Did Gollum deserve death?

[Boo Radley]

Originally Posted by davem

For one line in such a long book this opens a whole can of worms....

OK, I know I'm possibly going to get flamed for this... I can already hear the cries of "Heretic! Recant!! Recant!!!", but isn't it possible that you're looking too closely at this? That maybe when Tolkien wrote it he wasn't thinking that deeply about it? That it was just a line? It moved the story arc along?
I mean no offense, but if Tolkien gave as much thought to every single freakin' line that some people around here do, parsing every fragment to death... the books would never have been written.
Now, if these are just fun mental exercises, that's cool. But some of the posts I read here... you guys are kinda scary.