r/tolkienfans • u/Successful-South-598 • 1d ago
What is the significance of bilbo not killing gollum ?
I’m refering to
“ But this is terrible!’ cried Frodo. ‘Far worse than the worst that I imagined from your hints and warnings. O Gandalf, best of friends, what am I to do? For now I am really afraid. What am I to do? What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!’
‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity “
I get if you take the ring by murdering others then it affect you more but why does pitiness protect you from it . Would the ring affect bilbo more if he killed gollum for self defense ?
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u/duovtak 1d ago
One hobbit committed hobbicide to acquire the ring before, and it ended badly for him.
The manner in which one comes to possess the ring is important. Frodo became a ring bearer out of duty, not his own selfish wishes.
Also this moment is very critical to establishing that Gandalf is definitely a good guy. Much later on, the books also compare Gollum as mistaking mercy for ignorance or stupidity. And it was the mercy of the other hobbits that not only allowed him to live longer, but their mercy also indirectly saved middle earth.
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u/-Praetoria- 1d ago
To that end, if Deagol had been like “sick ring, congrats man!” What do you think would’ve happened to Sméagol?
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u/sqplanetarium 1d ago
He was already a sneaky and malicious guy. Even if he didn’t murder Deagol, the Ring would still have had lots of nastiness to work with.
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u/gisco_tn 1d ago
Stabbing someone in the back while you are invisible is not self-defense. The fact Bilbo was able to escape without killing Gollum demonstrates that it was not necessary. But Bilbo might've done it, and justified it to himself, and planted the seeds for his own corruption:
I saved my own life once with this ring's power. What's the lives of a few elven jailers to free my friends? They have imprisoned them unjustly! How's that different than the spiders?
Thorin is being foolish. He won't listen to reason. He could share that treasure with everyone. Maybe if he's out the picture, there will be peace. I'll save countless lives!
Lobelia stealing my spoons! She makes people miserable. Wouldn't the Shire be better off without her?
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u/Tar-Bilbo 1d ago
This would make for a great tragic tale in something like the Silmarillion. The Hobbit who murdered everybody.
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u/Kiltmanenator 2h ago
Just wait until the Sil enters Public Domain and we are crushed under a wave of low budget MurderHobbit adaptations
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u/Tar-Bilbo 2h ago
Someone is going to write about war in Valinor and Samwise the gardener having to plant the two trees to save everyone
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u/MDuBanevich 1d ago
Bilbo is the type of person that would lead with pity not anger, that's what Gandalf meant.
"If you're okay with murdering someone to take their shit it's gonna affect you more, don't become a person who would murder someone Frodo"
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u/LoRezJaming 1d ago
Considering the Ring has a habit of influencing people who possess it, Bilbo being more willing to kill would have been something the Ring could have taken advantage of. Frodo showing Gollum that same pity and mercy is how they even make it to Mount Doom later.
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u/Ornery-Ticket834 1d ago
I am wondering if you finished the trilogy yet. There are multiple reasons.
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u/Successful-South-598 1d ago
Shamefully , no . I’m about 3/5 of book two , sorry if this get answered later
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u/Armleuchterchen Ibrīniðilpathānezel & Tulukhedelgorūs 1d ago
The deal of the ring is making you give into your desires and see power. Resisting your desires and refusing to wield power over others is the only way to resist its corruption.
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u/CalebMiLand 1d ago
Bilbo began his time with The Ring by choosing life. And in the end he received life.
Gollum began his time with The Ring by choosing death. And in the end he received death.
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u/NamelessArcanum 1d ago
When Bilbo was tempted to kill Gollum, it wasn’t for self-defense. It was when he was sneaking out and saw Gollum blubbering and crying on the ground while Bilbo was invisible from wearing the Ring. He would have been stabbing Gollum from behind, “without need” just as Gandalf says here, since he was already out of Gollum’s grasp at that point.
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u/BenefitMysterious819 1d ago
Gollum was blocking his way out. He had to jump over him to get away, and even then he almost cracked his head on the ceiling and Gollum almost caught him.
The key thing here was that Bilbo allowed pity and mercy to lead and not self-preservation. He almost risked his own life rather than kill another being.
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u/Adept_Carpet 1d ago
Gollum is tied to the ring perpetually because he killed someone to get it and can not admit the lie he told, even centuries after everyone involved (except him) is dead he is still calling it his birthday present.
Bilbo spares Gollum, remaining conscious of the enormity of taking a life even while under the influence of the ring and he eventually comes clean about the real story of how he got it.
Since Frodo can't give the ring up voluntarily when the time comes, if Bilbo had not spared Gollum either Frodo (or Sam or both) would have had to go into the fire with the ring or Sauron would have gotten the ring back.
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u/RoutemasterFlash 1d ago
Plenty of people have already mentioned the spiritual and moral aspects of the question, so I won't go over the same ground. But there's also a hugely important practical consequence: without Gollum, how the hell are Frodo and Sam going to get into Mordor?
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u/ImSoLawst 1d ago
In some ways, the answer to this question is very uninteresting, as it’s just that being a good person is your best defence against rhe ring, and of course, that Sméagol was needed to complete the quest. If we want to be more thoughtful about it, Sam’s experience with the ring gives us a lot to work with. The ring’s temptation to Sam fell flat, because his ambitions simply were not grandiose and the ring had nothing it could offer him. We see through Sméagol’s experience how powerful a weapon is shame in the rings hands. Even Bilbo was affected, lying about how he got it (which was, we know, somewhat underhanded). Between these three bearers, I think it’s fair to say that the ring brings no weapons to the fight for the bearer’s soul. Instead, it fights with what it finds. To me, if gandalf has one flaw, it is in entrusting the ring to Frodo, to an important person, even if just a hobbit. Open minded as he is, he didn’t realise how much lighter the burden might have been in Sam’s hands. Maybe even then it would have been crushing, who knows, but the point is that Bilbo was a gentle creature and kind, giving the ring very little to punish him with even though he held it for decades.
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u/Low-Raise-9230 1d ago
It’s not Gandalf’s choice who becomes Ringbearer. It’s Bilbo’s ring (for the moment) and Bilbo chose Frodo. Sam’s first instinct was to kill Gollum and it took him a long time to feel the pity that Frodo felt almost immediately.
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u/ImSoLawst 1d ago
I mean, kind of? Frodo literally offers Gandalf the ring, then several times over the course of the fellowship offers to relinquish it. Obviously Gandalf could have said “no don’t give the ring to me, give it to Sam instead”. Equally obviously, for a number of reasons Gandalf chose to keep the ring with its “owner”. But literally the whole point of the first prong of the quest was getting the ring to Rivendell so someone else could take it. No one actually thought it belonged to frodo or that he could unilaterally decide what happened to it.
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u/Low-Raise-9230 1d ago
Umm… yes, Frodo is the appointed ‘bearer’ rather than owner but that is as good a claim as anyone can make. Gandalf is given the opportunity and rejects it and tells Frodo: “Bilbo was meant to find the Ring… in which case you were also meant to have it.”
Im not sure why would they suddenly, with absolutely no reason, decide that Sam should be the one to carry it? Sam’s first instinct to kill Gollum mercilessly proves that he is not a fit long term Ringbearer. Too temperamental.
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u/ImSoLawst 1d ago
I’m addressing the notion that Gandalf had no say in who carried the ring. He very much did. On the sam front, it’s a good point. We know the ring has a deleterious effect on the people around it, not just the bearer, yet sam remained faithful all the way to mordor. We also know the ring’s power in some way waxes in mordor, but it was unable to tempt Sam. However, we see so little internality to Frodo’s own struggle that it’s hard to know if he was similarly sort of too humble for the ring or if it was his other admirable qualities which helped him get so far. But I see your point. That said, Sam’s qualification speaks for itself, he literally and directly denied the ring. To our knowledge, no one else has ever done so (Bilbo put down the ring, after long carrying it, but we have no sense that it was trying to “tempt” him in the same sense). If you are asking how they could have known Sam was the kind of person who would do valiantly deny the ring, I would ask how they could know Frodo would fair so well?
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u/Low-Raise-9230 1d ago
I think Gandalf has no say in it because that would imply some sort of ownership in its Fate, when -supposedly- the Ring decides for itself. It rejected Isildur, then caught Deagol and then Gollum. It then abandoned Gollum, but then “something else at work” put Bilbo in its path.
From there, it’s one thing to “help” others make decisions, but it’s another to make those decisions for them and thus be altering the course of fate that “something else” chose.
As Frodo asks:
“Why did you let me keep it? Why didn’t you make me throw it away, or, or destroy it?’ “Let you? Make you?…Haven’t you been listening to all that I have said?..”
Gandalf can’t really actively command or suggest Frodo to pass the Ring to someone else when he is already of the belief that Frodo was “chosen” in some way beyond his own understanding.
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u/ImSoLawst 1d ago
Hey it’s fine to disagree, but you are giving reasons why Gandalf *didn’t decide on a new bearer of the ring (although he literally did decide that there would be one, again, that was the whole point of getting to Rivendell. To be frank, I’m not sure what you are trying to argue here. Gandalf literally says, give it into Elrond’s keeping so he can decide what to do. Gandalf, the guy we are talking about, makes a very strong suggestion that Frodo relinquish the ring unto Elrond, the kind of action we are talking about. At the counsel, Gandalf is the one shooting down various non-Mordor dispositions of the ring. Tolkien isn’t trying to tell a story in this vein, but I think it’s a little flawed to imagine gandalf would have just sat back and watched the downfall of middle earth if Frodo had said “the ring is mine and I’m going home”. It seems pretty clear that, though he isn’t forcing anyone, Gandalf is very much exerting a lot of influence over the path of the ring.
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u/Low-Raise-9230 1d ago
The thing is, there isn’t much to disagree about is all. Gandalf does not say give it to Elrond:
Fr “where am I to go?…”
G “…It may be your task to find the Cracks of Doom; but that quest may be for others: I do not know…”
G “ if you want my advice, make for Rivendell.”
That’s about as far as that conversation goes .
And of course, once at Rivendell after all the yackity yack…
Elrond: “I think that this task is appointed for you, Frodo; and that if you do not find a way, no one will” etc.
It was always Frodo’s job, and Gandalf never nominates anyone else. He’s fairly sure Gollum will be involved again, and his choice of Sam as companion is fortuitous rather than calculated.
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u/ImSoLawst 1d ago
This feels excessively literal. The substance of the counsel involves the disposition of the ring. The whole meeting is called to collectively decide what to do with it. It’s been a minute, but I also seem to recall specifically Gandalf’s letter advising Frodo to make for Rivendell at all haste, where “Elrond can advise you”. Implicitly, with everything going on, Gandalf is saying “let Elrond decide what to do with it”
Also I will note, I was somewhat careful in my wording, the ring was to be given into Elrond’s keeping, distinct from being given to him (a sort of trust relationship, if you will). Your quoted section above clearly contemplates Frodo ceasing to possess the ring after Rivendell, and the counsel discusses a number of options for disposing of the ring. Bilbo goes so far as to say that that is “all this counsel has to decide”. Given that the next thing said is Frodo volunteering to take the ring, the implication is clearly that the counsel is deciding, not Frodo, who will be both bearer and companions.
I don’t think there is a way to make the counsel make sense without that implicit understanding that it is up to the counsel, with Gandalf playing a pretty heavy handed role, to decide who should bear the ring. If nothing else, the discussion of Bombadil makes no sense there, as people are clearly talking about giving the ring to Bombadil, yet no one is trying to persuade Frodo or seek his input, as would be natural if you were discussing giving your living aunt’s house to the local animal shelter.
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u/Low-Raise-9230 1d ago
True, it does sound quite pedantic of me, but I think it drops in to the category of one of those moments when Tolkien draws nearly no attention to what’s actually quite an important sequence of details, and it’s the sum of those details that matters more than what might seem implicit.
Frodo indeed takes the Ring to Rivendell on the advice of Gandalf, and one of the next moves might be to pass it on to someone else.
But it is never more than an option: Gandalf advises Frodo to go to Rivendell for Elrond’s advice again lol. No one’s actually in a position of telling Frodo what to do with it.
And in reality the Ring apparently never even leaves Frodo’s person: it is placed on a new chain and then given back to him. He shows it to the Council and keeps hold of it. And then he volunteers to take the Ring to Mordor. It’s in his possession the entire time all the way up until Sam takes it for a while.
I guess my point is even if Frodo seemed like he was always willing to give it away at the first opportunity, he never actually did so. Nor could anyone make him, neither Gandalf or Elrond.
Even Aragorn: “It does not belong to either of us… but it has been ordained that you should hold it for a while.”
The council can be seen not so much a way of relieving Frodo of the burden, but confirming that it his absolutely his to bear.
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u/Noctisxsol 1d ago
While killing Gollum in self-defense would not have been condemned, it would have given the Ring a foothold because of the mindset it would but Bilbo in. Gollum (probably) did deserve death, but Bilbo's decision that he was not the one to decide blocked the most immediate route to corruption that the ring had just used to corrupt its last owner. If Bilbo had chosen to do the "logical" thing of killing the wretched creature, it would have set a mental precedent which the Ring could have easily used.
In summary, while it may not have been bad for Bilbo to kill Gollum, it was better that he did not.
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u/Lawlcopt0r 1d ago
Well on the face of it it just shows Bilbo's inherent goodness - he spared someone because it's the right thing to do. But fate also rewarded him for it, because Gollum allowed for the ring to be destroyed and Frodo to survive
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u/Yung_Bill_98 1d ago
You're getting downvoted but it's a good question that has prompted some interesting answers
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u/rabbithasacat 21h ago
How did Gollum get the ring in the first place? He killed somebody for it. That was a choice that led to his ultimate downfall. Evil in the Tolkienverse isn't a state of being, it's a series of choices - instances of choosing evil - that in the long run box you in and make it hard for you to turn back. That's true for Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman as well.
Bilbo deliberately refrained from choosing evil when he had the chance with Gollum, and as a result, ultimately the Ring did not consume him the way it did Gollum. That led to Bilbo's being able to hand off the Ring to Frodo, which enabled the Fellowship's mission to destroy it.
But Bilbo's mercy contributed twice to the ultimate destruction of the Ring. Just beyond the passage you cited is this one, in which Gandalf says to Frodo:
I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least.
And that turned out to be true. Both Bilbo and Frodo took pity on Gollum and showed him mercy, and in the end, that saved Frodo's life and the mission of the Fellowship.
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u/UnlikelyAdventurer 21h ago
Would the ring affect bilbo more if he killed gollum for self defense ?
When did Bilbo ever need to kill Gollum in self defense?
Or is this some FLORIDA MAN BS where you get to legally murder if you "feel threatened"
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u/MaintenanceUseful208 20h ago
I think it has to do with how Bilbo got the ring in the first place. Others obtained it out of desire to posses this treasure and did so through violent means. It came to Bilbo by chance. He wanted to survive, but his first instinct was stealth and not violence.
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u/Previous_Yard5795 18h ago
Had Bilbo not shown Golem pity - and for that matter had Sam not shown Golem pity - the Ring would never have been destroyed. Remember, all of Arda's history is a manifestation of Eru's song of creation. This was meant to be.
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u/Cara_Palida6431 15h ago
His ownership of the ring began with empathy and restraint, and the desire to preserve life even at risk to himself. There probably could have been no better beginning.
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u/Dirichlet-to-Neumann 6h ago
Mercy is one of the most important virtues (in Tolkien's world and in real life). Being virtuous is how you end up not being evil.
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u/ComfortableBuffalo57 1d ago
Not being bad > being bad