During the third chapter of the final book of the Lord of The Rings series, Frodo has a confrontation with Gollum which leads to both Gollum and the ring falling into Mount Doom, destroying the ring. Before this happened, Frodo became corrupted by the ring’s power and declared that the ring was his, putting on the ring and absorbing its power. As Gollum began to fight the invisible Frodo, he bit of the finger and the ring, reminiscent of the first time Soron lost the ring in the beginning of the trilogy, leading Gollum falling into the pit, and Frodo proclaiming that he could not have done this quest without Gollum.

In this scene, Tolkien uses Gollum as an example of an individual corrupted by totalitarianism, in this case the ring, helping conquer the evil from within the society. This symbol can be applied to other writers from totalitarian regimes such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who used his horrible experiences in the Russian gulag to speak out against totalitarianism. Just as Solzhenitsyn wrote about the permanent lie and how totalitarianism clouds his mind by creating a false reality that people are forced to live in, Gollum’s experiences with the ring corrupted his mind and forced him to only think about the ring, creating his version of the permanent lie. Just as Solzhenitsyn was able to break free of his lie, inevitably writing the Gulag Archipelago which helped bring down the Soviet empire as it exposed the evils within it, Gollum was ultimately able to do the same. Even if him falling in the bit was not intentional, this act still symbolizes how an individual can help bring down a totalitarian regime.

Tolkien also uses Frodo as another example of how the power can corrupt, with Frodo declaring that the ring is his and succumbing to its power during the same scene. Frodo, who was able to resist the ring’s power for the entire book, has now fallen victim to the ring’s power. Tolkien uses this to reinforce the message that evil can corrupt anyone’s mind, which may lead to the rise of a totalitarian regime from seemingly nowhere.