Interesting voting and comments so far – to be honest I thought that option B would be way out in front, and that option D would attract hardly any attention at all (although I would have bet a month’s salary that Bethberry was going to vote that way – old narratologists die hard…
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My vote, for what it’s worth, is option C, which looks as though I shall once again be in the extreme minority. I know that it may appear mad to say that Gollum jumped in to the fire on purpose, but hear me out.
In “The Black Gate is Closed,” Frodo says to Gollum:
Quote:
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‘You swore a promise by what you call the Precious. Remember that! It will hold you to it; but it will seek a way to twist it to your own undoing. Already you are being twisted. You revealed yourself to me just now, foolishly. Give it back to Smeagol you said. Do not say that again! Do not let that thought grow in you! You will never get it back. But the desire of it may betray you to a bitter end. You will never get it back. In the last need, Smeagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command. So have a care, Smeagol!’
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Frodo shows a high degree of prescience here insofar as he correctly predicts, in a way, what will happen at Mount Doom, for in “the last need” he does indeed put on the Ring and Gollum goes “into the fire.” It’s interesting too that Frodo tells Gollum that if he puts on the Ring “such would be my command” (that Gollum jump from a precipice or into the fire – or maybe both…).
Now, I’m not arguing that when Gollum gets the Ring he remembers this conversation and concludes that Frodo’s order now automatically applies, and so he must throw himself into the fire. That would be too simple (although it is tempting to see the last shred of Gollum that may be Smeagol at work here – that bit of goodness awakened and nurtured by Frodo is so horrified by Gollum’s betrayal, and so terrified of being lost forever, that it sub- or unconsciously makes Gollum step too far…I don’t really buy this, but it’s an interesting idea at the very least).
OK, so what is my argument then… Well, I suppose that I would say that this option (Gollum jumped in on purpose) contains within it all of the other options. First, yes it was an accidental slip insofar as Gollum did not think “I must go into the fire now with the Ring.”
But, his fate is also part of The Plan, so Eru was there making sure that good triumphs over evil. But He was not in command of it all – as Gandalf points out time and again, there is no puppet master in the sky; all the events and actions of the story are the result of free will – so Gollum wasn’t pushed, but it wasn’t really
just an accident. That's why I quoted that conversation from earlier, since it's prettly clearly laid out there, well in advance of the story's climax, that Frodo putting on the Ring will entail Gollum's destruction. So either this is the wildest coincidence ever (and there's no such thing as coincidence in a fictional tale under the control of an author) or there's some kind of cause and effect relation between Frodo claiming the Ring and Gollum dying.
Finally, option C also includes option D insofar as by having the tale end this way (with Gollum going into the fire accidentally-on-purpose) Tolkien was able to leave the fabric of his story whole, without reducing it with gross over-simplification. As
Bethberry has pointed out in the CbC thread, the journey up Mount Doom is a complex and subtle re-enactment of the soul’s journey – to have the conclusion of that quest clearly rendered as the result either of accident or design would be to remove the complexity of that moment and of the whole tale’s exploration of the relation between free will and fate, moral action and choice, guilt and culpability, forgiveness an fault.
If Gollum had clearly jumped on his own, or if an angelic minister had come to throw him in – would this moment be even a bit as interesting and powerful as it is? I daresay that in the end, the whole enchantment of the story hangs upon this moment insofar as we know that Gollum went in “on purpose” but that, in the end, what that purpose may be is hard (if not impossible) for us to really understand.