Why is Gollum's memory so selective?

Question

In The Hobbit (the book and the movies), we meet our old friend Gollum again. But there is something strange about him. He doesn't remember what his own people (i.e., hobbits) are called, or even what they looked like, and doesn't seem to remember being a hobbit himself (when Bilbo appears and identifies himself as a hobbit, Gollum only wants to know if hobbitses are "crunchable" and "juicy").

On its own, this would not be very surprising; after all, in The Return of the King (the movie, not the book), he says that he even forgot his own name during his long stay under the mountains. But in The Hobbit, we see that he remembers a fairly large number of riddles, which is very surprising: he has no one to tell his riddles to, and no one to teach him new ones. He also remembers a good deal of lore in LotR. And obviously, one's own name and species are more important things to remember than riddles and lore.

Is there any reason for Gollum's incredibly selective memory?

Answer 1

Tolkien showed that the ring would totally consume the person carrying it much like an addiction can consume someone. When the mind is in an addictive state it can begin to play tricks on that person and one can lose sense of reality. You often see Gollum wrestling with his own inner thoughts as they try to overtake him.

There are many people in our world that suffer from the same memory issues that Gollum did. For example, there are many people in insane assylums who do not know who they are but surprisingly know other things we might not think they would know.

Answer 2

It is not necessarily the case that Sméagol-Gollum has forgotten the word "hobbit"; he may never have known it.

Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings states, regarding the word hobbit:

Hobbit was the name usually applied by the Shire-folk to all their kind. Men called them Halflings and the Elves Periannath. The origin of the word hobbit was by most forgotten. It seems, however, to have been at first a name given to the Harfoots by the Fallohides and Stoors, and to be a worn-down form of a word preserved more fully in Rohan: holbytla 'hole-builder'.

(bold-type emphasis added)

Thus, it is at least theoretically possible that Sméagol had known the word—but only if it had been invented before or during his lifetime (he was on the order of 600 years old in the War of the Ring), and if he had had occasion to know of it. The word hobbit would only have cause to appear when Harfoots were present, or at least being mentioned. In a situation like that of Sméagol's, with apparently no Harfoots anywhere near (since they didn't care for that kind of land to settle in), it need not have been the case that the word ever came up. And if the word had been invented in a different place (by perhaps a different group of proto-Stoors), it would have been only a regionalism, and there would be no expectation that Sméagol would have learned it.

Presumably, since hobbit was a word originally used only of Harfoots, the Stoors and Fallohides would have had some other word to describe themselves, or some more general word that they used to describe all three varieties of halfling. Such a word Gollum might have known, and Bilbo might not.

Alternatively, it could have been that the word was invented later than Sméagol's time, or that (since the word was developed from something like the equivalent of holbytla) he learned the word before it began to be used in the worn-down "hobbit" form.

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All this is simply to say that the fact that Gollum didn't recognize the word hobbit doesn't necessarily mean that he had forgotten it; and as you note the forgetting of his name isn't even mentioned in the book; thus the issue of a "selective memory" of some sort doesn't, in my understanding, arise.

Answer 3

Gollum's people are described as

a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind; akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors.
- Lord of the Rings: The Shadows of the Past

So he may not actually know the word Hobbit. I'll need to research when they started calling themselves that and if the river folk of that time were aware of the Shire Hobbits.

Hobbit, like many Shire words, derives from Rohirric:

Are not these the Halflings, that some among us call the Holbytlan?
-Lord of the Rings: The road to Isengard

He also hasn't forgotten his name, I don't believe it is explicitly stated he has?

Answer 4

Could it be that in the deep dark under the mountains with only his split personality as company, the way smeagol/ Gollum entertained itself was to play endless games of riddles? I'm sure he would have liked this rather than recounting stories of the time before he was hunted out of his village?

Answer 5

I guess not even the corrupting, eroding power of the One Ring is capable of erasing such firmly-entrenched and honourable tradition among the Hobbits as the telling of riddles.

As for not knowing what Hobbits are, perhaps Smeagol's tribe didn't call themselves that; it's a name given to them by Humans (derived from holbytla, hole-builders).

In the end, I think that trying to find some sense in what such a maddened and consumed by the Ring character as Gollum does or remembers, is pointless.