Cain-Leviathan Typology in Gollum and Grendel‪.‬

J. R. R. Tolkien was fascinated with monsters. His most enduring influence as a critic is his defense of the monster's central place in Beowulf, and he expressed similar enthusiasm for his own famous monster, Gollum, who owes much to the monsters of this Anglo-Saxon poem, particularly Grendel. Writing to his son Christopher on 21 May 1944, Tolkien observes that "Gollum continues to develop into a most intriguing character" (Letters 81). Tolkien returns frequently in his correspondence to the topic of his monster, implying Gollum's importance and that, like his counterpart in Beowulf, this monster has a central place in his story. Tolkien's conscious recognition of Beowulf as a source for his own fiction is incomplete: one of two direct acknowledgments of its influence comes in a letter to his son Christopher, dated 18 December 1944, and pertains not to Middle-Earth but to a "long shelved time-travel story" to which he was returning; the other, a comment in a letter to the editor of the Observer, concerns The Hobbit and identifies Beowulf 'as being "among my most valued sources" (105, 31). Readers of these works, however, have noted a number of significant parallels: some see influences in plot and structure, and many more find similarities between the various monsters of these two stories. But surprisingly little has been said about the influence of Beowulf's monsters, especially Grendel, on Tolkien's Gollum. (1) As Verlyn Flieger notes, Gollum's "parallel with Grendel, the man-eating monster of Beowulf, is unmistakable" (141), but it is a parallel that is largely overlooked in Tolkien criticism. Early in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf relates to Frodo the story of Gollum's origins, which foregrounds two important typological connections between Gollum and Grendel, evoking both the Leviathan of romance as elaborated by Northrop Frye and a second and related typology, one not recognized by Frye: the fall of Cain. A prominent detail in Tolkien's rendering of the scene is the relationship of Smeagol (Gollum's original name) to water. Smeagol belonged to a race of hobbits that bore one striking difference from the water-fearing hobbits of the Shire: "they loved the River, and often swam in it, or made little boats of reeds." Smeagol in particular was "[t]he most inquisitive and curious-minded" of his family; he