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In The Hobbit (the book and the movies), we meet our old friend Gollum again. But there is something strange about him. He doesn't remember what his own people (i.e., hobbits) are called, or even what they looked like, and doesn't seem to remember being a hobbit himself (when Bilbo appears and identifies himself as a hobbit, Gollum only wants to know if hobbitses are "crunchable" and "juicy").

On its own, this would not be very surprising; after all, in The Return of the King (the movie, not the book), he says that he even forgot his own name during his long stay under the mountains. But in The Hobbit, we see that he remembers a fairly large number of riddles, which is very surprising: he has no one to tell his riddles to, and no one to teach him new ones. He also remembers a good deal of lore in LotR. And obviously, one's own name and species are more important things to remember than riddles and lore.

Is there any reason for Gollum's incredibly selective memory?

Wad Cheber
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    Well no, I meant the out-of-universe answer was that Gollum wasn't a hobbit when The Hobbit was first written, and maybe something about why Tolkien never bothered to change that bit – Jason Baker Jun 14 '15 at 05:30
  • Do we know that he wasn't a hobbit? I don't recall reading anything to that effect. Gollum was just some weird dude who lived in a cave, ate Orcs, and told riddles. I don't think there were any significant details about who or what he was, but certainly nothing to suggest that he wasn't a hobbit at one time. I'm not saying he was a hobbit, in Tolkien's mind, just that there isn't any evidence that he was anything in particular (in the actual text, I mean - I don't know what Tolkien said elsewhere) – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 05:36
  • @JasonBaker - but the fact that he wasn't meant to be a hobbit still doesn't explain why he doesn't remember anything but riddles. Even in the book itself, "gollum" is a sound that he makes. I don't remember if he ever calls himself Gollum. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 05:38
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    The book never says he was a Hobbit, it just says he was similar to them. He could still not have a clue what "Hobbit" means. Perhaps he could have some memory that he used to be a bit similar to the creature in front of him, but he spent centuries hanging around fish, goblins, and nobody else. Not sure he can be blamed for memory issues. – Misha R Jun 14 '15 at 05:47
  • @MishaRosnach - if you mean to say that the LotR books don't say Gollum was a hobbit, I have to disagree. It is never in doubt (after Gandalf interrogates him and reports his findings to the Council of Elrond) that Gollum was a hobbit, specifically a Stoorish hobbit, and was the grandson of the leader of his community. His name, Smeagol, refers to his tendency to root around in holes and focus all his attention on the ground. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 06:08
  • @Wad Cheber: Yep - I stand corrected. I suppose I then agree with an earlier comment that the explanation is out-of-universe. I do think Tolkien updated Gollum'so character a bit for LotR. Which is all right, writers don't always plan everything in advance. – Misha R Jun 14 '15 at 15:03
  • The out-of-universe answer is dealt with here. I'm sure there's an in-universe rationalization, even though I'm not confident there's a directly in-text one – Jason Baker Jun 14 '15 at 16:18
  • Why would you need to remember your name and species, if you're alone for centuries? It's like remembering your own phone number: why, when you never call yourself? Likewise, I don't think of myself as being my name; that's just a label other people have fixed on me, so when I'm alone it's irrelevant. – jamesqf Jun 14 '15 at 17:59
  • @jamesqf. - Why would you need to remember a bunch of riddles if you're alone for centuries? – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 19:45
  • @Wad Cheber: Because you can occupy yourself thinking about them. The real question is why Gollum wasn't a lot better than he was, after all that practice? – jamesqf Jun 14 '15 at 21:51
  • @jamesqf - I don't know about you, but telling myself riddles isn't much fun. Riddles are only enjoyable if you have someone to tell them to. But as far him not being good at riddling, I disagree. He only lost the contest because 1. Bilbo happened to ask for more time by saying "Time! Time!", and the answer to the riddle happened to be "time". 2. Bilbo cheated, by asking what was in his pocket, which isn't a riddle. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 21:56
  • @Wad Cheber: Maybe not much fun in general terms, but compared to what's available when you live in deep, dark tunnels under the roots of the mountains? As for Gollum being good at riddles, 1) Bilbo is likely no more than average; and 2) If Gollum was really good, Bilbo should still be working on the first one. – jamesqf Jun 15 '15 at 02:38
  • @jamesqf - Have you ever been in a deep, dark tunnel under the roots of the mountains? Probably not. So you have no way of knowing what is down there. Maybe it's like a Dave & Busters, with buffalo wings, beer, and arcade games. Maybe there's a casino or an amusement park. It might be the most incredibly fun place in the world. We just don't know. BRB - I have to go dig a hole under a mountain and see if there's cool stuff down there. – Wad Cheber Jun 15 '15 at 02:42

5 Answers5

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Tolkien showed that the ring would totally consume the person carrying it much like an addiction can consume someone. When the mind is in an addictive state it can begin to play tricks on that person and one can lose sense of reality. You often see Gollum wrestling with his own inner thoughts as they try to overtake him.

There are many people in our world that suffer from the same memory issues that Gollum did. For example, there are many people in insane assylums who do not know who they are but surprisingly know other things we might not think they would know.

kojow7
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  • Sorry, I'm fine with the downvote, but stick with my answer. – kojow7 Jun 14 '15 at 07:11
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    I think this answer is perfectly fine - Gollum is insane; insane people remember things that didn't happen and forget things that did. – Dale M Jun 14 '15 at 07:26
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It is not necessarily the case that Sméagol-Gollum has forgotten the word "hobbit"; he may never have known it.

Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings states, regarding the word hobbit:

Hobbit was the name usually applied by the Shire-folk to all their kind. Men called them Halflings and the Elves Periannath. The origin of the word hobbit was by most forgotten. It seems, however, to have been at first a name given to the Harfoots by the Fallohides and Stoors, and to be a worn-down form of a word preserved more fully in Rohan: holbytla 'hole-builder'.

(bold-type emphasis added)

Thus, it is at least theoretically possible that Sméagol had known the word—but only if it had been invented before or during his lifetime (he was on the order of 600 years old in the War of the Ring), and if he had had occasion to know of it. The word hobbit would only have cause to appear when Harfoots were present, or at least being mentioned. In a situation like that of Sméagol's, with apparently no Harfoots anywhere near (since they didn't care for that kind of land to settle in), it need not have been the case that the word ever came up. And if the word had been invented in a different place (by perhaps a different group of proto-Stoors), it would have been only a regionalism, and there would be no expectation that Sméagol would have learned it.

Presumably, since hobbit was a word originally used only of Harfoots, the Stoors and Fallohides would have had some other word to describe themselves, or some more general word that they used to describe all three varieties of halfling. Such a word Gollum might have known, and Bilbo might not.

Alternatively, it could have been that the word was invented later than Sméagol's time, or that (since the word was developed from something like the equivalent of holbytla) he learned the word before it began to be used in the worn-down "hobbit" form.

All this is simply to say that the fact that Gollum didn't recognize the word hobbit doesn't necessarily mean that he had forgotten it; and as you note the forgetting of his name isn't even mentioned in the book; thus the issue of a "selective memory" of some sort doesn't, in my understanding, arise.

Matt Gutting
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    He hadn't heard of the shire, which was founded 1500 years before he found the ring, so it is very possible they had no dealings with the people who started calling themselves hobbits. +1 –  Jun 14 '15 at 14:22
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    @Carl Sixsmith: But the Shire was something over 1000 miles as the crow flies from where Smeagol's people lived, with a major mountain range inhabited by Orcs in between. Not likely to be much regular commerce between them. Also, it's perfectly possible that Smeagol might have known himself as a "holbytla" but, not being into comparative linguistics, did not recognize the relationship between that and "hobbit". – jamesqf Jun 14 '15 at 18:10
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    My points exactly. He doesn't know he's a hobbit because he doesn't know what the term means. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to say that because the OP is convinced being the same species they naturally understand every word of each other's dialect. –  Jun 14 '15 at 18:11
  • @CarlSixsmith - That isn't what I am saying. I'm saying that he should recognize that Bilbo looks a lot like the people he used to know, and even the person he used to be. The word is not important. The "He looks like the guys I used to live with" part is important. If I spent centuries under a mountain, I think I would still recognize another human being if I saw one, regardless of whether or not I wondered if it was "Crunchable and juicy":) – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 21:06
  • @Carl Sixsmith: Yeah, the way I understand Gaelic, Lakota, and Old Norse - and that's with roughly 150 years separation, not 600+ :-) – jamesqf Jun 14 '15 at 21:54
  • @Wad Cheber: As far as we know - or as I know, anyway: I don't think Tolkien ever painted Orcs - hobbits look quite a bit like the smaller breeds of Orcs (goblins in The Hobbit), as Frodo & Sam are able to pass in Mordor just by dressing in scavenged Orc garments. Yet Gollum was happy to prey on them when he could catch them unawares. So why would he recognize that Bilbo is of the same people as he, when they live far away and centuries in the past? It's "not a thought that would occur to his mind". – jamesqf Jun 14 '15 at 22:09
  • @jamesqf - As I said, I haven't spent centuries alone under a mountain, so I can't be sure about this, but I still suspect that I would recognize another human as a member of the species I (used to) belong to. At the very least, I would remember that they are in fact crunchable and juicy without needing to ask. Hobbitses are so crunchable and juicy that it seems unrealistic to expect that anyone would ever forget how crunchable and juicy they are... :) – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 22:19
  • @jamesqf - More seriously, it doesn't make sense to suggest that Gollum couldn't understand the language spoken by hobbits 600 years after he went into the caves, because he obviously could - he spoke to Bilbo, and they understood each other with no difficulty whatsoever. Apparently the language hadn't changed much. Now I have to concentrate on resisting the urge to ask a new question: "Are hobbitses crunchable and juicy?" Because it just occurred to me that Bilbo never answered that particular question. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 22:25
  • @jamesqf - Also, in The Hobbit, Gollum seems to recognize that Bilbo is something other than an Orc almost immediately after he sees him. He actually gets pretty excited because he is sick of eating nasty goblinses all the time. In LotR, he clearly states that hobbits would be more tasty than orcs, and thinks that Shelob will be quite pleased with him for bringing her two non-orcs to eat. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 22:27
  • @Wad Cheber: Both Bilbo and Gollum use the contemporary Common Speech, which IIRC the Shire Hobbits only adopted after leaving their former homes (where the language was like the ancestral tongue of Rohan). Gollum would have kept up to date by overhearing the goblins, and (again IIRC as I don't have my copy of The Hobbit to hand) sometimes talking to other dwellers under the mountains. As for Bilbo being "something other than an Orc, I could tell that a fox is different from a wolf without thinking either are the same species as my dog. – jamesqf Jun 15 '15 at 02:44
  • @jamesqf - Sorry for being pedantic, but wolves and dogs are the same species. That's why they can interbreed and produce viable/fertile offspring. But otherwise, your point is taken. – Wad Cheber Jun 15 '15 at 03:07
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Gollum's people are described as

a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind; akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors.
- Lord of the Rings: The Shadows of the Past

So he may not actually know the word Hobbit. I'll need to research when they started calling themselves that and if the river folk of that time were aware of the Shire Hobbits.

Hobbit, like many Shire words, derives from Rohirric:

Are not these the Halflings, that some among us call the Holbytlan?
-Lord of the Rings: The road to Isengard

He also hasn't forgotten his name, I don't believe it is explicitly stated he has?

Rand al'Thor
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Could it be that in the deep dark under the mountains with only his split personality as company, the way smeagol/ Gollum entertained itself was to play endless games of riddles? I'm sure he would have liked this rather than recounting stories of the time before he was hunted out of his village?

Cearon O'Flynn
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  • Have you ever tried to tell yourself riddles? It isn't much fun. In fact, it is almost impossible to do, because you always know the answer. It would be boring from the moment you began until you finally gave up entirely because you never hear any new ones and the old ones aren't interesting unless you have someone else to play with. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 10:29
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    But he is playing with someone else. He is playing with the other half of his split personality, they are often shown having conversations with each other. It is not unreasonable to believe that the two sides could ask each other riddles. – Cearon O'Flynn Jun 14 '15 at 10:31
  • They could, but each knew all the other's riddles. It would be like telling riddles to a mirror. They certainly talk to each other, which makes the forgetting of the name even more bizarre, but I doubt that they told each other riddles. You could be right though. +1. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 10:34
  • @WadCheber I'm 99% positive there was something about Gollum playing riddles with other beings than himself while in the cave, I can't find a quote tho. sound familiar? EDIT: naturally I find a quote in the very next Google link :P ----- "Riddles were all [Gollum] could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before the goblins came, and he was cut off from his friends far under under the mountains" – Mac Cooper Jun 14 '15 at 13:39
  • @MacCooper - I don't know how long the long long ago was. I would think that Goblin Town has been there for a while. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 19:43
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I guess not even the corrupting, eroding power of the One Ring is capable of erasing such firmly-entrenched and honourable tradition among the Hobbits as the telling of riddles.

As for not knowing what Hobbits are, perhaps Smeagol's tribe didn't call themselves that; it's a name given to them by Humans (derived from holbytla, hole-builders).

In the end, I think that trying to find some sense in what such a maddened and consumed by the Ring character as Gollum does or remembers, is pointless.

Maksim
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  • Problem: It is quite clear that we are meant to believe that the text of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have been translated into English from Westron and Shire-speak, whatever the formal name for the latter was. So when we read the word "hobbit", it means that the characters said whatever their equivalent of that word is in their language. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 07:59
  • I'm aware of that. What I meant was that the Hobbits of the Shire used the name given to them by the Rohhiric people (or their own modified version of it), whereas Smeagol's tribe, which was seemingly isolated from any contact with humans, could have called themselves something else. – Maksim Jun 14 '15 at 08:08
  • But they would have spoken the same language as Frodo, more or less (especially in light of the fact that he can communicate with Sam and Frodo and vice versa), so Frodo and Bilbo would presumably have been speaking Gollum's native language. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 08:18
  • Not it isnt. You seem to be asserting that someone would automatically know what a word means when someone from another area says it. What ia Chinese for human? The Russian, the native american, tell me without looking it up. –  Jun 14 '15 at 09:11
  • Neither theodon Ingold know what a hobbit is. Despite speaking the common tounge. –  Jun 14 '15 at 10:35
  • @CarlSixsmith - Hobbits speak their own dialect. And neither Theoden nor Ingold are hobbits. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 19:53
  • @WadCheber and? It proves that characters can have a conversation in the common speech and not know each other's twists. Being hobbits or proto-hobbits doesn't give them the same language or words. –  Jun 14 '15 at 20:01
  • @CarlSixsmith - Let me put it another way: not only does Gollum not remember the word for his species, he also doesn't remember that all the people he knew looked more or less like Bilbo. And yet he remembers lore that he learned from them, and riddles that he learned from them. He remembers being cast out by them, but he doesn't remember what they looked like, even when someone very much like them is before his eyes. Not knowing each other's twists is different from not knowing the person in front of you is a member of your species – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 20:20
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. –  Jun 14 '15 at 20:27
  • @CarlSixsmith - Are you coming? – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 20:40
  • It's not letting me log in –  Jun 14 '15 at 20:40
  • @CarlSixsmith - Please see my comments under your answer. – Wad Cheber Jun 14 '15 at 21:01