Gollum’s Moral Complexity in ‘The Lord of the Rings’

Filmmaker Andrew Muir of The Art of Storytelling examined the moral complexity of the highly conflicted Gollum by comparing his portrayal in J.R.R. Tolkien‘s original writings with that in Peter Jackson‘s subsequent film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings.

Of all the many strange and fascinating characters created by J.R.R. Tolkien, I’ve often felt that the most morally complex character is Gollum. On the one hand, he’s a villain scheming to take back the ring and ultimately betraying his only friend. On the other hand, he’s a victim, more a casualty of evil than its source. 

Muir further explores how character portrayals and narrative shifts shaped the audience’s perception of this pitiable figure and questions what Tolkien intended Gollum to convey.

Tolkien’s writing doesn’t reduce to simplistic answers. But if we look at Gollum’s story in the grand scheme of the tale, then I think we can tease out a general moral outlook and that is that evil is self-defeating. …The dominion of evil rots and decays any landscape that it touches, and so on. Evil is unstable. It cannot last because it already contains the seeds of its own destruction.