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Gollum

This article is about the fictional character. For the animated being from Jewish folklore, see Golem. For other uses, see Gollum (disambiguation).
"Smeagol" redirects here. For the sea slug, see Smeagol (gastropod).

Gollum
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings character
Sculpture of Gollum catching fish at Wellington Airport, New Zealand, 2013, to mark the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey[1]
In-universe information
Full nameSméagol
RaceHobbit (Stoor branch)
GenderMale
Book(s)

Gollum is a monster[2] with a distinctive style of speech in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy world of Middle-earth. He was introduced in the 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became important in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit[T 1][T 2] of the River-folk who lived near the Gladden Fields. In The Lord of the Rings, it is stated that he was originally known as Sméagol, corrupted by the One Ring, and later named Gollum after his habit of making "a horrible swallowing noise in his throat".[T 3]

Sméagol obtained the Ring by murdering his relative Déagol, who found it in the River Anduin. Gollum referred to the Ring as "my precious" or "precious", and it extended his life far beyond natural limits. Centuries of the Ring's influence twisted Gollum's body and mind, and, by the time of the novels, he "loved and hated [the Ring], as he loved and hated himself."[T 4] Throughout the story, Gollum was torn between his lust for the Ring and his desire to be free of it. Bilbo Baggins found the Ring and took it for his own, and Gollum afterwards pursued it for the rest of his life. Gollum finally seized the Ring from Frodo Baggins at the Cracks of Doom in Mount Doom in Mordor, but he fell into the fires of the volcano, where both he and the Ring were destroyed.

Commentators have described Gollum as a psychological shadow figure for Frodo and as an evil guide in contrast to the wizard Gandalf, the good guide. They have noted, too, that Gollum is not wholly evil, and that he has a part to play in the will of Eru Iluvatar, the omnipotent god of Middle-earth, necessary to the destruction of the Ring. For Gollum's literary origins, scholars have compared Gollum to the shrivelled hag Gagool in Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and to the subterranean Morlocks in H. G. Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine.

Gollum was voiced by Brother Theodore in Rankin-Bass's animated adaptations of The Hobbit and Return of the King, and by Peter Woodthorpe in Ralph Bakshi's animated film version and the BBC's 1981 radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. He was portrayed through motion capture by Andy Serkis in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies. The "Gollum and Sméagol" scene in The Two Towers directly represents Gollum's split personality as a pair of entities. This has been called "perhaps the most celebrated scene in the entire film".[3]

  1. ^ Child, Ben. "Hobbit release marked with giant Gollum sculpture at Wellington airport". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Nelson 2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Thompson 2011 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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