“The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien (post 11): Narrator fails to recognize multiple personality, even when the alternate personalities debate.

For most of the time that the magic ring had been out of the picture, the Sméagol personality had probably stayed inside, did not come out, and did not pay much attention to what was going on in the outside world, leaving that to the Gollum personality to manage. But now that the presence of the ring (in Frodo’s possession) has brought the Sméagol personality out, he is quite engaged. In multiple personality, alternate personalities come out when what they are interested in is at issue.

Indeed, regarding the issue of the ring, Sméagol and Gollum disagree. Sméagol wants to keep his promise to follow Frodo as his master (since Frodo has the magic ring), but Gollum wants them to take the ring away from Frodo, making them “Lord Sméagol” and “Gollum the Great” (1, p, 633).

The narrator, who does not know multiple personality when he sees it, introduces the debate between the Sméagol personality and the Gollum personality (1, pp. 632-633) as a debate between a person and a thought: “Sméagol was holding a debate with some other thought that used the same voice but made it squeak and hiss. A pale light and a green light alternated in his eyes as he spoke” (1, p. 632).

The narrator describes an autonomous thought process, with different enunciation, and with eyes that emanate a green light—not to mention its own, separate, sense of self—which is a dramatized alternate personality, not just “some other thought.”

When you are ambivalent and have an ordinary “debate with yourself,” you have a subjective sense of taking both sides, which is not the case in the debate between Sméagol and Gollum, who have separate senses of self and are alternate personalities.

1. J. R. R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings [1954-55]. 50th Anniversary One-Volume Edition. New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004.