Hey! Someone revived my question! Thank you very much!
Child that was lovely, forgive my belated thanks. The fact that there isn't a Hell mentioned in Tolkien's cosmos, the fact that all the characters who seem closest to Tolkien: Gandalf, Frodo, particularly by the end, have a seemingly limitless capactity for giving bad old wizard-tyrants, dessicated, murdering fish thieves and slimy traitors a second chance suggest to me that all those characters who seem lost forever have quite a bit tossed at them or to them (like a line, or a lure, or a call, or a 'gift of man') to bring them sometplace both good and proper. The entire sub-creation seems to me imbued with kindness, which I attribute to the nature of the author.
doug*platypus: I like this:
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Sméagol's case is a little different - can you be accidentally redeemed?
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Um, no, nope. 'He slipped, tripped, and saved the world -- oh, ok. You're good on a technicality.' Poor guy's in trouble. Smeagol, unlike Boromir, did not get it right at the last second. I don't imagine the ultimate fate of most of the fear to be like Ragnarok, I imagine it as something like the end of Frodo's last journey to the West, but on a larger scale, with the grey rain curtain rolling back, but without the bother of a ship, an ocean, a breathing body, all those details.
-- It seems from HoME (I think vol. 4) that JRRT thought about a similar ending for Turin, a place in a final battle against Morgoth -- for no one else, not your average fea, just the much abused (albeit pigheaded) Turin, but then discarded it. I'm still waiting for the later volumes to find out what his last ideas were. I'd like to think that all those fear that experienced the gift of man had something better to do than wait around for yet another battle, or sleep, or float; but what that would be, I don't know exactly. I just persistently see them all on the grass by a river, stealing eggses, but in a good way. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
Wow, Kin-strife, you think the mists of history might have promoted Smeagol to a prince! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] I think somehow Smeagol would appreciate princedom no more than he appreciated chips. I do hope Smeagol's fea managed to get away from the cracks of doom. No one who appreciated Frodo, however imperfectly, deserves that.
Inderjit-Sangherja Eeek! Eru sounds mean. Or -- wait -- isn't there a Russian spa treatment that involves jumping out of hot springs, rolling in the snow, hitting eachother with switches? Maybe THAT's Eru's gift to man, a week of tough Slavic spa treatments to get those Fear into condition!
Ah, Saucepan Man, you make a good point, but remember, Smeagol strangled his friend at the sight of the gold before he actually touched it. The ring may have been exerting an influence at that point -- from the way Smeagol's reasons for murder are described 'because the gold looked so bright...' (something like that) I think the ring was affecting him. Still, this is a comment on Smeagol's morality-- it took much, much longer for Boromir to begin planning his ring-raid, and Bilbo, Frodo and Sam held to their essetial natures in almost all circumstances. I'm afraid Smeagol was going bad before the ring; you can't blame the ring for all of his degradation.