207: The FotR 12: Smeagol Explained

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Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast.

The show that explores the background of Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.

This is going to be one of those episodes, where I basically quote the entire section

that we're covering today.

Because this is the moment where Gandalf reveals to Frodo who smegle is.

Now of course Frodo knows the story about Gollum and the Ring, but he didn't know anything

about who Gollum might have been before that.

Gandalf has discovered some things that are now revealed both to Frodo and to the reader.

About Gollum's actual identity, his history, and some of the things that we otherwise wouldn't

know.

And a lot of this section, a lot of the knowledge that is gained by Gollum about smegle is because

of the events that happen between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

And this becomes the centerpiece.

This is the focus of the new movie that they're actually working on.

So we're going to be going over every little detail in this section, and it is not a very

long section, but there is a lot to parse out here about what Gandalf discovers, how

Tolkien writes it, and why these details are important, and why they're here at the

beginning of the story as opposed to later on.

So let's get into it.

Let's talk about smegle, and the things Gandalf knows.

So this section continues right after the last one where Gandalf explained how the ring disappeared

into the river and then out of knowledge.

But time moves on, and this section begins with this, long after, but still very long

ago, they're lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of Wilderland, a clever

handed and quiet-footed little people.

Now immediately, the very first sentence, we already have lots of things to cover here.

First of all, this was long ago, but still a considerable amount of time since the ring

was lost.

So what exactly does that mean?

Alright, so let's go back in time.

When was the battle of the last alliance?

Well, that was basically the end of the second age.

That ushered in the beginning of the third age, and how long did Islder actually have

the ring before he was killed and he lost it only about a year or two?

It was the second year of the third age when the ring was lost.

So when does Golem find the ring?

What?

For almost two and a half thousand years later, 2463 of the third age.

That is 2,461 years that that ring sat at the bottom of the river.

Now you may also be wondering how long did Golem have the ring?

How long did he survive his extended life due to the power of the ring and hide underneath

the mountains?

Well, 478 years until the year 2941 when he lost it to Bilbo in the riddle game.

Now let's put this in context a little bit.

The amount of time that Sauron possessed the ring before losing it with his finger getting

cut off was 1,841 years.

The ring has been sitting at the bottom of a river for hundreds of years longer than

that.

Another way to conceive of this is how long ago did this happen?

In the context of our own world, let's go back in time, 2500 years.

What was going on in the world 2500 years ago?

Well, the Roman Republic was just being founded.

There wasn't even a Rome yet, really.

Also the Greeks and the Persians were fighting.

You know those stories about the Battle of Marathon and the invasions of the Persians

into mainland Greece, the stand of the 300 Spartans and the rest of the different people

from Greece trying to hold back the Persian Empire, yeah, that was 2500 years ago, roughly.

So when Gandalf says long after he lost the ring, but still very long ago, this was an

incredible amount of time.

Many world empires have risen and fallen in our own world.

So it makes sense that empires like Gondor or Arnor would have been established, roughly,

and then also de-established, is that a word?

Either destroyed or fallen into decline.

Places like Rohan didn't even exist at the beginning of the third age.

This is the amount of time that has passed.

Now there are some other details here.

This is the banks of the Great River, of course the edge of Wilderland.

That is a phrase that we know from the Hobbit.

It means that part of the world beyond the Misty Mountains.

And when you picture the events that happen here, think about the part of the map that's

between the vertical running, or at least north and south running Misty Mountains and

Merkwood and the river that runs between those.

So for those of us who are familiar with the Hobbit, that means this is where Bjorn was.

This is where Bjorn's people are still, to this day, re-established since the events

of the Hobbit.

And there are different types of people who have lived in this part of the world and migrated

and moved and re-established themselves, and the people that Smeagol came from are one

of those groups.

Now, Gandalf notes here that he was clever, handed, and quiet, footed, and a little people

come, came from a little people.

And he goes into this further.

He says, I guess they were of Hobbit kind akin to the fathers of the fathers of the

stores for they loved the river.

Now, in one of our bonus episodes, we went over the different types of Hobbits and where

they came from.

The stores are probably the Proto-Hobbits.

They're probably the ones who established and eventually moved further to the west and

established what eventually became the Shire.

So these are people that Frodo and Sam and Bilbo and Mary and Pippin were all roughly

related to.

Their ancestors go back to this time period most likely.

Now this is another piece of the puzzle that shows both the differences of these people

but also similarities to Frodo because Gandalf says here that they loved the river and often

swam in it or made little boats of reeds.

Now most Hobbits are afraid of the water.

They can't swim.

The stores could though and they loved the river.

Now this reminds me of Frodo's parents and the fact that they died in a river accident.

And that also makes me think, and this is me just kind of speculating a little bit here,

but this is drawing similarities between Frodo's own parents and the stores and smegle specifically

that they are not as different as we might think.

Not just because they're Hobbit-like, stores being kind of the biggest group of Hobbits.

They're kind of in between Hobbit-sized and man-sized, maybe closer to dwarves, something

like that.

But they are similar.

They liked the water.

And although Hobbits can't swim, we don't know if that's so much of a cultural thing or

is it a size and ability thing?

I don't think it's a size and ability thing because children can swim and children can

be Hobbit-sized.

So it's probably more of a cultural thing.

The Hobbits of the world that we are now in at the end of the third age are just not

swimmers.

Not that they couldn't learn to be.

Now this part was just off the top of my head.

If there is some proof out there that they are just incapable of swimming for some reasons,

like I don't know, maybe the hair on their feet bugs them, that doesn't make any sense.

But yeah, comment, let me know.

So my point is that Frodo's family was a little bit odd in the fact that they actually like

to be on the river in boats and the stores and Smiegel's people actually enjoyed the

river as well.

Now this is important because the ring was lost in the river, so if they were people

who couldn't swim or avoided the river, then of course they never would have found it.

But we do get some other details here.

We know that Smiegel came from, I guess the closest thing you could say to as the royalty

of those store people at the time, his grandmother ruled the largest wealthiest family

among those people.

This also feels very similar to a lot of the hobbits that we've heard about so far.

Bilbo is fairly wealthy.

Pippin, Mary, also come from wealthy families.

A lot of the families in these stories are wealthy or the aristocracy or the literal king

who is going to return to Gondor.

So similarities there as well.

But then we find out more about Smiegel.

The most inquisitive and curious-minded of that family was called Smiegel.

He was interested in roots and beginnings.

He dived into deep pools.

He burrowed under trees and growing plants.

He tunneled into green mounds and he ceased to look up at the hilltops or the leaves on

trees or the flowers opening in the air.

His head and his eyes were downward.

So not only does this set up the understanding of how somebody like Smiegel could become

gallum and want to live underneath the ground and be okay with diving into the water to

get fish that he eats and all of that.

But it also establishes something from Tolkien's perspective that he talks about or at least

hints at a lot.

Is this love of nature and looking up?

How many times does he take time to describe the trees?

How many times does he reference something like the wind or the sky or the sun in the

moon and the stars?

There's probably an essay here about the difference between the characters who tend to look up or

the peoples who think about the elves looking up at the stars when they are brought into

existence and the characters who tend to look down and into the ground.

In the ground are dangerous spooky, old, mysterious, and I don't know, horrific monsters.

Up in the sky is the place that was made by the Valar, the trees, the winds, the stars,

heck, even the sun in the moon.

Now they also did create the ground and the mountains and things like that, but those

are dark places where once they created them they no longer went because you have to tunnel

down into them.

Who else tunneled down into the ground?

Every dark lord ever who has created some form of fortification where the orcs and

they and their minions dwelled.

Usually it was some sort of on top of the ground fortress that then dug and burrowed deep

into the earth and the majority of the structure was actually underground.

So Gandalf has now established that Smeagle is different from the other stores and was

already the black sheep of the family in some ways.

Now there's nothing wrong in being curious or inquisitive.

In fact, those are features that we can also connect to Frodo and Bilbo and even some

of the other Hobbits.

In fact, most of the other Hobbits that we actually bring together, the Fellowship Hobbits,

are kind of curious and inquisitive in ways that most of the other Hobbits in the Shire

just aren't.

So there is a connection there, but his focus was downward and that's the difference.

Frodo, when he's curious, he goes out and he finds the elves, he goes out and he looks

at the stars, he's looking up and outward, not downward.

So then Gandalf shows us the rest of the story.

He says he had a friend named Degel of similar sort, Sharper Eyed, but not so quick and

strong.

Obviously he's setting this up, he's Sharper Eyed because he's the one who notices

the ring, but he's not quick and strong enough to defend himself, but we'll get there.

On a time they took a boat and went down to the Gladden Fields where there were great

beds of iris and flowering reeds.

Notice the reference to nature again.

Now it makes sense, he's setting the scene, but also these are flowering plants, they're

cool.

This is setting up something that is good that is about to turn not so good.

Their smegel got out and went nosing about the banks, but Degel sat in the boat and fished.

Suddenly a great fish took his hook and before he knew where he was, he was dragged out

and down into the water to the bottom.

Then he let go of his line where he thought he saw something shining in the riverbed and

holding his breath, he grabbed at it.

Now this is scene for scene the same in the movie as far as I recall.

Then up he came sputtering with weeds in his hair and a handful of mud, and he swam to

the bank and behold, when he washed the mud away, there in his hand lay a beautiful golden

ring and a shone and glittered in the sun so that his heart was glad.

But smegel had been watching him from behind a tree.

Now I'm going to pause there, does he need to be behind a tree or does that just make

it feel more sinister?

I'm pretty sure it just makes it feel more sinister because it's not like he's snuck

up on his friend, they went there together, they knew they were both hanging out, one

was in a boat, one was on the land.

But nope, he's now peaking behind a tree because he's a creepy dude I guess.

And as Deagle gloated over the ring, smegel came up softly behind.

Now I'm going to stop here, we're going to get to the conversation that they have, which

again is pretty much word for word in the movie.

But something else to note here is that Gandalf is telling the story and if you think back

to how Gandalf gets this knowledge, it has to do with he...

He and Aragorn tracking, smegel down, interrogating him, getting him to give them whatever information

they possibly could.

And yet the way Gandalf tells the story here is very flowery and it's very expressive

in a way that Gollum never would have been.

So there's this feeling of this is being crafted either intentionally by Gollum to be

easier to consume and more enjoyable by Frodo or more likely by Tolkien in order to bring

us into the details of the story rather than just giving us a list of facts about what

happened in the past.

So keep that in mind as we go.

This does feel a little artificial, but it's intentional.

And you could argue that Gandalf is doing it for Frodo too.

So here, let's get into the conversation though.

Davis that deagle my love said smegel over his friend's shoulder again, being creepy.

Why said deagle?

Because it's my birthday my love and I want it said smegel, I don't care said deagle,

I have given you a present already, more than I can afford, I found this and I'm going

to keep it.

Oh, are you indeed my love said smegel?

And he caught deagle by the throat and strangled him because the gold looked so bright and beautiful.

And he put the ring on his finger now notice some details here.

They're arguing over the ring and we know that the ring can begin to affect people in

proximity and make them do things they otherwise wouldn't do.

That is a fact we this happens multiple times in the stories, but the fact that we've already

established smegel as being kind of a creep and selfish and sneaky and all the other

language up to this point is already pointing to that shows that he was already ill intentioned

from the beginning and the ring just made that worse remember that's what the ring does.

It takes the natural qualities in somebody and it makes them more powerful, but often

in a dark and twisted sort of way.

But when we get to the end of the conversation, we're told that he strangled his friend because

the gold looked so bright and beautiful, then he put the ring on his finger.

He didn't strangle his friend because the ring convinced him to murder his friend.

Smegel was already seemingly by the way this text is laid out somebody who was already

willing to do that.

Now maybe he would have been pushed over that last limitation.

Maybe smegel without the influence of the ring would have waited and kind of snuck around

and stole the ring from his friend because he really wanted it rather than murdering

him, but in this case, he murders him.

And that is not just on the ring alone, smegel was already not a great person.

So Gandalf continues the story.

He says no one ever found out what had become of Deagle.

He was murdered far from home and his body was cunningly hid.

Now remember smegel likes to dig in the ground.

He knows about probably caves and other places, recesses, somewhere where you could hide

a body far from home where most people would never think to look, so that makes sense.

But smegel returned home and he found that none of his family could see him when he was

wearing the ring.

Now we know that that already is a feature of the ring, so that makes sense.

He was very pleased with his discovery and he concealed it and he used it to find out

secrets and he put his knowledge to crooked and malicious uses.

This reminds me of the warning of when you ask a group of people, if you could have any

superpower, what would you have?

Always be careful about the people who say invisibility because the number of good uses of invisibility

as compared to malicious uses of invisibility is significantly different.

Now I'm not saying that you can't come up with some good reasons why you would want

that, but the majority of the ones that naturally come to mind are pretty bad.

Now the next line is very interesting.

He became sharp-eyed and keen-eared for all that was hurtful.

This feels like, and this is just me speculating here, that this is the line that seems to imply

the alternate version of himself, the golem to the smegel, the stinker to the slinker,

that kind of thing.

This is the personality for lack of a better word of the ring manifesting in him.

He was always somebody who was, well, creepy, but in this case, he very specifically was

looking for things and listening for things that were hurtful, not particularly beneficial

to himself, not advantageous or not something that would increase his wealth or his status

or his popularity or his good looks or, I don't know, any of those kinds of things,

but things that were specifically hurtful as if there was some enjoyment in that, in and

of itself, which feels more like a ring, saueron thing than a sneaky, hobbit-like person

kind of thing.

It goes on, it says, the ring had given him power according to his stature.

That line also super important, and why somebody like Gandalf or Galadriel would

never be able to actually control the ring, it would make them too powerful and twisted

in dark ways.

And we're already establishing this right at the beginning of this book.

It is not to be wondered at that he became very unpopular and was shunned when visible

by all his relations.

They kicked him, and he bit their feet.

Now, that makes a lot of sense, but you might be wondering why the kicking and the biting

of feet feels almost like old-timey, biblical language or something like that.

Sometimes, Tolkien writes things, and they feel like they're out of, I don't know, an

ancient line of scripture or just a really old document, almost as if they've been translated

or almost...

I mean, think about it.

If somebody's kicking at you, are you going to catch their foot and bite it?

Like that it seems odd, like in our own world, if you're kicking at somebody, even if

you kicked at their face, they couldn't just bite at your foot while they were kicking

your face.

Like the logistics of it are a little bit weird.

And so it's not the logistics, it's not even about the picture that it paints in your

mind.

It's establishing that this person is odd and weird and terrible in almost animalistic

ways.

He bit at their feet, like a creature on the ground, like a dog or a snake, something

like that.

And I think that's what's going on here, is that those types of lines in ancient works

aren't so much about being factually accurate about what was happening and more about establishing

an analogy and setting this character up to be like something else, so we have that framework

in our heads.

He took to thieving and going about muttering to himself and gurgling in his throat.

Again, he's turning into somebody who's terrible, he's doing these terrible things, people

are shunning him and that makes him lean more into this animalistic kind of dark side

of what he's becoming.

So they called him golem and cursed him and told him to go far away and his grandmother

desiring peace expelled him from the family and turned him out of her whole.

Basically he was kicked out.

He was told, you cannot stay here, you have to leave.

Now I'm guessing they didn't have some sort of, I don't know, prison system or something

like that.

They couldn't just lock him up and so they told him he had to go away.

He wandered in loneliness, weeping a little for the hardness of the world and he journeyed

up the river.

Now I'm going to pause there weeping a little for the hardness of the world.

He already understands or at least feels in his core that he is in some ways a victim

and victimhood is a complicated topic and it goes into all sorts of different directions.

But here it seems to reveal something about him.

He understands that even though he was a terrible person to begin with, he wasn't necessarily

a good person, he hadn't yet become a murderer and openly a regular thief who was a pariah

on his community.

He was sneaky and maybe deceitful but the ring had turned him in that direction and made

the world even more difficult for him.

And he may not have really fully understood that or even had the capabilities of putting

this together that it was the ring that was influencing him and ultimately causing him

or at least pushing him to do things that are worse and making the natural ramifications

of those things his reality.

And yet there's a piece of him that suffers from it and mourns that.

And there are multiple times in these works that Tolkien, it's upon things that feel

very similar to the things that people with neurodivergences or psychological impairments

have to deal with.

And one of the things that a lot of people with neurodivergences deal with is this feeling

of not fully being in control of their own minds, their own natures and then suffering

because of that.

This feels like that sort of parallel.

So he journeyed up the river till he came to a stream that flowed down from the mountains

and he went that way.

He caught fish in the deep pools with invisible fingers and ate them raw.

This is the first mention of him eating fish raw, right?

This is his transformation into golem eating the fish raw as opposed to cooking them the

way that regular people would and leans into that analogy of him becoming more animal-like.

One day it was very hot and as he was bending over a pool he felt a burning on the back

of his head and a dazzling light from the water peigned his wet eyes.

He wondered at it for he had almost forgotten about the sun.

Then for the last time he looked up and shook his fist at her.

Alright so a few things here.

First of all, of course he's been outside and been in the sunlight and felt like it

was hot or been in a place where the water was reflecting the sun and it was bright

and heard his eyes before.

But he's finally at the point of his transformation where that becomes unbearable.

He cannot deal with that anymore.

And the line that he almost forgot about the sun is very interesting.

It's not so much that he forgot there was day and night and he was living in the world.

That's not something that you can just forget unless you go down in a hole and then never

go up on the surface again which he hadn't done yet.

But in this case he had almost forgotten about the sun.

What does the sun represent?

It is a construction of the Valar.

It is something that is good.

It is something that brings light and warmth and life to the world.

And those are all now things that he could care less about.

In fact, we were just told that the light was burning his eyes.

He can't even stand to be in the sunlight anymore.

Then for the last time he looked up and shook his fist at her.

Now notice the gendered her.

That's because the sun is piloted by Aryan, the female Maya who is also the spirit of fire.

If you want to refresh her on that one, you can go back to the Silmarillion episodes

that talk about the establishment of the different sources of light.

There's the trees and the orbs and then the sun and the moon and the different ways

that the Valar attempted to light the world.

That's a whole part of the early mythology.

So if you haven't listened to those episodes, go check those out.

So this is when Golem decides to leave the area that he's in and find shelter under

the mountains.

But as he lowered his eyes, he saw far ahead the tops of the Misty Mountains, out of which

the stream came.

And he thought suddenly it would be cool and shady under those mountains.

The sun could not watch me there.

Notice the use of the word watch as if there's a person in the sun, which there is, who

would be looking down at him.

The roots of those mountains must be roots indeed.

There must be great secrets buried there which have not been discovered since the beginning.

This goes back to the earlier part where Gandalf was talking about how he liked to dig

in the ground and find secrets in the ground.

So he journeyed by night up into the Highlands and he found a little cave out of which a dark

stream ran and he warmed his way like a maggot.

Now we're reducing from person to animal to worm or insect like creature in our analogies.

So he worms in like a maggot into the heart of the hills and vanishes out of all knowledge.

The ring went into the shadows with him.

And even the maker when his power had begun to grow again could learn nothing of it.

Thanks again for tuning in.

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With one of them as a good question, I'm going to answer here.

This is from Gaga, who wrote classy and insightful.

After listening to this pod since the Silmarillion days, it's easy to say that robots is second to none

when it comes to dissecting Tolkien's extensive world.

Wow, he's a class act with his insight and peaks my love of these stories even more

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Thanks so much, Tom, for all your hard work and natural talent, PS.

How do you think the hunt for Gollum will turn out?

Yeah, that came up in today's episode a little bit.

I've stated previously, when I'm answering this, I don't remember where I answered this,

that I get why they're doing this topic, but it also is not as interesting to me as

some of the other things they could have done, like heck, doing the story of Turin, the

children of Hurin, you could do the whole thing, you could do Baron and Lothian, there's

a bunch of other stuff, but I also get that they want to capitalize on the fact that they

still have actors who could replay those roles.

And if they don't do this now, we're going to miss out on seeing Ian McEllen again as

Gandalf because he's a treasure and who knows how much longer we're going to have him around,

right?

I know that's kind of dark, but that's the feeling I get from this.

So I guess you do it now and then maybe do the other stories later.

There's definitely more out there they could make movies about.

So hopefully they do it well.

I'm just not 100% sure how you write a story about that time period and make it interesting,

especially since we already know how it's going to end, but that's always the prequel

problem anyway.

So I don't know.

I guess you could say I'm skeptical, but optimistic.

So there you go.

All right.

And then this one comes from Doc Ra, DO7 who writes amazing podcaster.

I love robots radio.

I followed him along with the Elder Scrolls podcast and Fallout lore podcast to this one.

Amazing storytelling tells it how it is and gives you the stuff you really want to know.

We love your robots radio.

Keep doing what you're doing.

Well, thank you so much.

And thank you for continuing to be here.

I'm going to go record the Patreon episode and I'll either see you on the other side or

I'll see you next week.

Have a wonderful week.

See you then.

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