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Originally Posted by Folwren
I agree with Raynor, and possibly somewhat with something that Lal said.
I didn't say Gollum deserved to die because I thought his treason deserved it. That was no where in my mind. I was thinking more of his murders and his over all corruption. He had to have been pretty corrupt to kill Deagol as soon as he saw the other Hobbit holding the ring in the first place.
I don't deny that Mercy is a wonderful thing and sometimes is better than Judgement, but you can't always put Mercy in as a substitution for Judgement. Not on earth (in this case, Middle-Earth). If you did, what would you be left with? (What's the world today left with?) Either a lot of murderers and criminals (and that doesn't belong in quotation marks, I'm talking real criminals) running around loose, or a lot of murderers and criminals locked up in prison for years upon years. Sometimes, capital punishment is appropriate punishment, and to have mercy in such cases would be jepordizing other people.
I guess in a case like this, one has to choose the lesser evil. That is, unless you believe the Bible, and then you won't have a problem with capital punishment, because that's God's law, when it comes to murderers and just a couple other crimes.
The real mercy comes after life.
But I didn't want to get into all that because it's not LotR or ME related.
I still think Gollum deserved to die, and I think Gandalf knew it.
I also think that Gandalf was supposed to make judgements. He did judge Saruman, to a certain extent.
But judgement and mercy are often mixed together when good people judge.
Aragorn, for instance, judged Beregond (spelling may be incorrect, and I haven't got a book with me), but he did so with mercy.
Won't go farther, I haven't the time.
-- Folwren
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Firstly I must correct something. The Bible does not say that capital punishment is acceptable. One of the fundamental things I was taught being brought up, at Sunday School and in church was that Mercy comes above all and that to resort to capital punishment was wrong; reacting with violence is allowing oneself to sink to the level of the criminal; that only God was able to make such judgements. Only
certain interpretations of scripture says capital punishment is OK and we must also remember that many of the 'laws' contained therein are not God's laws but reflections of the culture of an ancient middle eastern society - e.g. not eating shellfish, stoning adulterers etc. And as for those who are against the cruel treatment of criminals, many of the prime movers in the movement against Capital Punishment were/are committed Christians. Today we have the Quakers solely to thank that prisoners are not beaten and left to rot in foul dungeons.
Now on the matter of Gollum's crimes. Again, there is not enough evidence that he committed much more crime than to kill Deagol. Anything else he 'did' is simply hearsay, as we as Readers are not there when events rumoured to be Gollum's work take place and there is no reliable evidence. Had he been a Real Life criminal the case would be laughed out of court as it's only circumstantial evidence at best - and that's a push of credibility!
And we simply cannot say that because he killed Deagol he was already corrupt. If we do so we are omitting to consider that most powerful of all the dangers in Middle Earth. What's that? The Ring of course. What about the powerful draw that the Ring has on him? If it was so unimportant then we might as well dismiss the whole story of LotR, as it was quite pointless trying to get this risky object out of anyone's hands forever, and we might as well dismiss Frodo's struggles, and decide Boromir really was a nasty pigheaded bully and not just troubled by thoughts of the Ring and what it might do.
I'm afraid that this is one of those examples whereby seeking to impose simplistic Real World moral mores onto Tolkien's complex creation just results in stripping away all the subtlety.
As indeed Gandalf said "can you really judge?" No, none of us can.