“Long Black Veil” by Jennifer Finney Boylan (post 11): Protagonist identifies with split personality Gollum and feels that the boy she was still lives inside her

“I’m a relic, though. That’s what I realize now. The world has become a safer place for trans people, for some of us anyhow…I set out to save the shire…and it has been saved. But not for me. ‘Gollum,’ I said, ‘Gollum’ ” (1, p. 230).

Her talk of saving the shire is a reference to the plot of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Her saying “Gollum, Gollum” is to quote Gollum, the multiple personality character from that novel with whom she apparently identifies, although she may not think of him in terms of diagnosis.

“But most of the time I think that the boy that I was still lives inside me, in spite of the woman’s life that came after. I hear his voice when I tell a joke, or raise my voice to sing some song…” (1, p. 287).

1. Jennifer Finney Boylan. Long Black Veil. New York, Crown, 2017.