# Was Gollum naked?



## Goro Shimura (Sep 9, 2002)

*All About Gollum*

After seeing many different artist interpretations... I just want to know... is Gollum naked? If not what sort of clothes does he wear?


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## Goro Shimura (Sep 9, 2002)

*What color was Gollum?*

Green? White? The pictures say green, but the book often says white, doesn't it?


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## Goro Shimura (Sep 9, 2002)

*Why did gollum have lights in his eyes?*

I don't understand this.... Did the ring do it to him?


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## Confusticated (Sep 9, 2002)

I think he must have had super night vision from spending all those years in the caves deep in the mountains where no light ever goes. I think his eyes could easily pick up a light that humans would not be able to detect. His eyes glowing is probably the same sort of thing that happens with cats, racoons, and other night animals.


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## In Flames (Sep 9, 2002)

I believe Gollum's eyes adapted to the darkness..so they became like..cat eyes. So he could see better.
You know how sometimes a cats eyes seem to glow in the dark.

Argh! To late...I hate when this happens.


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## mr underhill (Sep 9, 2002)

You have now ruined my vision of gollum.....

now i can imaine him havin a....thing... yuck!


( well i know he could pee but in the two towers they better not ive notice to this issue )


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## Mormegil (Sep 9, 2002)

I'm sure he would wear some kind of loincloth at least, to protect his modesty.


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## mr underhill (Sep 9, 2002)

ive just had a sickenin thouht about gollum and the ring...


my precioussssssss


* shudders *


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## Ithrynluin (Sep 9, 2002)

> _Originally posted by mr underhill _
> *ive just had a sickenin thouht about gollum and the ring...
> 
> 
> ...



Hmmmmm.....a pretty qrotesque (though undeniably interesting) thread.

I figure Gollum wore some dirty old rags. 
But how could Gollum survive in such unhospitable weather (as in the Misty Mountains and other places) if all he wore were a few shattered rags (or even nothing at all?)


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## Ithrynluin (Sep 9, 2002)

Did his eyes contain this "glow" all the time? I don't think so. I think they lit up at the prospect of possessing the ring (when someone mentioned the ring etc.)
Of course he had improved vision from all the long years of darkness,it's just that his eyes got these lights at some specific moment IMHO.


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## Ithrynluin (Sep 9, 2002)

I don't picture Gollum as either white or green (?)
The one picture of Gollum that sticks in my mind is Ralph Bakshi's depiction where Gollum is dark brown or dark gray if I remember correctly.


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## Confusticated (Sep 9, 2002)

Well he didn't seem too healthy to me. I think he is a mutant to some degree. As funny as that may word may sound, I beleive it. I don't know what illnesses the people of Middle-earth had to deal with, so I do not even know which sicknesses might have came to Gollum. The Ring prolonged his life and helped him mutate to adapt to his surroundings so I figure it probably helped him deal with any virus, bacteria, parasite ...and so on that might have come along.


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## Confusticated (Sep 9, 2002)

I hadn't noticed that. It may not have been related to his excellent night vision at all then.


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## Grond (Sep 9, 2002)

> _from The Fellowship of the Ring_
> The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and
> they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides. *The Stoors were broader, heavier in build; their feet and hands were larger, and they preferred flat lands and riversides.* The Fallohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and they were taller and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and of woodlands.


Gollum (Smeagol) was a Stoor and would have had the most Mannish appearance of all the classes of Hobbits. He would have likely have had a medium complexion with brownish hair.

Having said that... Gollum had been under the Misty Mountains for hundreds of years... so he would have been extremely pale skinned. His favorite food was fish and he spent untold hours hunting fish in the pools under the mountain. From the books, we know that he continued his affinity for fish and would likely have been very dirty and possibly greenish as well since he spent so much time in the water. *fungus and algae build up, don't you know.*

Also, remember that he was skin and bones... both from a regularly poor intake of food and because he had been eaten away by the Ring for all those years he possessed it and was then eaten away by the Ring for all the years he searched for it.


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## Lantarion (Sep 9, 2002)

I think the description is merely decorative, and that the actual luminescence might have no actual ibophysical reason behind it. But as we're all speculating, I would say that his eyes, being larger and more 'goggly' than usual from squinting and peering in the deep dark places of the world, reflected light more sensitively and more brightly; his eyes had probably acquired a sort of moist outer 'shell', which reflected the most vague and most dim light manyfold. 
Or then he had accidentally invented the lighbulb before TA Edison, while juggling a wet fish. But I guess we'll never know, will we?


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## Lantarion (Sep 9, 2002)

Yeah, now I have a great vision in my head, which isn't exacly helped by my listening to George Carlin's theories.. 
Goro, why the sudden interest in Gollum? And why create THREE SEPERATE THREADS for three questions about the same subject?! Now I have to merge them, you little nuisance!


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## In Flames (Sep 9, 2002)

Nothing like a little extra work ey Lantarion. 

I always imagined Gollum to be light grey with a touch of green.


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## HLGStrider (Sep 9, 2002)

Personally I always saw him as a slimey creature with slightly grimy skin very much like that of a sea lion... without the fur... or a wet suit... you get the idea. I also always gave him really exaggerated almost alien like eyes... you know, from those glowing alien heads.. weird...
He normally didn't have any need for clothing in my images though in a picture I once gave him trousers to avoid questions.


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## Goro Shimura (Sep 9, 2002)

> _Originally posted by Lantarion _
> *Yeah, now I have a great vision in my head, which isn't exacly helped by my listening to George Carlin's theories..
> Goro, why the sudden interest in Gollum? And why create THREE SEPERATE THREADS for three questions about the same subject?! Now I have to merge them, you little nuisance!  *


Sorry.

I thought they were separate issues.

I wish you hadn't merged them, though!


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## HLGStrider (Sep 9, 2002)

I'm going to try to attach a picture of Gollum I did with water colors when I was probably 12 or 13. I'm not very good at attachments so bear with me.


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## YayGollum (Sep 10, 2002)

No, he wasn't naked. I know that he at least had pants 'cuz he had pocketses at least in The Hobbit. oh well. Who knows? He might have had a shirt, too. Tolkien never says. My favorite picture of Gollum has him looking almost black with cool looking eyes, but the books say he's white, so I'd say, Duh! white! Yeah, the Ring probably did that weird thing to his eyes. They glow green every now and then. They look like a normal hobbitses' eyes other times. Poor Smeagol. oh well.


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## Goro Shimura (Sep 10, 2002)

Yay... you see it, too. 

The book says he's white.. but I've never seen him pictured that way.

And in the Hobbit, it says he has pockets... but the pictures are always naked it seems.

He was frog-like... but they always overdo it, I think. There's at least one scene where he should look almost like an old starved hobbit.

(At least in the movie, they get it right that Gollum *does* have wispy hair!!)

If anyone knows a decent picture of gollum somewheres (ie, consistent with the book)... please post the link!


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## Goro Shimura (Sep 10, 2002)

Your's is pretty good, HLG!


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## HLGStrider (Sep 10, 2002)

Thanks, Goro... Actually I used that picture as part of a table display to go with a book report on the Hobbit and I got into an argument over it with a dad who was there... Said it should've been white... Well, he is just grimey... that's all.


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## In Flames (Sep 10, 2002)

This picture shows Gollum pretty much how my mental image of him is.


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## In Flames (Sep 10, 2002)

Or wait..maybe this is more like i imagined Gollum. 
I really like this one.


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## HLGStrider (Sep 10, 2002)

Just so you know, Flames... the second one's eyes give me the creeps...


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## In Flames (Sep 10, 2002)

Yeah he's really creepy lookin'..
Like something from your toy collection that would come alive at night and just sits and stare at you by the bed.


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## HLGStrider (Sep 10, 2002)

As a collector of stuffed cats, that sounds highly possible and not very frightening... 

He's kind of like Dr. Suess gone bad.


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## In Flames (Sep 10, 2002)

Good thing you don't collect creepy stuff then Elgee. 

Btw, enlight me please..who is Dr.Suess?


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## HLGStrider (Sep 10, 2002)

Dr. Suess wrote childrens books like Green Eggs and Ham and the Grinch who stole Christmas... He had weird looking characters.. I don't know where I could find you an example.


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## In Flames (Sep 10, 2002)

Okay thanks.

Iv'e seen the Grinch so i get the idea.


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## Goro Shimura (Sep 11, 2002)

If Gollum was white, then why did an orc refer to him as "that black fellow" at the end of Two Towers???


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## Confusticated (Sep 14, 2002)

This is just an idea I got from reading your post, don't think it is mentioned in the book. Back during Bilbo's adventure Gollum had been underground away from light for so long that I'm not surprised his skin was white. After leavings the caves he did avoid light as much as he could, but even under a shady tree Gollum would be getting a large amount of light reltive to what he used to get, this could have darkend him up. Not only that but being in the cool damp setting in his cave his skin probably started to take on a different (grasping for word)....texture, just a different quality that may have caused the dry sun to backen him? 

I don't even remember that part in the book where an orc calls him 'black'.


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## HLGStrider (Sep 15, 2002)

I remember a comparison of him to a squirrel of Mirkwood by one of Faramir's men... Something like "They have black squirrels in Mirkwood... but it didn't have a tail."


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## Popqueen62 (Sep 22, 2002)

*so then....*

so then would he be black, green, or white. I think tolkien liked to change his mind a lot and liked to confuse us. That's why the books so good!


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## Wonko The Sane (Oct 3, 2002)

Question's probably been answered but no...Gollum was not naked.
He wore briches and suspenders I think...I don't remember anything about a shirt though.

And he had hair...though most artists leave that off.


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## Deagol (Oct 27, 2002)

no, Gollum was'nt nude he had sort of a apron around his waist, i think it was brown.


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## Anamatar IV (Oct 27, 2002)

im sure he did. INfact I remember just reading about him wearing brown pants or something...IVE GOT IT!! In riddles in the dark chapter of the hobbit when bilbo asked gollum what he had in his pocket gollum *thought about what he had in HIS OWN POCKETs* thus he had pants.


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## Wonko The Sane (Oct 28, 2002)

That's exactly what I said...
Although I expect he probably DIDN'T have pants. Trousers yes...pants no.


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## Princess Vi (Oct 29, 2002)

hahahaha


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## Bucky (Oct 29, 2002)

3 pages, & nobody got the quote.

I guess I got back just in time......  

TTT, 'The Black Gate Is Closed', right after the "there is another way into Mordor" debate, as Frodo, Sam & Gollum lay in a pit before the Gate:

Not even an eagle poised against the sun would have marked the hobbits sitting there, under the weight of doom, silent, not moving, shrouded in their thin grey cloaks. For a moment he might have paused to consider Gollum, a tiny figure sprawling on the ground: there perhaps lay the famished skeleton of some child of Men, it's RAGGED GARMENT STILL CLINGING TO IT, IT'S LONG ARMS AND LEGS ALMOST BONE-WHITE and bone-thin: no flesh worth a peck.


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## JanitorofAngmar (Oct 29, 2002)

For a while there my vision of Gollum was almost identical to that of the little black martian guy from Bugs Bunny cartoons. You know they little guy that runs around complaining about the rabbit messing with his discombobulator or something like that.

I still wonder what kind of drugs I was on to get THAT vision in my head of Gollum.

I just think it's funny if he were like that.

Then he would be dressed very differntly I guess.


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## Princess Vi (Oct 29, 2002)

hahahaha you guys are crazy


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## Leto (Oct 29, 2002)

I think it depended on the light as to what color he appeared. I think his skin perhaps was somewhat transluscent...he could appear white, greyish, or black. When they called him 'black', it was always at night, or in shadows and darkness (in Shelob's lair). The eagle would have seen him as white, in the daylight out in the open. I believe when Frodo and Sam first saw him crawling down the cliff, he looked grey or black against the stone, except for his big glowing eyes.


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## Bucky (Oct 29, 2002)

Yeah, I agree.
Whenever he's "black", it's at night.

Knowing Gollum's M.O., he was always hiding in the shadows too.


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