Main Narrative: Did Gollum Frighten Sauron?

Welcome to Ranger of the Realms, where we explore the hidden depths of Tolkien's legendarium. I'm your guide through Middle-earth's most fascinating mysteries.

Today we're diving into one of the strangest paradoxes in The Lord of the Rings: How could Gollum—a pathetic, corrupted creature—disturb Sauron, the mightiest fallen Maia in Middle-earth? This isn't just a curiosity. It's a window into the fundamental nature of power, decay, and the limits of evil itself.

[IMAGE_CUE: Split composition - Gollum cowering in shadow on one side, the towering dark form of Sauron on the other, an unbridgeable gulf of incomprehension between them, cinematic fantasy concept art]

What we'll discover is that the answer reveals something profound: perfect corruption can paradoxically create imperviousness to control. But to understand how, we need to travel back to the year 3017 of the Third Age, to the darkest fortress in Middle-earth.

SECTION: The Encounter in Barad-dûr

The capture happened in Mordor itself. Gollum, creeping through the shadows near the Black Gate, was seized by Sauron's servants and dragged to Barad-dûr—the Dark Tower.

[IMAGE_CUE: Barad-dûr rising impossibly tall against a volcanic sky, Gollum being hauled in chains toward its gates by armored orcs, the Eye beginning to turn toward him, dramatic architectural concept art]

What happened next, we know from fragments—from Gollum's own testimony and from the accounts in Tolkien's Unfinished Tales. Sauron interrogated the creature personally. This wasn't delegated to the Mouth of Sauron or to the Nazgûl. The Dark Lord himself questioned this wretched prisoner.

And we know Sauron had a body—a physical form. Later, when Sam and Frodo overhear Gollum talking to himself near the Black Gate, the creature shudders and whispers: "Yes, He has only four on the Black Hand, but they are enough."

Four fingers. Gollum had been close enough to count Sauron's fingers. Close enough to see where Isildur had cut the Ring from his hand three thousand years before. The interrogation wasn't some distant, telepathic probing. It was intimate. Personal. Physical.

[IMAGE_CUE: Close-up of Sauron's hand gripping stone, showing only four fingers and an empty space where the Ring finger was severed, dark and menacing, gothic engraving style]

And something happened in that interrogation—something Sauron hadn't expected.

We know he used the Shadow of Fear, his primary weapon for breaking wills and binding servants. This was the same power that had transformed nine great kings of Men into wraiths, the same force that could reduce warriors to trembling shells. Sauron applied this terrible pressure to extract information about the Ring.

But Gollum didn't break. Not in the way Sauron needed him to.

The text from Unfinished Tales tells us: "He did not trust Gollum, for he divined something indomitable in him, which could not be overcome, even by the Shadow of Fear, except by destroying him."

Indomitable. That's the word Tolkien chose. In a creature five hundred years corrupted, physically deformed, mentally unstable—Sauron perceived something he could not conquer, could not tame, could not subjugate.

This is our mystery. What could possibly make Gollum—of all creatures—resistant to the greatest power of domination in Middle-earth?

SECTION: Sauron's Fundamental Framework

To understand what confounded Sauron, we first need to understand how Sauron sees the world. And at Elrond's Council, Gandalf explains this with perfect clarity.

"The only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts."

[IMAGE_CUE: Conceptual split artwork showing Sauron's binary worldview - on one side, enslaved wraiths and bound servants bowing in submission; on the other, proud kings and warriors reaching for crowns and weapons, cinematic symbolic art]

Sauron divides all beings into exactly two categories. First: the dominated. These are slaves, servants, creatures whose wills have been broken and bound to his own. The Nazgûl exemplify this perfectly—once mighty kings, now utterly subject to Sauron's command, extensions of his will rather than independent beings.

Second: power-seekers. These are potential rivals—beings who would use power to challenge him or claim his throne. Saruman falls into this category. So does anyone Sauron imagines might claim the Ring and wield it against him.

Dominated or dominator. Slave or rival. Those are the only possibilities in Sauron's mental framework.

This isn't merely a personality quirk—it's the structure of his cognition. As one analysis puts it, Sauron cannot tolerate "the confusion and friction" that comes from the free will of other beings. His entire project is to eliminate unpredictability by bringing all minds and wills under his control.

And this means anything that doesn't fit his binary categories becomes fundamentally incomprehensible to him.

Gandalf explains the strategic blindness this creates: "That we should wish to cast him down and have no one in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse the Ring, that having it we may seek to destroy it."

A being who would voluntarily renounce power? Impossible. A creature who would destroy the ultimate weapon rather than use it? Unthinkable.

[IMAGE_CUE: Sauron's Eye searching Middle-earth, but with blind spots - areas of light and humility that his gaze simply passes over without seeing, symbolic fantasy art showing the limits of dark vision]

Sauron's worldview has no category for selflessness, no framework for understanding sacrifice, no concept of rejection of supremacy. These possibilities literally do not exist in his mental map of reality.

And this limitation—this cognitive gap—would become fatal.

SECTION: The Uncategorizable Prisoner

So when Sauron interrogated Gollum, he tried to fit this creature into his binary framework. Was Gollum a dominated slave? Or a power-seeking rival?

Neither.

Gollum wasn't truly dominated. Sauron could torture him, yes. Apply the Shadow of Fear, absolutely. But he couldn't make Gollum's will conform to his own. The creature could lie under interrogation—and did. He could scheme. He could resist even when the pain should have broken him utterly.

But Gollum also wasn't seeking power in any way Sauron could recognize. He didn't want to rule. He didn't want supremacy or conquest. He didn't even want the Ring for its power to command others.

What Gollum wanted was to possess. To hide in darkness. To whisper to his Precious. To curl around it like a dragon around gold—not to use it, but simply to have it.

[IMAGE_CUE: Gollum curled in a fetal position in complete darkness, neither slave nor master, the Ring clutched against his chest, existing in a third state beyond Sauron's conceptual categories, atmospheric character study]

Unfinished Tales gives us the key passage: "Ultimately indomitable he was, except by death, as Sauron did not fully comprehend, being himself consumed by lust for the Ring."

That last phrase is crucial: "being himself consumed by lust for the Ring." Sauron and Gollum shared the same fundamental affliction—both were utterly devoured by desire for the One Ring. But Gollum's obsession was so complete, so total, so pathologically absolute that it had stripped away everything else.

Modern psychological analysis recognizes Gollum as one of literature's most realistic portrayals of severe addiction. Medical students at University College London concluded he meets seven of nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder—not schizophrenia, but a condition characterized by emotional detachment and an overriding internal fixation.

This addiction had stripped away his original identity. Sméagol the hobbit was gone. His relationships, his community, his physical health—all sacrificed to the compulsion. After five hundred years, there was nothing left but the need itself.

And here's the terrible irony: this completeness of decay created imperviousness.

Traditional torture and psychological domination work by threatening what someone values. You break someone's will by threatening their life, their loved ones, their principles, their dignity. But Gollum had nothing left to threaten except the Ring itself—and Sauron couldn't threaten to take that away because Sauron desperately wanted to find it.

[IMAGE_CUE: Abstract visualization of Gollum's psyche - a hollow shell with only a bright, burning core where the Ring-obsession resides, nothing else remaining for Sauron to grasp or manipulate, symbolic psychological art]

Sauron had encountered something he'd never faced before: a will that had no self left to dominate. Gollum's unyielding quality wasn't noble resistance or heroic courage. It was pathology so profound it functioned as armor.

Total degradation paradoxically created resistance to further control.

SECTION: The Halfling Advantage

But there's another dimension to this mystery. Gollum, despite five centuries of Ring possession, never became a wraith. And that's extraordinary when you consider what happened to others who bore Rings of Power.

The Nine Rings were given to Men—great kings, sorcerers, warriors who became mighty in their day. They gained extended life, magical power, glory beyond measure. But by the year 2251 of the Second Age, all nine had faded completely, transformed into the Nazgûl—neither living nor dead, bound utterly to Sauron's will, visible only as shadows in black robes.

[IMAGE_CUE: The transformation sequence - a proud king in golden armor gradually fading, becoming transparent, then just a black-robed wraith, showing the progressive corruption of Men by Rings of Power, sequential art panels in epic style]

It took only a few centuries. The Ring worked through their ambitions, their desire for greatness, their hunger for power. And the more they wanted, the more the Ring had to work with—until it devoured them entirely.

But hobbits? Hobbits resisted.

Elrond recognizes this at his Council: "This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."

Why? Because, as one analysis notes, "Hobbits are simple creatures and do not wish for much, so there is nothing for the Ring to use against a hobbit."

Think about what Men wanted when they received the Nine Rings: immortality, conquest, dominion, glory that would echo through ages. The Ring could offer all of that—at the price of their essence.

But what do hobbits want? A comfortable home. Good food. Peace and quiet. A well-tended garden. The Ring can't really amplify those desires into world-dominating ambitions. It tries—we see it tempt Sam with visions of "Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age"—but it doesn't have much leverage.

[IMAGE_CUE: Contrasting images - on one side, a humble hobbit-hole with smoke rising from chimney in pastoral peace; on the other, great towers and armies, showing the vast gulf between hobbit desires and the Ring's gifts, Tolkien watercolor style]

Humility becomes immunity. Lack of ambition becomes armor.

Bilbo possessed the Ring for sixty years and, while certainly affected, never approached wraith-transformation. Frodo carried it all the way to Mount Doom. Sam wore it briefly and resisted its temptation. And Gollum—Gollum survived five hundred years of possession and remained, if not alive in any wholesome sense, at least not a wraith.

This is part of what made Gollum so incomprehensible to Sauron. The Dark Lord was a Maia, an immortal spirit of immense power. The Nine had been great kings of Men. But Gollum had been nothing—a Stoor hobbit, one of the small, humble, overlooked peoples.

Sauron barely knew hobbits existed. He'd spent no effort studying their nature, considering their unique resistance, understanding their psychology. They were beneath his notice—until one of them held his Ring, and another carried it into the heart of his realm.

The weak confounding the mighty. It's a pattern that runs through the entire story, and nowhere more clearly than in Gollum's unyielding core—a resistance built on the foundation of hobbit humility, twisted by centuries of perversion into something Sauron's power could not break.

SECTION: The Art of Deception

But Gollum didn't merely resist. He actively deceived.

This is the detail that transforms our understanding. Under torture, in the presence of the Dark Lord himself, suffering the Shadow of Fear—Gollum lied. And his lies were effective.

[IMAGE_CUE: Gollum before Sauron in the interrogation chamber of Barad-dûr, seeming to grovel and submit while his eyes show cunning calculation, dramatic lighting revealing dual nature, cinematic character interaction]

Unfinished Tales is explicit: "From Gollum, even under pain, he could not get any clear account, both because Gollum indeed had no certain knowledge himself, and because what he knew he falsified."

What he knew, he falsified. This wasn't passive resistance or the confused babbling of a broken mind. This was strategy. Deception. Gollum deliberately gave false information.

The specific lie was about the location of the Shire. Gollum didn't actually know where the Shire was—he'd never been there. His geography was fragmentary, limited to the paths he'd traveled in his long, solitary wandering. But he knew enough to be dangerous.

He knew the Shire was where "halflings" came from—the beings who'd robbed him. And Sauron desperately wanted to know where to search for the Ring.

So Gollum "dared to pretend that he believed that the land the Halflings was near to the places where he had once dwelt beside the banks of the Gladden."

The Gladden Fields. Where he'd originally found the Ring five hundred years before. Where he'd murdered Déagol and taken the Precious. That's where Gollum directed Sauron's attention.

Not west toward the Shire. Not toward the actual location of the halflings. East—toward the Gladden Fields, hundreds of miles off target.

Why would Gollum protect the location of the Shire? Not out of any loyalty to hobbits—he hated them for "robbing" him. Not out of noble resistance to evil—there was nothing noble in Gollum.

He lied because revealing the Shire's true location might help Sauron find the Ring. And if Sauron found the Ring, Gollum would never get it back.

[IMAGE_CUE: A map of Middle-earth with two glowing points - Sauron's searching gaze directed toward the Gladden Fields in the east, while the Shire sits safely in the west, unnoticed, cartographic art style with symbolic lighting]

His obsession protected the Ring from everyone—including the Ring's maker. Gollum's possessiveness was so consuming that he would lie to the Dark Lord under torture rather than risk Sauron recovering the Precious before Gollum could reclaim it himself.

This active deception reveals something critical: Gollum's resistance wasn't merely the passive immovability of an object too corroded to be useful. It was the active resistance of a will still functioning—just functioning in service of a singular, all-consuming goal that Sauron couldn't fully grasp.

SECTION: The Fatal Release

Sauron faced a calculation. He had extracted some information—enough to know the Ring had been in the hands of a creature called "Baggins," somewhere in a land called "Shire." But the details were murky, contradictory, unreliable.

He could destroy Gollum. He had that power, certainly. The text is clear: Gollum was "indomitable... except by destroying him." Death was always an option.

But would that serve Sauron's purposes?

Here's where the Dark Lord's reasoning becomes fascinating—and where his fatal error originates.

Unfinished Tales explains: "Sauron perceived the depth of Gollum's malice towards those that had 'robbed' him, and guessing that he would go in search of them to avenge himself, Sauron hoped that his spies would thus be led to the Ring."

[IMAGE_CUE: Gollum being released from Barad-dûr's gates, walking out into the wastelands of Mordor while shadowy figures watch from the darkness - Sauron's spies preparing to follow, dramatic irony in composition, atmospheric concept art]

Sauron's strategy: Release Gollum. Let his hatred drive him to search for Baggins and the Ring. Have spies follow him. Let the creature be the hunting dog that leads Sauron's hunters to the prize.

It's not an unreasonable plan. Sauron had correctly identified Gollum's overwhelming malice toward those who possessed his Precious. That malice was real, powerful, motivating. Gollum would absolutely pursue the Ring—that much was certain.

And Sauron recognized he couldn't extract better information through continued torture. There was something in Gollum he couldn't overcome without destroying him. So rather than destroy a potential asset, use him.

But the calculation contained a fatal flaw—multiple flaws, actually, all rooted in that same binary worldview we discussed earlier.

Sauron assumed Gollum would seek vengeance in a way that would lead to the Ring. But what Sauron couldn't grasp was the specific nature of Gollum's obsession. This wasn't about vengeance in any normal sense. It wasn't about justice or retribution or even hatred overcoming prudence.

It was about the Ring. Only about the Ring. Always about the Ring.

[IMAGE_CUE: Visualization of Sauron's miscalculation - his mind imagining Gollum as a hunting dog on a leash leading to the Ring, while reality shows Gollum as something far less controllable and predictable, split symbolic composition]

Gollum would pursue the Ring-bearer, yes—but with the intent to reclaim the Ring for himself, not to deliver it to anyone, including Sauron. And if the choice ever came between helping Sauron find the Ring or keeping knowledge of it to himself, Gollum's addiction would always choose the latter.

Sauron released him anyway. And though spies were meant to follow, Gollum eventually slipped away, pursued by another tracker entirely—Aragorn, who captured him in the Dead Marshes months later and brought him to Thranduil's halls in Mirkwood.

From there, Gollum eventually escaped and followed the Fellowship south. Not to Sauron. Not to report or serve. But to stalk the Ring he could sense, the Ring he needed, the Ring that was his Precious.

Why did Sauron miscalculate so catastrophically?

Pride, certainly. Tolkien tells us that pride was Sauron's greatest weakness, "coupled with an underestimation of his enemies." But it's deeper than mere arrogance.

Sauron couldn't fully comprehend Gollum because Sauron himself was "consumed by lust for the Ring." That shared affliction created a blind spot. Sauron projected his own framework onto Gollum—imagining that Gollum's pursuit would function like Sauron's own strategic calculations.

But Gollum wasn't calculating. He was compelled. And compulsion doesn't follow strategic logic.

The Dark Lord divined something beyond his subjugation, recognized something dangerous, and yet still believed he could use what he couldn't control.

That was the error. And Middle-earth's fate turned on it.

SECTION: The Blindness of Evil

Step back from the specific events at Barad-dûr, and a larger pattern emerges. What happened between Sauron and Gollum wasn't just a miscalculation by one character in one scene. It reveals something fundamental about the nature of evil itself in Tolkien's world.

[IMAGE_CUE: Abstract philosophical art showing light and darkness - goodness as something that can perceive both light and shadow, evil as something that sees only shadow, with key figures like Gandalf in light and Sauron in blind darkness, symbolic medieval illumination style]

There's a line in The Silmarillion that cuts to the heart of this: "To him that is pitiless the deeds of pity are ever strange and beyond reckoning."

This appears in the context of the Valar showing compassion to the people of Middle-earth—an act that Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, never anticipated. Evil cannot fathom such grace because evil has destroyed it within itself.

And here's the crucial insight: this isn't a personality flaw that evil could theoretically overcome with more effort or better information. It's an ontological limitation—a structural blindness built into the very nature of corruption.

Sauron was once Mairon, "the Admirable"—a Maia who served Aulë the Smith, who understood craftsmanship and creation. But in choosing corruption, in joining Morgoth and pursuing total domination, Sauron didn't just gain dark power. He lost something essential: the capacity to understand what he had destroyed within himself.

Think about what Gandalf says: "The only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power." Sauron can't conceive of beings who would voluntarily renounce power because he has amputated that capacity from his own being. It's not that he chooses not to believe it—it literally does not compute.

Evil has narrowed itself. In pursuing absolute control, it has lost the ability to comprehend the very things that fall outside control: genuine love, self-sacrifice, compassion, pity, humility.

[IMAGE_CUE: A series of doors or windows in Sauron's mind - each representing a category of understanding - with several doors locked, barred, or simply bricked over, showing the architecture of willful blindness, gothic symbolic art]

This is why scholars note that "goodness has the power to understand and reach out to evil, but evil is blind to goodness." Gandalf can understand Sauron's motivations—greed, pride, lust for domination—because Gandalf hasn't destroyed those concepts within himself. He's chosen not to pursue them, but he comprehends them.

But Sauron cannot understand Gandalf's motivations in return. Compassion looks like weakness. Humility looks like contemptibility. Self-sacrifice looks like stupidity. The framework through which Sauron interprets reality cannot accurately parse these acts.

And so with Gollum. What confounded Sauron wasn't just Gollum's individual pathology, though that was certainly part of it. What confounded Sauron was that Gollum's very existence proved the inadequacy of Sauron's entire cognitive system.

A being who was neither dominated slave nor power-seeking rival. A will that resisted not through strength but through emptiness. A creature whose corruption was so total that it transcended the categories of the corruptor.

Evil, despite all its power, made Sauron into what one scholar colorfully calls "an idiot" to anything beyond his narrow framework. "He is very dangerous for those gripped by pride, jealousy, or lust for power, because they think like him. But good being wholly strange to him, he cannot guess what a good person would do."

And critically: he cannot guess what a creature completely consumed by addiction would do either—because that addiction, ironically, places the creature beyond Sauron's strategic calculations.

The blindness of evil isn't a bug in Sauron's particular character. It's a feature of what evil is. To be evil, in Tolkien's moral universe, is to be limited—to have cut away portions of reality from your perception.

And those blind spots become fatal.

SECTION: Mercy's Long Shadow

So we arrive at Mount Doom. March 25, 3019 of the Third Age. Frodo stands at the Crack of Doom with the Ring on the chain around his neck. Sam is with him. And Gollum is there too—following them through all the leagues of their journey, obsessed, compelled, relentless in his need.

[IMAGE_CUE: The three figures at the Crack of Doom - Frodo, Sam, and Gollum - with volcanic fire below and the weight of all preceding choices converging on this single moment, epic oil painting style]

The entire quest comes down to this moment. And Frodo fails.

He claims the Ring as his own. "I have come," he says, "but I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!"

After everything—after every mile walked, every burden borne, every temptation resisted—at the final moment, Frodo's will breaks. He cannot destroy it.

And this is where every thread we've traced converges.

Gollum attacks. Bites off Frodo's finger. Claims the Ring. And in his moment of triumph, dancing on the edge of the precipice—he falls. The Ring falls with him. And both are consumed in the fire.

Was it an accident? Tolkien is carefully ambiguous. Earlier on the slopes, Frodo had spoken with the authority of the Ring itself: "If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom." Sam witnessed Frodo transformed—a figure robed in white, at his breast a wheel of fire, speaking with a commanding voice.

The redundancy in that sentence is striking: "you shall be cast yourself." Not "you shall be cast," but "cast yourself"—suggesting the self-directed nature of the fall.

In Tolkien's own words, from his letters: "Frodo deserved all honour because he spent every drop of his power of will and body, and that was just sufficient to bring him to the destined point, and no further. Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far."

[IMAGE_CUE: Abstract representation of eucatastrophe - human hands reaching upward as far as they can go, then divine hands taking over and completing the task, light breaking through darkness, symbolic religious art style]

"The Other Power then took over: the Writer of the Story (by which I do not mean myself), 'that one ever-present Person who is never absent and never named.'"

Providence. Tolkien calls this "eucatastrophe"—a massive turn of fortune from seemingly hopeless circumstances to unforeseen victory, brought not by heroic triumph but by grace.

But—and this is crucial—it's not arbitrary grace. It's not deus ex machina. The resolution has been prepared by every choice that came before.

Consider the chain:

Bilbo, in the darkness under the Misty Mountains, chose mercy. He had his chance to kill Gollum after their riddle game. He didn't. "It was Pity that stayed his hand," Gandalf later says. "Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need."

Years later, Frodo wants to condemn that choice. "What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!"

And Gandalf replies: "Pity? It was Pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

[IMAGE_CUE: Visual representation of the cascade of compassion - Bilbo's hand staying from violence, Frodo's multiple acts of sparing Gollum, each act like a domino influencing the next, all leading to Mount Doom, sequential symbolic art]

"For even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not least."

Frodo, throughout the quest, extends that same compassion again and again. When Sam wants to kill Gollum, Frodo forbids it. When Faramir's rangers would shoot him, Frodo protects him. When Gollum leads them through danger, Frodo trusts—or at least hopes.

None of them could see the end. None of them knew how it would resolve. These acts weren't strategic calculations—they were moral choices made without certainty of benefit.

And yet, those choices created the situation that made eucatastrophe possible.

If Bilbo had killed Gollum, there would have been no one to bite off Frodo's finger and fall with the Ring. The Quest would have failed at the moment Frodo claimed the Ring for himself—because there would have been no secondary mechanism for its destruction.

But compassion planted seeds. Those seeds grew in ways no one could predict. And at the moment when human will was exhausted, when Frodo had given everything and it wasn't enough—the accumulated consequences of pity and grace completed what mortal effort could not.

[IMAGE_CUE: Mount Doom erupting as the Ring is destroyed, while in the foreground, the small figures of Frodo and Sam represent human effort reaching its absolute limit and being saved by grace, epic dramatic landscape]

Tolkien wrote: "His exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed."

And think about the magnificent irony: Sauron released Gollum because he thought he could use the creature's malice to find the Ring. That release—that miscalculation born of evil's blindness—put Gollum on the path to Mount Doom. It preserved the very agent who would destroy the Ring when the Ring-bearer couldn't.

The weak confounding the mighty. The small hands moving the wheels of the world while the eyes of the great are elsewhere. A pathetic, corrupted creature—indomitable not through virtue but through addiction—becoming the instrument through which providence works.

Sauron couldn't comprehend compassion, so he couldn't predict its consequences. He couldn't understand Gollum's specific obsession, so he misjudged the danger of releasing him. He couldn't imagine selfless destruction of power, so he never guarded against it.

And in the end, all of those blindnesses converged. The quest succeeded not despite the weakness of hobbits, the pathology of Gollum, and the failure of Frodo—but through them. Through grace shown to the undeserving. Through providence working with crooked instruments to draw straight lines.

This is what frightened Sauron, though he couldn't name his fear: the terrible realization that something existed beyond his categories, beyond his control, beyond his comprehension. And that something—small, broken, unyielding—would be his undoing.