Let’s think this through. Sam’s not intervening, because he’s busy taking a dump behind a rock or whatever. So Gollum becomes a nice guy (let’s just ignore his precious being inches away at all times) and they all get along great. So, who’s supposed to replace “the part he has to play”? You know, the evil accidentally doing good stuff, when Frodo is finally that close to screwing up the whole mission?
I suspect that the author knows what his character is up to.
It reminds me of Dwijendralal Roy’s Bengali play Sajahan (সাজাহান). Shah Jahan, was a Moghul Emperor of India. A man asked the author why he titled the play Sajahan because the main focus of the play is Aurangzeb, son of Shah Jahan. To get the throne Aurangzeb murdered all his brothers and imprisoned his father Shah Jahan, and then went about on a series of wars that killed millions. The author replied that, “it was titled Sajahan because it is the father Shah Jahan who had to suffer seeing one son murder all his other sons and then betrayed and imprisoned by his son. Just imagine his pain and anguish.” So it is the author who knows the purpose behind what he writes.
For the record Arangzeb’s bad behavior of killing his brothers and imprisoning his father was not unusual or an outlier but par for the course in Islamic polities. And Shah Jahan, his father, had also killed his own brothers as well as many rivals to secure the thrown. And this was a common practice in other Islamic polities such as the Ottomans. It had to do with their flawed succession system which almost always led to significant blood letting in the family after a ruler died. And since Mulsims practiced polygamy a ruler could have 20+ sons as well as extended male relatives. One Ottoman ruler to secure the throne and prevent civil war, had all his many brothers and half brothers, as well as many uncles and cousins killed (usually by strangulation). It was ruthless.
The point is that this tragedy had to unfold the way it did in the grand scheme of things. (Which makes it even more tragic, I guess.)
I’m not sure I’d agree with this passage:
This speaks to Tolkien’s wider world view, says Lee. “What happens in his mythology is that good can sometimes do excessive evil unintentionally.”
Okay, but is this instance a good example? Gollum not getting his redemption arc IMHO is a little bit less excessive evil than the alternative of Frodo becoming the next Dark Lord (or more likely Sauron taking the Ring while Frodo is busy searching for a ladder to climb his throne) and everyone gets killed or enslaved and stuff.
Since I am not a fiction writer I will leave it up to the fiction writers to debate these points further.
That is one of the benefits of writing non-fiction, the plot and characters, so to speak, are already laid out for you.