by russcannon » January 11th, 2006, 12:38 pm
Here is a mystery I spotted a few years ago:
How to account for Smeagol's knowledge that the Hobbits' ascent of Mount Doom represented a threat to the Precious.
Within the narrative at the time he attacks Frodo and Sam on Orodruin, Smeagol had not...
-been told they were going to destroy the ring,
-overheard (again within the narrative) that they were going to destroy the ring,
-been told that that particular mountain was dangerous to the ring,
-heard the lore of the ring.
I think this is something that Tolkien just forgot about. In order to maintain the cohesion of the narrative, each of us must supply the missing information in our own favorite way. Some might say that Smeagol just knew instinctively of the danger, but this is too vague for me. I need something more concrete. Others have suggested to me that the ring "cried out for help", but they would then have to account for why the Witch King did not know the "specific power" that he perceived in his valley. If the ring possessed the power to communicate so clearly and explicitly, it should have done so there. But we have elsewhere in the narrative that the ring had to be put on by its bearer before it could be anything more than a vague sense of a brooding power. My solution is much more mundane: Smeagol simply overheard Frodo tell Faramir about the Quest.
Peter Jackson solved the problem by having Frodo just tell Smeagol himself.
Regards,
Russ
Plausible as these explanations may sound, they ignore economics, among other things.--Thomas Sowell