[MLD-Grounds-Keeper-Willie]

I agree with Arwen Imladris.

I don't think that Frodo was such a good ring bearer because he was a hobbit. I think that a lot of hobbits could have had a resilinece to the ring but my theory is that it was because they are simple. Hobbits' minds are hard to cloud because they are simple. It would be easier to confuse a human or any other race because they are either stupid (like trolls) or complex. Most hobbits in the shire were simple, simple because they did not deal with issues out of the shire. Their ignorance made it harder for the ring to confuse hobbits.

I also have a theory that the ring was a separate character in lotr. I don't think that it was just an object or a tool. When I read lotr, I get the impression that the ring was a character. It couldn't physically interact in the environment like the other characters could. It couldn't walk or talk, but it could think. I think that it had a mind and its own personality. Maybe its personality wasn't really developed but I'd describe it in one word- evil. The ring could use its mind not to communicate but to trick and confuse and to even control ring bearers. It even used ring bearer's to get closer to sauron. It had the ability leech on to a ringbearer's mind, or it was like a virus that enters the body (in the ring's case, the mind) and take over. I think that it could predict how it would get to sauron. For example, the ring purposely slipped off of isildur's finger to avoid being brought to Gondor and then under counsel, where it would be decided that it must be destroyed. Or maybe it wanted revenge for sauron. Anyway's, the ring saw gollum as an opportunity to get closer to sauron.

Now that you know my 2 theories, lets put them together. The ring needed to move. When it had the opportunity, it chose Deagol. It got out of the water and saw gollum. I think that it thought gollum would do better to move it or gollum would be easier to control.
Now if hobbits are simple folk who have a good resiliance to the ring, how would it have worked on gollum? Simple, Smeagol and Deagol were some of the hobbits that lived by the river and liked to maybe have some adventures. If they lived closer to other or 'Big folk,' then they were most likely not as ignorant as the other hobbits. They probably got news of things in middle earth over the years. And if Smeagol's family lived there for a long time, then their family over the years might have lost its simplicity. So if gollum had been less simple and more complex, it was probably harder for gollum to resist the ring and easier for the ring to corrupt gollum.

Hope that helps [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]