He obsessed about it constantly and was prepared to go to any length to get it back. It was key to his survival in the Misty Mountains, where he would hunt goblins for food and otherwise need to avoid attention.
Gollum, conversely, used the Ring copiously and often for centuries. That left him comparatively untouched by the Ring's influence, though it exacted a price as his true age caught up to him at last when he finally, reluctantly surrendered it. He pulled it out only when he wished to avoid someone - notably his sour relations, the Sackville-Baggins - or to play a prank as he did during his birthday party at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring. In actuality, the seeming difference between Gollum's age and Bilbo's fits in well with the mythology of the Ring.įinally, and perhaps most importantly, Bilbo didn't use the Ring very often. On the surface, it looks like a grave oversight, and since the details come from Tolkien's novels, the spotlight falls on him. Gollum, on the other hand, was deprived of the Ring for the same amount of time, and while he clearly hungered for it fiercely, he suffered no effects of aging. Bilbo Baggins carries the Ring for decades - retaining seemingly preternatural youth the entire time - only to find it all catching up to him in a few months once he lets it go. A perceived discrepancy of the One Ring, in which Gollum does not age while wearing the ring but Bilbo does, takes a good deal of sorting out to explain, largely because both Tolkien and the Peter Jackson-directed movie trilogy focused on more pressing aspects of the narrative.Ī poster on Quora questioned the Ring's effects on its user, which appear to vary wildly when it comes to aging. The Lord of the Rings and Middle-earth in general subsequently became the standard by which world-building is judged, and even apparent continuity errors often have detailed explanations hidden slightly deeper in the lore.
Tolkien devoted considerable energy to the task at a time when the notion of such an elaborate universe was far less common than today. World-building is never easy, and continuity errors can crop up in even the most carefully crafted universe.
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