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Post by Sparrow on Jul 25, 2004 11:59:41 GMT -6
Bilbo imagines what types of creatures might be living in the dark of the goblin cave: "slimy things, with big bulging eyes" and "other things more slimy than fish." Then he encounters Gollum. It has been said the changes Gollum underwent while living in the cave could only happen through successive generations over many, many years. Do you think Gollum's adaptations are realistic or completely fantastic? About a year ago, some of us met at the Lost Sea in Tennessee and toured the cave and observed the fish in the underground lake. What do those of you who attended this fellowship gathering recall about the fish at the Lost Sea?
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Post by Desi Baggins on Jul 28, 2004 13:05:02 GMT -6
From what I recall the fish were dark in color and so was the water. The fish were also hungry, the tour guide threw some fish food into the water and the fish devoured it in seconds!
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Post by Stormrider on Jul 29, 2004 21:43:01 GMT -6
If I remember correctly, the fish in the Lost Cave had adapted to the darkness and were able to see better. I can't remember if the guide said their eyes were big and bulgy or not.
Since Gollum was in complete darkness all the time, he had adapted good eyesight in the dark, too. He is described in this chapter as "dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in this thin face." So Gollum was transforming, too. His eyes were large and even his skin was dark--I image so that he blended in with the darkness. Were the Stoors dark skinned or was this one of the ways living in the depths of the mountain changed Gollum?
Well, now I remember why I always thought Gollum was black! A friend of mine said she always pictured him pale because he was never in the sunlight. I guess PJ thought that, too!
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Post by Greenleaf on Jul 30, 2004 3:51:28 GMT -6
Perhaps we could say that Gollum adapted to his environment according to the laws of evolution. And from what I can remember from documentary films, I think that fish which live in great depths in the dark do have big bulging eyes.
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Post by Stormrider on Aug 8, 2012 6:16:40 GMT -6
In the year 2463 of the Third Age, Deagol the Stoor finds the One Ring and is murdered by Smeagol.
In the year 2470, Smeagol-Gollum finds his way to and hides in the Misty Mountains.
In the year 2941, Bilbo meets Gollum by the lake and wins the Ring in the Riddle Game.
That is 471 years time that passed for Smeagol-Gollum to transform into the creature Bilbo met at the lake.
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Post by Andorinha on Aug 8, 2012 8:19:18 GMT -6
RE Sparrow's: "It has been said the changes Gollum underwent while living in the cave could only happen through successive generations over many, many years. Do you think Gollum's adaptations are realistic or completely fantastic?" In the original storyline, Gollum was not (in my understanding) a hobbit of any kind. He was a strange, gangrel creature who probably had always been somewhat froglike, with webbed paws, an inhuman amount of teeth (6 instead of 32 -- seems an oddly low count of teeth for a predator!) bulging frog-like eyes, black skin etc. The original Gollum was who he was, with no need to "transform." In the good old days, he apparently lived "outside" on a river bank, knew the Sun, knew daisies, knew eggs; apparently he had been a more social animal with "friends" to chat with and had a grandmother, to whom he imparted the knowledge of "egg-sucking." Sounds like grandma was a good deal other than hobbit herself... It is only with the advent of LOTR that JRRT takes Gollum and his grandma out of the "exotic monster" class, and gives them both a more "human" back story. Then, of course, it becomes necessary to provide a sufficient length of time for a "transformation" to occur, as now, in the second story line JRRT must explain how a regular hobbit fellow eventually becomes a Gollum. The ring of luck-invisibility, is transformed in the revised tale to a far more powerful, corrupting device with a physically/ psychically mutating effect on its bearers. 471 years, it seems, will alter a hobbit enough to make him a Gollum. But, parenthetically, was Gollum, in JRRT's mind, still black? When does the "pale-skinned" Gollum come into view? Remembering here that Damrod, or Mablung or some Ranger of Ithellien, in LOTR, calls the poorly seen Gollum a " black squirel-like" figure, possibly an escapee from Mirkwood... I'll have to check up on this, can't, off hand remember how Gollum is described when he meets Frodo etc. ______________________ Bit of an aside here: egg-sucking. Tolkien seems to be having us on at this point as the phrase "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs" is a very old one in the English language and has a certain meaning: Teaching grandmother to suck eggs is an English-language saying, meaning that a person is giving advice to someone else about a subject that they already know about (and probably more than the first person).[1] "Egg sucking" removed the egg contents while preserving the shell intact. Two small holes were made on the ends of the egg, and the contents sucked out. The shell could then be painted or otherwise used for decorative purposes without it becoming rotten and smelling bad. cf en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_grandmother_to_suck_eggs
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Post by Stormrider on Aug 8, 2012 15:10:09 GMT -6
I know I pictured Gollum as black and slinky when I first read the story. I am going to go back and look at my really old copy of The Hobbit to see if it is different from the newer version I have. And compare them both to the Annotated Hobbit for the comments.
It is reather difficult to talk about The Hobbit knowing of the changes that were made over the years. However, I am betting that most of us didn't read it until the LOTR came out (what was that--in the 1950's?), so when we discuss what we are familiar with, it is(are) the version(s) altered to fit LOTR.
But it is cool to discuss how it changed to make it be part of the LOTR trilogy tale.
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Post by Fredeghar Wayfarer on Aug 8, 2012 16:31:00 GMT -6
My first exposure to Gollum was the old Rankin-Bass cartoon so I had that image in my mind when I read the book--not black per se but definitely a dark, grayish green creature with webbed feet, huge frog-like eyes, and an inhuman appearance. Perhaps the last of an unknown species that lived in caves below the mountains.
When I read LOTR and learned Gollum's history, my mind was blown. I had trouble at first reconciling the frog-monster in my imagination with a corrupted hobbit. I grew to prefer the later version though since it adds more depth and sympathetic qualities to Smeagol's character.
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Post by Stormrider on Aug 8, 2012 17:14:39 GMT -6
The two versions of The Hobbit that I have are Ballantine Books 13th printing 1968 and Houghton Mifflin 1997 so they were both already revised to include the changes made for merging with LOTR. Alas! My old version was not old enough.
However, my Annotated Hobbit actually has the entire 1937 version written in the side columns and it was very interesting reading. There were comments made in the side columns stating that several foreign editions had illustrations showing Gollum as a very large creature about four times larger than Bilbo.
Fredeghar: I never liked the Rankin-Bass cartoon Gollum. I read LOTR and then The Hobbit. I always pictured Gollum as a sneaky cat/human creature with large (but not bulging) glowing eyes and he moved along the ground in a cat-sneaking-up-on-a-bird like motion. He was blackish, hardly any hair, but of a skin-like tecture that slightly reflected the light of the moon.
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