How "Human" are wraiths?

[Attalus]

Originally Posted by Tinman

Wait. Gandalf comes right out and says gollum was a hobbit at some time.

Whats your arguement against this?

Gandalf says that he guessed that Gollum's family was akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors. This is not the same thing as saying that they were Stoors. He offers it as an informed guess, but note Frodo's heated disagreement.

As a matter of fact, I do think that Gollum was a proto-Hobbit, but much ink and more pixels have been devoted to the other side.

[Gordis]

I think Gandalf's words are another of the cases where the reminders of earlier conceptions were not removed or corrected in the beginning of LOTR. FOTR has a lot of them, in fact, and TT has a few.
The final clearer conceptions can be found in the Tale of Years, which was written about 10 years later than FOTR.

c 1150. The Fallohides enter Eriador. The Stoors come over the Redhorn Pass and move to the Angle, or to Dunland.
1356. King Argeleb I slain in battle with Rhudaur. About this time the Stoors leave the Angle, and some return to Wilderland.
2463 The White Council is formed. About this time Déagol the Stoor finds the One Ring, and is murdered by Sméagol.

Taking this into consideration, I don't think there is much to argue about.

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

Well, its not that im saying you're wrong, its just i can find quotes that seem to support this, but cant find quotes that conflict with it. Are there and lines that you might have in mind that conflict?

See the bold above. That's where the ambiguity lies. You take the quotes literally and I take them figuratively. We're not going to convince one another to change views and that's cool with me.

By the way, without taking the thread off on a tangent, where do you stand on the shining eyes of the Elves?

[Tinman]

I'm not sure what quote you're referring to on the elves eyes. But, without even reading it, I assume they had large eyes. Large to human standards, but not abnormally large to human standers (within physical human norm).

In which case you're right as we don't take this elf quote as a literal translation...

However... if thats the case, I think we stumlbed upon another "balrogs wings" debate

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

From the Silmarillion:

For beside the old who deemed that their wandering days were over there were not a few who desired to go their own ways, and they feared the Eldar and the light of their eyes; and then dissensions awoke among the Edain, in which the shadow of Morgoth may be discerned, for certain it is that he knew of the coming of Men into Beleriand and of their growing friendship with the Elves.

and

The Noldor, outnumbered and taken at unawares, were yet swiftly victorious; for the light of Aman was not yet dimmed in their eyes, and they were strong and swift, and deadly in anger, and their swords were long and terrible.

There are a couple examples. While searching through LotR for examples of shining, glowing, etc. eyes, there were too many to post, and not only applied to Gollum or Elves. Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, and others are all described with shining eyes much the same way that Gollum is. If some are literal and some figurative, how do we know?

Seems to me that they're all figurative. I'll try to post some quotes later on. I have a meeting...

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

The quotes below all come before we even arrive at the Council of Elrond. Few, if any, are literal. How do we know that those describing Gollum are literal or figurative?

Apologies for the apparent overkill, but maybe the complete list will prove useful in research for someone. That said, this isn't every occurrence of the word "eyes" but just the ones with some mention of shining, glowing, glinting, etc. that I thought relevant. There are a handful of other occurrences that I did not include because they were either about Gollum or they were only marginally relevant, in my opinion.

Gandalf looked again very hard at Bilbo, and there was a gleam in his eyes

Bilbo flushed, and there was an angry light in his eyes.

The wizard’s face remained grave and attentive, and only a flicker in his deep eyes showed that he was startled and indeed alarmed.

Gandalf’s eyes flashed.

but his eyes were as bright as ever, and he smoked and blew smoke-rings with the same vigour and delight.

Gandalf looked at Frodo, and his eyes glinted.

His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within.

Gandalf’s eyes flashed and his brows stuck out like bristles.

He had a blue coat and a long brown beard; his eyes were blue and bright,

But I see you are an elf-friend; the light in your eyes and the ring in your voice tells it.

‘Eh, what?’ said Tom sitting up, and his eyes glinting in the gloom.

Tom wagged his head up and down, and there was a glint in his eyes when he heard of the Riders.

‘Hey there!’ cried Tom, glancing towards him with a most seeing look in his shining eyes.

He thought there were two eyes, very cold though lit with a pale light that seemed to come from some remote distance.

He stood up, and seemed suddenly to grow taller. In his eyes gleamed a light, keen and commanding.

His eyes shone, and his voice was rich and deep.

Their cold eyes glittered, and they called to him with fell voices.

But glory and trumpets!' he cried, turning round again with shining eyes and dancing on the floor.

Glorfindel was tall and straight; his hair was of shining gold, his face fair and young and fearless and full of joy; his eyes were bright and keen, and his voice like music;

The braids of her dark hair were touched by no frost, her white arms and clear face were flawless and smooth, and the light of stars was in her bright eyes, grey as a cloudless night;

Arwen turned towards him, and the light of her eyes fell on him from afar and pierced his heart.

[Tinman]

My support:

Now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its long skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were quickly lidded again.

and

Gollum was talking to himself. Sméagol was holding a debate with some other thought that used the same voice but made it squeak and hiss. A pale light and a green light alternated in his eyes as he spoke.

and

He set his two large flat hands on his shrunken belly, and a pale green light came into his eyes.

and

Then his eyes shone with a green-white light, reflecting the noisome Morgul-sheen perhaps, or kindled by some answering mood within.

These quotes, specificly the second, seem to indicate that his eyes are in fact changing color and illuminessence, and not just figuratively.

[Tinman]

Also, doesn't physical corruption fit in with the concepts of the decent to malkor. Kinda like the theory that orcs are corrupt men/elves (Not that i wanna start that argument, but you get the point)

[Attalus]

As I said, these are all literary tropes: cf. "a twinkle in her eye."

[Tinman]

Since when has the changing of eye color been concidered a literary trope

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

The problem, Tinman, is that if Gollum's eyes do in fact change in light and color, the question arises about Aragorn, Frodo, Gandalf, Arwen, Glofrindel, Samwise, the Nazgul, and all the other people Tolkien uses the same sorts of phrasing for.

It isn't that it's impossible to write figuratively about some people and literally about others, but if an author does so, there has to be some way to tell the difference and thus far I can't see any. Tolkien describes the eyes of all sorts of people as flashing, glinting, shining, dimming, etc. and we have no mechanism for determining when he's being figurative and when it's literal.

Absent some sort of clear difference between the literal and figurative descriptions, and logically knowing they can't all be literal, we simply can't say if any are literal.

[The last sane person]

*Pokes head in*

This is true, especially since he used such descriptions like "The Tallest", "The Fairest", "The Strongest", etc. for just about every damn elf he cared to introduce.

Which of said descriptions "eyes glinted" and so on applied to a character, do you think he meant literally, and when does he give an example of that? If ever? Because Tolkien's rather hap-hazard way of adding these physical descriptions, especially in conjuction with "evil" characters always confounded me.

[Gordis]

There is a good theory that the objects that emit light in the world of Shadow are visible even in the World of Light. Elendilmir was such a thing:

Isildur turned west, and drawing up the Ring that hung in a wallet from a fine chain about his neck, he set it upon his finger with a cry of pain, and was never seen again by any eye upon Middle-earth. But the Elendilmir of the West could not be quenched, and suddenly it blazed forth red and wrathful as a burning star. Men and Orcs gave way in fear; and Isildur, drawing a hood over his head, vanished into the night.-UT, the Disaster...

Nazgul eyes could sometimes be seen by the World of Light observers, because, presumably, their eyes also emitted light:

A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes: the Lord of the Nazgûl.

Most of the time nazgul eyes remain unseen, so they blaze only when the owner is excited or angry. Look at this illustration :

Meet the Nazgul by ~The-Black-Panther

[Attalus]

Originally Posted by Tinman

Since when has the changing of eye color been concidered a literary trope

Since Homer described Achilles with "flashing eyes." You may have heard of him. Or, more recently, when Henry Fielding (in Joseph Andrews) described Pamela's eyes as "usually blue, but sometimes grey as the evening skies."
Edit to add, from Ellis Peters' The Holy Thief:

Small flames of interest and liking kindled in Donata's hollow eyes.

I hasten to add that Donata is a mortal woman, actually dying of "a wasting sickness."