He thinks Frodo stole the ring from him, and shows his resentment of him when speaking to himself: “Where iss it, where iss it: my Precious, my Precious? It’s ours, it is, and we wants it. The thieves, the thieves, the filthy little thieves. Where are they with my Precious? Curse them! We hates them.”
The author, JRR Tolkien, created a particularly vivid representation of Gollum in several ways. The author uses “we” in Gollum’s dialogue to show he is not one character but in effect two (smeagol, his good side and his evil alter ego).
Smeagol is reluctant to bring harm or despair to Frodo, but his evil side convinces him to do otherwise. Sam, another character in the book describes Gollum as “sinister”, “deceitful” and “mischievous”. Gollum also has varied personalities and attributes. He himself is shown as being very distasteful of Sam, especially his cooking methods. For example when he catches rabbits and Sam Stews them with herbs, Gollum unpleasantly replies to this with “Stupid fat Hobbit!”
This image from the film interprets Gollum’s expressions described in the book to the greatest detail “Gollum looked at Sam in dismay”
Gollum is very similar to Boromir from the first book of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. They both had very noble intentions, but the ring drove them to insanity and forced them to pursue the ring at all costs. Each of them incurred a great cost because of the ring’s evil power: Boromir forfeited his life, and Gollum lost his mind, becoming an hideous atrocity.
The imagery used to create Gollum is extensive and effective. For example: “Down the face of a precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. Maybe its soft clinging hands and toes were finding crevices and holds that no hobbit could have ever seen or used, but it looked as if it was just creeping down on sticky pads, like some large prowling thing of insect-kind. And it was coming down head first, as if it was smelling its way. Now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its long skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were quickly lidded again.”
I think that the author has created this character well by the use of alternate personalities (the use of a good and evil side). This gives depth and diversity to what would have perhaps been a very plain character. In fact, these vivid descriptions in the book helped the Director of the Lord of the Rings movies to create Gollum’s character very convincingly.
