Tolkien could have used a different verb to frame the relationship between Frodo and Gollum. But he didn’t.
An update on our family’s progress through The Lord of the Rings: we’re still reading it! Almost done with the Two Towers. (The kids are very, very concerned about the “she” of whom Gollum spoke. They don’t stand a chance.)
I am thankful for how our reading has paralleled the changing of the seasons, matching the flow and progression of the narrative. We started in September (a very good place to start). And now as we’ve crossed the threshold of spring, Sam and Frodo have journeyed south into a vale of herbs and rabbits.
And even though March 25 has come and gone and we have yet to read about the destruction of the One Ring, I am holding out hope that maybe we’ll reach that part by the time Good Friday rolls around.
There is one passage we read recently that I had not remembered, and Tolkien’s word choice is as sharp as it is subtle. The passage in question comes after the taming of Sméagol. Frodo and Sam haven taken in Gollum and are following him toward Mordor into the Dead Marshes. As they begin this leg of their journey, Gollum sings a little ditty about eating fish, which gets Sam to thinking and worrying:
These words only made more pressing to Sam’s mind a problem that had been troubling him from the moment when he understood that his master was going to adopt Gollum as a guide: the problem of food.
When he understood that his master was going to adopt Gollum. Frodo adopted Gollum. Frodo—whose parents died when he was young, and who was adopted by Bilbo—adopted Gollum—a creature who had lived without home or family for time out of mind.
I don’t know if I have much of a point beyond highlighting how powerful this is. Of all the words Tolkien could have used, he used adopted. Thinking of Frodo’s relationship with Gollum in terms of adoption does help to make sense of good chunks of the text. And it also helps frame Gollum’s own torn sense of conflicted identity, his desire to be loved by his master and his unreconciled desire for the Thing that he thinks will provide safety and security.
Consider this section near the end of “The Taming of Sméagol”:
At once Gollum got up and began prancing about, like a whipped cur whose master has patted it. From that moment a change, which lasted for some time, came over him. He spoke with less hissing and whining, and he spoke to his companions direct, not to his precious self. He would cringe and flinch, if they stepped near him or made any sudden movement, and he avoided the touch of their elven-cloaks; but he was friendly, and indeed pitifully anxious to please.
If you’re a foster parent or have adopted children from the foster system, Gollum’s behavior feels eerily familiar. And when Frodo, Sam, and Gollum feel the terror of a Ringwraith overhead, it sends Gollum spiraling into trauma- or PTSD-induced ways of inhabiting the world:
From that time on Sam thought that he sensed a change in Gollum again. He was more fawning and would-be friendly; but Sam surprised some strange looks in his eyes at times, especially towards Frodo; and he went back more and more into his old manner of speaking.
The pity toward Gollum Gandalf spoke about—and which Frodo recalled when he and Sam first came into contact with Gollum in the Emyn Muil—is enacted in the relationship of adoption. Frodo does the unimaginable toward the utterly unloveable. In the desert, Frodo breaks (lembas) bread with a creature so starved for real connection that he cannot even stomach the gift. (Another thing many foster parents can relate to.) And though a deep tragedy awaits Gollum, the sign and significance of Frodo’s actions do not return empty.
Here, I’m afraid—and as a friend pointed out to me as we were discussing these things—Samwise Gamgee must bear some of the blame. In this metaphor, if Gollum is the adopted child, then Sam is the biological child. Both Sam and Gollum viewed Frodo as a paternal “master.” The bond Frodo and Gollum shared was a unique and powerful one, and Sam could sense it. It’s possible that he felt threatened, insecure—lacking in the attention he was used to receiving from Frodo. Yes, Sam had good reason to distrust Gollum. But if he had treated Gollum with the same grace and pity as Frodo, maybe things would have turned out differently.
Foster parents are told that even if the children live with you for a short time before returning home or being placed elsewhere, the moments of attachment and felt-safety experienced in your home will enable them to attach and feel safe in future relationships. In a different Middle Earth, maybe that would have been the case with Gollum: that his adoptive encounter with Frodo could have started to unwind all the shame and darkness in his heart. But that it didn’t only speaks more soberly about the painful realities for many children in the foster system. A life of dark survival and trauma is not easily overcome. Frodo shows us the way, even if the ending for Gollum is not a happy one.
A.maze.ing!
The first title was only slightly more interesting!
Thanks, Henry!