Wonderful stuff.
However:
Quote:
5) They oppose the wills of the heroes, even try to hinder them, but they are not evil.
This is probably the most important point about them. They are the story’s only truly flawed characters who undergo some process of redemption transformation. It is why they are the most interesting characters in some ways. They do evil things (even Éowyn, who breaks her oath to her King) but they are not evil. They are, in fact, good, but mistaken in their actions and desires.
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I think it's a stretch to say that Gollum isn't evil.
"Nothing is evil in the beginning-- even Sauron was not so." I would say the same thing about Smeagol. The fellow had every intention of eating Bilbo; um, ex-hobbit eats hobbit, that's cannibalism. In Mirkwood there was the rumor of some evil creature that drank blood and made small children disappear. We know that while still in the caves, when he tired of fissssh he ate goblins.
(Aside: "And they don't taste very good, does they, precioussss?" Great line.)
Who else has he eaten?
Sam's fear that Smeagol would strangle them in their sleep was not an unfounded one. If the Ring hadn't had a still stronger hold on Smeagol than hunger, Frodo and Sam would have been lunch.
IMO this makes Smeagol's near repentance that much more profound and amazing. We're not looking at the repentance of someone who's been caught stealing cookies. ONe would guess that five centuries of cannibalistic murder produces a tremendous hardening of the heart and soul. Frodo's persistent love and mercy and kindness and compassion actually whittled through THAT kind of hardening. It's like pondering, for the sake of argument, the repentance of one of the ringwraiths-- hard to imagine, and I doubt Tolkien would go for it; but Smeagol's repentance is somewhat like that. The odds against it are seemingly insurmountable, and if Sam hadn't seen it with his own hasty eyes, would you believe it?
Compared to that, the repentance of Boromir and Eowyn is in a different league.
I don't think that hurts your arguments all that much, Fordie, except for the part that "the three of them aren't evil". Two aren't, and the third wasn't evil in the beginning-- that works for me.