Appearances can be deceiving

From left to right, Frodo and Gollum.

In many novels, short stories, and movies, the theme "appearances can be deceiving" comes up. It is the same in the short story The Man Who Loved Flowers by Stephen King and the two novels The Two Towers and The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. The man who loved flowers, the protagonist of The Man Who Loved Flowers looks to most onlookers like a young man in love going to see his sweetheart on a beautiful spring evening. Just after the very first paragraph of the story, a woman who the man passed thought "He's in love." The flower vendor in the story also thinks to himself about how much in love the young man looks. However these people are all wrong as you find out at the end of the story. He is actually the hammer murderer that the police have been searching for. This shows that even the most innocent looking people can turn out to be evil. The saying "don't judge a book by it's cover" also comes up in a way. When that saying is usually thought as to be not to think something is bad just by looking at it, in this story it's the opposite, instead the story is saying to not think that something is good just because it looks like it is good, it could still end up being something bad. The relationship between the characters Gollum and Frodo from the Lord of the Rings series also has the theme Appearances can be deceiving. When Frodo and his friend Sam first meet Gollum, he is trying to kill them to get the "one ring." However, once Frodo has his sword to Gollum's throat, Gollum stars to get Frodo to take pity on him and then says that he will lead them to Mordor. For most of his time with them he is good, but then he starts to plot to kill him, whilst Frodo still things that Gollum is loyal to him. In The Return of the King Gollum sends Frodo into a tunnel that contains a giant spider without telling him what is in it, thus trying to kill him. Earlier in the book, while Frodo was asleep, Gollum started to plot Frodo's death even though he was trying to look like someone nice to Frodo, making this is another example of someone being deceived through someone elses appearance. 

Images retrieved from: http://arwen-undomiel.com/images/frodo.php?page=3 and http://www.reelmovienews.com/gallery/gollum-picture/ and then photoshopped together.