Gollum

There is an incredible lesson to be learned, I think, from the character of Gollum/Smeagol, created by J.R.R. Tolkien.

He, at first, seems hopelessly vile and evil . . . but then, he has a truly pathetic, tragic, deeply sad back story. So much as you hate him and mistrust him, there is a part of you that feels compassion. You feel torn.

I think any author or moviemaker that plays that gray middle--neither black nor white, but some middle ground where the morality is far more complex and muddled, has created something deeper, more reflective of the real world. To be able to play on emotions like that takes skill. But real life is so much like that. Someone you love profoundly wounds you, and much as the simpler path might be to cut them from your life completely, that is the path for cowards--sometimes. The more complicated path, the one that DEMANDS more of you as a human being, often is the one in which you feel for their mistake and try to save them, or try to forgive and move on. Or make yourself vulnerable again because of unconditional love.

In my current work in progress, one of the main characters has done the most awful thing I think a human being can do. She has murdered. But . . . there is a complicated, and I hope Gollum-esque journey, that brought her to the precise and broken place where the choice she made seemed sane to her. Thought afterward, like Gollum, she became a pathetic version of her former self.

Anyway, that's what I am hoping for. And Gollum is the example I am keeping in mind, though my book is not fantasy at all.

Thoughts?