Still, I scurried away to my lair to unpack my treasure and immediately began reading "The Question of Original Sin in Hamlet" by Professor John Gillies of the University of Essex. Gillies posits this Christian doctrine as a useful lens for reading the play. From the riches of his article I will only pluck the first shiny object that met my gaze: He refers to the parable of Gyges in Plato's Republic to illustrate the universality of the concept of fallen human nature. For those unfamiliar with the tale, I will quote Gillies' own summary: "Upon discovering a ring that makes him invisible, Gyges, a humble Lydian shepherd, infiltrated the king's palace, 'seduced the king's wife and with her aid set upon the king and slew him and possessed his kingdom.'" It's a classier version of the old saw that "integrity is who you are when no one is looking."
Gillies connects this idea to Calvin-via-Augustine and the idea that all of society amounts to an attempt to govern our fallen nature, to make us behave ourselves in response to various positive and negative pressures. Shakespeare, he believes, works from the same theology: The only reason Claudius never killed his brother before was that he never stumbled across, "hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing;/Confederate season, else no creature seeing." "Thoughts black" he had in at the ready.
A few pages later Gillies quotes Patrick Downey's take on Calvin's reading of Cain and his race as the emblem of society in general: "Politics is revealed for what it is, a pack of hidden murderers and thieves who appear to be law-abiding citizens out of fear rather than desire. Inside the heart of every citizen is a fugitive and wanderer who has no place to lay his head because he has exiled himself form his fellow man and creation. Outside, that same fugitive is a solid citizen who farms, plays well with others and obeys the law." It reminded me of Marlow's taunt to his companions as he tries to tell the tale of what happened to Kurtz in the Congo:
You can't understand. How could you? - with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums - how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude - utter solitude without a policeman - by the way of silence - utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion?Marlow repeatedly emphasizes Kurtz' isolation - his virtual invisibility - from Cainite control mechanisms. "There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! He had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone. . . ."
A thought struck me: For Plato, a ring of invisibility makes visible the essential corruption of human nature. Now, you don't run that image past a Tolkien nerd like me and not set up a whole series of reflections on the One Ring of Sauron. In many ways, the One Ring operates pretty much the same way Gyges' ring does. Gandalf tells Frodo that, upon discovering what his shiny trinket could do, Smeagol-ne-Gollum, "used it to find out secrets, and he plug his knowledge to crooked and malicious uses. He became sharp-eyed and keen-eared for all that was hurtful. The ring had given him power according to his stature." That last line is the money-shot: Gollum used the ring for evil because he was evil; he didn't use it for any great evil, not because he was not evil, but because he was not great. Tolkien underscores this idea when Frodo offers the ring to Gandalf: "No! With that power I should have power too great and terrible." Smeagol to Sauron is only a sliding scale.
Bilbo, however, is the exception. When Frodo, upon learning the ring's malevolent nature, fears for his beloved uncle. "I don't think," Gandalf reassures him, "you need worry about Bilbo." Indeed, for all the hobbit/Gollum parallels Tolkien is at such pains to sketch in this scene, including Bilbo's lie immediately upon taking possession of the object, this exception should have struck me more than it has so far. Granted that, as Cory Olsen, the Tolkien Professor has pointed out (and as Hollywood has, regrettably, failed to notice), The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are very different books, it is still true that Tolkien re-wrote the ring-scene in The Hobbit to accommodate his developing tale. So it is worth noting the last mention of Bilbo's actions upon finding himself back home in Hobbiton and now in Gyges' place: "His magic ring he kept a great secret, for he chiefly used it when unpleasant callers came."
So why is this one being, this simple little villager, the exception, not only in Middle Earth but in ancient Greece and the Belgian Congo and east of Eden? "There is," Gandalf explains to Frodo, "only one Power in this world that knows all about the Rings and their effects; and as far as I know there is no Power in the world that knows all about hobbits." Tolkien repeatedly described himself as a hobbit, and he was too faithful a Catholic to identify himself with an unfallen race. At any rate, Frodo's final defection from the quest proves that even hobbits had their dark side.
Perhaps - and I'm drawing a bow at a venture here and inviting assistance - the difference is community. The same passage that tells us Bilbo used his ring to avoid unpleasant callers also tells us that he used his gold to buy presents, mostly for his nieces and nephews. Like Smeagol, his reputation with his own kind suffered, but that had more to do with his adventures than his magic ring. Bilbo did not aspire to become king, or even Mayor of Michel Delving. If he wanted to avoid unpleasant callers, he still wanted pleasant ones.
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