Sméagol: Hero of the Third Age

[littlemanpoet]

Interesting.... :

Originally Posted by Rikae

I see it as one last desperate, half conscious impulse for good that caused him to fall.

From Letter #192:
Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far. The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named' (as one critic has said).

Originally Posted by Raynor

I don't think it was those words of Frodo that caused the fall of Gollum - but Grace

Originally Posted by Rikae

Ah! A prophecy. .... it wasn't a spell Frodo cast, but a flash of intuitive knowledge on his part, though he mostly likely wasn't aware of it at the time.

I had it in my mind that Sam's denouncing of Gollum (Sneak!) closed down any good left in him. But maybe that little unconscious (I wouldn't call if half-conscious) chink in his mind played a part. And the Grace of an ever-present Person played a part. And Frodo's command/prophecy played a part. And Pity played a part. Isn't life like that? Everything is interweaved and all of a piece. Try to tease apart the weave of reality and you end up with a potentially polemical tangle of polarized views, one emphasizing this, another that. Meanwhile it's all there, working together toward the ultimate evangelium, the eucatastrophe. LotR is most powerful when it is most like real life. Like Gollum's evil being absolutely necessary for the great good to happen.

Oh, and a belated welcome to the Downs, Rikae.