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Originally Posted by The Might
Lalwende, with all due respect, I think this has gone a bit too far.
You're being a bit subjective here, and interpreting the whole quotes as it fits your point.
Of course a threat is not equal to a deed, but let's be serious, Tolkien was pretty clearly saying that Gollum would have eaten Bilbo.
It could well be that the Ring had a great influence, and that the old Smeagol was a pretty nice guy, still, the thread topic is "Did Gollum, and not Smeagol, deserve death?"
Bogeymen stories? Even if these were just "stories", let's keep in mind that many stories actually base on real events.
Hobbits and ents only existed as characters in stories for the Rohirrim. Are you saying they are perhaps just bogeymen as well, meant to keep kids out of the forest or something?
Let's be serious, and face the facts, Raynor already gave some very good quotes for this.
Gollum was a murderer and a cannibal and probably would have been killed according to the laws of any kingdom in Middle-earth, with exceptions such as The Shire.
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Me subjective? Isn't everybody subjective? Every last one of us? The only person who can be objective is Tolkien and he isn't here - all we have are the scraps to turn over.
A threat is not equal to a deed. Tolkien was particularly skilled in using his own language and I think he would have known the nuances and meanings inherent in every word he wrote down! He also knew well that implied actions and threatened actions are far more effective at scaring the reader than actually seeing the 'gore' - the Wicth King's threats to Eowyn are far more frightening than actually
seeing someone having their Hroa ripped from them as without a defined picture, the imagination is able to go wild!
And that's sadly one thing that a lot of people today do not appreciate - the sheer power of the written word to create pictures in the mind, and the way that the writer can suggest things that may or may not have happened, and leave us to imagine and think for ourselves. So much more satisfying than films.
Many stories are based on real events? Many are not. See Mithalwen's great example for modern stories and how they get out of hand.
And which laws would have seen Gollum killed? Certainly not the laws of Thranduil's realm, nor those of Rivendell. And Faramir chose not to enact the normal rules applicable to intruders to the Forbidden Pool.
As davem says, it does not help to reduce this work to black and white. It is far too subtle for that. I don't care how many carefully cherry-picked quotes from the Letters are thrown at me, I have been reading Tolkien for long enough to know full well that there is always a contradictory one, so I am afraid Clever Quotes impress me not at all - mostly because I'm old enough in this game to know they aren't very clever.
And from a personal level, we instantly demean Tolkien's whole wonderful work to the level of a mere factual Maths text book the moment we set boundaries of X or Y upon it. Personally I blame the insidious influence of simplistic good/evil paradigms as seen in games and Jackson's films for this view people take today of the text. We need to listen to good old Gandalf a bit more. Which brings me back to being subjective. Nobody here is more than subjective as nobody here is Tolkien.
EDIT - What Boro says! And Boro knows as well as I do just how easy it is to spread stories and false rumours - that's what playing the Wolf in Werewolf is all about after all...
You can forget bogus 'magick spells' - it's stories that spread the real magic, whether malicious or not, true or not, it's magic all the same.