The Realm of Slimy Things - The Hobbit, Ch. V

If one thinks of nature in the abstract, it is easy to conceptualize it as hostile – the heat of the desert, the wrath of the hurricane.  If we bother to think about the complexity of nature, we may be more likely to consider it as a benevolent matrix of life.  Yet it is intriguing to think of a nature that is both complex and yet hostile to humanity, an old and hidden web of life that waits to capture people (or hobbits), rather than to support or nurture them.

 

We find something like this beneath the Misty Mountains: “There are strange things living in pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains… things more slimy than fish…. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins… and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about.”  It is in such a space, of course, that we encounter Gollum.

Leaving aside what we learn in The Lord of the Rings, we might wonder whether Gollum is just an avatar for ancient intricacies of power that spawn and slumber in the uttermost depths of the world.  Are there ooze-encrusted nexuses of consciousness posing riddles through the croaking flesh of demented hobbits?  And, if we let them be, will we find some measure of benevolent complexity among the rivers, trees, and starlit sanctuaries above the realm of slimy things?

Image: American Museum of Natural History