passage from lord of the rings gollum riddes

This comes up especially as Gollum is unable or unwilling to eat lembas bread, which seems to almost poison him when he takes a bite (nice connection The Hobbit by the way, as Gollum asks if the food is “crunchable”).

The continuing flashes of his darker, perhaps real, self are self-evident in the way he mutters, complains for food and is generally just nasty when things don’t appear to be going his way. Gollum has begun to have those traits that we will see again and again, being as pleasing as possible even while holding obviously dark thoughts, such as when he repeatedly calls the two hobbits “sensible” as he tries to convince them not to do something he dislikes. Gollum retains that slight air of maliciousness in nearly everything he does though, even if it is in something as insignificant as a dark look. Gollum is getting better, personality wise, and the opening pages provides a tie–in to The Hobbit, in the form of one of the riddle-rhymes from the famous game played with Bilbo. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long-forgotten summers.” The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Cold clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. Anyone who has ever spent time in such a landscape will know that Tolkien gets the description pretty much dead-on here, as the marshes come to life as a place that it is possible to traverse but abound with hidden dangers and footfalls, where an obvious path can quickly turn bad:

But there is a bit more to it than that, even if “The Passage Of The Marshes” really is one of the weaker chapters in the story.Īs with the Emyn Muil in “ The Taming Of Smeagol“, this chapter has another major physical obstacle, in the form of festering bogland. This chapter really does show clearly the main complaints that are standard with Book Four, in that it can, at an initial glance anyway, be summed up in little more than a sentence: They walk through a bog and Frodo is getting a little peaky.

Passage from lord of the rings gollum riddes