misunderstanding of love is clear in the encounter in which he repeatedly calls Déagol his love, even while he is strangling him.
So now we know what both Sam and Gollum think about happiness. For them, happiness consists in two different things: For Gollum it is possession of the Ring, and for Sam it is a life of fellowship in the Shire.
The Importance of Friendship
Gollum is not all bad, nor is Sam all good, however. Both are tempted by opposite passions: Gollum by the love of Frodo, and Sam by his jealousy of Gollum. And both are attracted, like almost everyone else, by the power of the Ring.
Even after Gollum had planned to take Frodo and Sam to the giant spider Shelob and in that way revenge himself against Sam, whom he hated, and recover the Ring from Frodo’s remains, there is a moment in which his good side could have overcome the bad. The origin of this extraordinary possibility was prompted by affection, the stirrings of love for his “nice master.” His expression changes, his eyes become old and tired-looking, he shakes his head as though debating inwardly:
Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo’s knee—but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld 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. (TT, p. 366)
The moment is crucial, and Tolkien calls it “the most tragic moment in the Tale” (L, p. 330), but unfortunately Sam destroys the possibility for regeneration it has opened for Gollum. Of course, we do not know whether there was enough fellow-feeling in Gollum to overcome the temptation for treachery in order to recover the Ring. But certainly Sam provides the excuse to make sure that it could not happen. When he wakes up and sees Gollum touching Frodo, his first reaction, prompted by jealousy (L, p. 235), is to challenge him: “Hey you! What are you up to” (TT, p. 366)? Sam is suspicious and he calls Gollum a sneak and villain, something Gollum resents deeply, for his feelings toward Frodo at that moment had been of a finer kind. He responds with bitter irony: “Sneaking, sneaking! Hobbits always so polite, yes. O nice hobbits! Sméagol brings them up secret ways that nobody else could find. Tired he is, thirsty he is, yes thirsty; and he guides them and he searches for paths, and they say sneak, sneak. Very nice friends, O yes my precious, very nice.” After this he withdraws into himself and the green glint of malice in his eyes reappears. Tolkien notes, in despair: “The fleeting moment had passed, beyond recall” (TT, p. 366). A new venom surfaces, motivated by the bitterness resulting from misunderstanding and rejection. Sam understands it and feels remorse, but he cannot but distrust Gollum.
In his letters, Tolkien speculates that, had Sam not acted as he did, Gollum might still have done all he could to recover the Ring, either by stealing it or taking it by violence, but once he had it, he would have sacrificed himself for Frodo’s sake, voluntarily casting himself into the Crack of Doom (L, p. 330). This certainly would have been a dramatic turn of events, but it is doubtful that it could have happened in spite of some indications early on that he wanted to save both his Precious and Frodo. There was not enough time for Gollum’s feelings for Frodo to grow strong enough in order for Gollum to overcome his desire to keep the Ring forever. But the issue is unclear in that, from the very beginning, Gandalf does not see Gollum’s regeneration as hopeless. He tells Frodo that there is little hope that the evil part of Gollum can be conquered by the good one. “Yet not no hope” (FR, p. 60). And he repeats the point later: “I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it” (FR, p. 65).
The power of the Ring is a temptation to both Sam and Gollum, to which Gollum gives in completely. After Gollum’s moment of hesitation, there is nothing left for him to do but to proceed with the planned treachery. Sam, on the other hand, is tempted by the Ring when Frodo is paralyzed by Shelob, and he takes the Ring from Frodo in order to escape from the orcs that teem in the area. All of a sudden he desires the Ring for reasons similar to the ones we saw in Gollum. He sees himself as “Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr” (RK, p. 186). He sees a transformation in the world brought about by him, Gorgoroth changed into a garden of flowers. He could do it, just put the Ring on and claim it for his own, and this fantasy would become a reality. How could he resist? Gollum could not. They are both hobbits and thus endowed with a plain sense of their limitations, but Sam resists and Gollum gives in. What makes the difference? Sam’s love of his master, Tolkien tells us. It is the love that Sam has for Frodo that makes it possible for him to resist temptation.
There is another episode that shows that the great difference between Sam and Gollum lies precisely in their fellow feeling. The reason that the Ring got hold of Gollum in such a way as to have destroyed his will can be traced precisely to how it was acquired: by betrayal, murder, and, most important, the corruption of love. Gollum, as we saw earlier, kills his friend Déagol to get it. By contrast, the reason that Bilbo was never under the complete power of the Ring is precisely that when he acquired it, he was moved by the fellow feeling of pity and spared Gollum’s life (H, p. 87).
Gollum cannot resist the desire for the Ring because he has no resources, no friends. One reason, perhaps, why Gollum has no friends is because he has no love for himself. As Aristotle reminds us, “Friendly relations with one’s neighbours, and the marks by which friendships are defined, seem [to proceed] from a man’s relations to himself.”2 A man who likes himself makes friends easily, and a man who has good friends is more easily prevented from going astray. Gollum lacks this self-love. Even Fro
do’s friendship is treated with suspicion and scorn because of his own self-doubt. In the face of an enemy with this kind of power, Gollum (like you or I) would have needed a little help from his friends.
Recall that Bilbo nearly did not give the Ring up, and it was only through Gandalf’s insistence that he did. Frodo himself became too attached to the Ring and in fact failed to do with it what he meant to do. Instead of throwing the Ring in the fires of Mount Doom, he took possession of it at the last minute: “I have come . . . but I do not choose now do to what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” (RK, p. 239) Had not Gollum bitten off Frodo’s ring-finger and fallen to his doom with it, it is difficult to envision that Frodo would have come to his senses. But Sam was able to resist the Ring’s power, and the reason was his feelings for Frodo. When Sam took the Ring from Frodo in Shelob’s cave, he was tempted to keep it, but he did not because his first thought was for his master rather than for himself. Love gave him the strength to resist.