Sauron (/ˈsaʊərɒn/)[T 2] is thetitle character[a] and the mainantagonist[1] inJ. R. R. Tolkien'sThe Lord of the Rings, where he rules the land ofMordor. He has the ambition of ruling the whole ofMiddle-earth using the power of theOne Ring, which he has lost and seeks to recapture. In the same work, he is identified as the "Necromancer" of Tolkien's earlier novelThe Hobbit.The Silmarillion describes him as the chief lieutenant of the firstDark Lord,Morgoth. Tolkien noted that theAinur, the "angelic" powers of his constructed myth, "were capable of many degrees of error and failing", but by far the worst was "the absoluteSatanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron".[T 4] Sauron appears most often as "the Eye", as if disembodied.
TheAinulindalë tells how the supreme beingEru began the creation with good,[T 3] immortal spirits, theAinur. The lesserMaiar included Sauron, under the greaterValar.[T 4][T 5] The ValaMelkor rebelled against Eru,[T 6][T 7] starting evils[T 8] that Sauron continued.[T 9] Sauron perceived Eru directly;[T 9] he was "far higher" than the Maiar who later came to Middle-earth asWizards.[T 5]
Sauron servedAulë, the smith of the Valar, acquiring knowledge;[T 10][T 11] he was calledMairon (Quenya: "The Admirable") until he betrayed the Valar by joining Melkor. InBeleriand, he was calledGorthu (Sindarin: "Mist of Fear") andGorthaur (Sindarin: "The Cruel").[T 12] Sauron, hating disorder,[T 9] was drawn to Melkor's power.[T 13] He became a spy for Melkor on the isle ofAlmaren, the Valar's home,[T 10] which Melkor soon destroyed; the Valar moved toValinor, not perceiving Sauron's treachery.[T 14] Sauron followed Melkor toMiddle-earth,[T 15] joining the Valar's enemy.[T 5]
Sauron helped Melkor in every kind of deceit.[T 16][T 11] By the timeElves awoke, Sauron was Melkor's lieutenant with command over the stronghold ofAngband. The Valar made war on and captured Melkor; Sauron escaped.[T 17] He repaired Angband, and bred an army ofOrcs. Melkor, now called Morgoth, murdered Finwë, King of the Noldor, and escaped to Middle-earth with theSilmarils, pursued by the Noldor.[T 16][b] Sauron directed the war against the Elves, conquering their fortress of Minas Tirith (not the later city in Gondor) on the isle of Tol Sirion. The elfLúthien came there to save her lover, the imprisonedBeren, withHuan the Wolfhound. Sauron, as awerewolf, battled Huan, who took him by the throat; Sauron was defeated and fled, taking the form of a hugevampire bat. Lúthien destroyed the tower and rescued Beren. Later, the half-elfEärendil sailed to Valinor to ask the Valar to fight Morgoth. They did so in theWar of Wrath, and Morgoth was defeated and cast into the Outer Void. Again, however, Sauron escaped.[T 19]
In theSecond Age, Sauron reappeared,[T 16] intent on taking over Middle-earth.[T 5][T 14][T 20][T 9] To seduce the Elves into his service, Sauron assumed a fair appearance asAnnatar, "Lord of Gifts",[T 13] and befriendedCelebrimbor's Elven-smiths. He taught them arts and magic, helping them to forge theRings of Power. Sauron then secretly forged theOne Ring to rule all the others.[T 14] The Elves detected him when he put on the Ring, and removed their Rings. Enraged, Sauron made war, killed Celebrimbor, and seized the Seven and the Nine Rings of Power. The Three Rings were hidden by the ElvesGil-galad,Círdan, andGaladriel. Sauron attacked them. The Elves were saved by an army fromNúmenor, defeating Sauron. Sauron fortified Mordor and completed the Dark Tower,Barad-dûr. He distributed the Seven and the Nine Rings to lords ofDwarves and Men. Dwarves did not submit, but he enslaved nine Men as the fearedNazgûl. Orcs,Trolls,Easterlings and men ofHarad became his servants.[T 5]
Late in the Second Age, the men of Númenor sought to colonise Middle-earth. Led by Ar-Pharazôn, a massive army sailed to Middle-earth to battle Sauron. Dismayed, Sauron surrendered, hoping to corrupt Númenor from within.[T 21][T 4] Using the One Ring, Sauron soon exerted a malign influence over the Númenóreans,[T 21] undermining Númenor's religion and deceiving its people into worshiping Melkor withhuman sacrifice.[T 4][T 9] Sauron later deceived Ar-Pharazôn into attackingAman by sea to steal immortality from the Valar.[T 4][T 14] The Valar appealed to Eru,[T 4] whodestroyed Númenor. Sauron's body was destroyed, and he lost the ability to appear beautiful.[T 21]
Led byElendil, nine ships escaped to Middle-earth fromthe Downfall of Númenór. There, the Númenóreans founded the kingdoms ofGondor andArnor. Sauron returned to Mordor, took on a new physical form, and made war on these Exiles.[T 22] He captured the fortress of Minas Ithil, and Elendil's sonIsildur escaped down the Anduin River. Elendil's other son,Anárion, defendedOsgiliath, the capital city of Gondor, and drove Sauron's forces back to the mountains.[T 13] Elendil, Isildur and Anárion formed the Last Alliance with the Elves and defeated Sauron atDagorlad. They invaded Mordor and besieged Barad-dûr for seven years. Finally, Sauron came out to fight face-to-face, killing Elendil and Gil-galad;[T 14] Elendil's swordNarsil broke beneath him. Isildur took up the hilt-shard and cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand, vanquishing Sauron. Isildur refused to destroy the Ring by casting it into Mount Doom, but kept it for his own.[T 13]
Isildur was ambushed by Orcs at theGladden Fields. Isildur put on the Ring and attempted to escape by swimming acrossAnduin, but the Ring betrayed him by slipping from his finger. Isildur was killed by Orc archers. Sauron spent a thousand years as a shapeless evil.[T 23]
Sauron eventually reembodied, hiding inMirkwood as theNecromancer, inDol Guldur, "Hill of Sorcery".[T 24] The chief of the Nazgûl, theWitch-king of Angmar, destroyed the northern realm of Arnor. When attacked by Gondor, the Witch-king retreated to Mordor.[T 13] The Nazgûl captured Minas Ithil, renamedMinas Morgul, and seized itspalantír, a seeing stone from Númenor.[T 25] TheWhite Council of Wizards discovered Sauron,[T 26] and drove him from Mirkwood. He returned to Mordor, openly declared himself, rebuilt Barad-dûr, and bred armies of large orcs,Uruks.[T 27]
The One Ring, lost in the Anduin, was found by the hobbit Sméagol. The Ring corrupted him. He shunned sunlight and took on the personality ofGollum. He retreated into caves, obsessed with the Ring, his "Precious". It slipped from him and was picked up byBilbo Baggins. Gollum attempted to murder Bilbo and reclaim the Ring, but Bilbo escaped when the Ring slipped onto his finger. Many years later, Gandalf identified Bilbo's ring, now passed down to his cousinFrodo, as Sauron's One Ring. He tasked Frodo with taking it to Rivendell.[T 28]
Sauron tortured Gollum and discovered where the Ring was.[T 29] Sauron sent the Nazgûl to pursue Frodo, but he escaped toRivendell, where Elrond convened a council. It determined that the Ring should be destroyed in Mount Doom by theCompany of the Ring.Saruman attempted to capture the Ring, but was defeated. Thepalantír ofOrthanc fell into the hands of the Company;Aragorn, Isildur's descendant and heir to the throne of Gondor, used it to show himself to Sauron as if he held the Ring. Sauron, troubled, attacked Minas Tirith prematurely. His army was destroyed at theBattle of the Pelennor Fields. Frodo entered Mordor. Aragorn distracted Sauron with an attack on Mordor'sBlack Gate.[T 30] Frodo reached Mount Doom, but claimed the Ring for himself, revealing the Ring to Sauron. Gollum seized the Ring and fell into the Cracks of Doom, destroying it and himself. Sauron was utterly defeated, and vanished from Middle-earth.[T 30]
Tolkien never described Sauron's appearance in detail, though he painted a watercolour illustration of him.[T 1] Sarah Crown, inThe Guardian, wrote that "we're never ushered into his presence; we don't hear him speak. All we see is his influence".[2] She called it "a bold move, to leave the book's central evil so undefined – an edgeless darkness given shape only through the actions of its subordinates",[2] with the result that he becomes "truly unforgettable ... vaster, bolder and more terrifying through his absence than he could ever have been through his presence".[2]
He was initially able to change his appearance at will; however, when he became Morgoth's servant, he took a sinister shape. In the First Age, the outlaw Gorlim was ensnared and brought into "the dreadful presence of Sauron", who had daunting eyes.[T 31] In the battle withHuan, the hound of Valinor, Sauron took the form of a werewolf. Then he assumed a serpent-like form, and finally changed back "from monster to his own accustomed [human-like] form".[T 32] He took on a beautiful appearance at the end of the First Age to charmEönwë, near the beginning of the Second Age when appearing as Annatar to the Elves, and again near the end of the Second Age to corrupt the men of Númenor. He appeared then "as a man, or one in man's shape, but greater than any even of the race of Númenor in stature ... And it seemed to men that Sauron was great, though they feared the light of his eyes. To many he appeared fair, to others terrible; but to some evil."[T 33] After the destruction of his fair form in the fall of Númenor, Sauron always took the shape of a terrible dark lord.[T 34] His first incarnation after the Downfall of Númenor was hideous, "an image of malice and hatred made visible".[T 35] Isildur recorded that Sauron's hand "was black, and yet burned like fire".[T 3]
A flag displaying the Red Eye of Sauron, based on a design by Tolkien that was used on the cover of the first edition ofThe Fellowship of the Ring in 1954
ThroughoutThe Lord of the Rings, "the Eye" (known by other names, including the Red Eye, the Evil Eye, the Lidless Eye, the Great Eye) is the image most often associated with Sauron. Sauron's Orcs bore the symbol of the Eye on their helmets and shields, and referred to him as the "Eye" because he did not allow his name to be written or spoken, according to Aragorn.[T 36][c] TheLord of the Nazgûl threatenedÉowyn with torture before the "Lidless Eye" at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.[T 37] Frodo had a vision of the Eye in the Mirror of Galadriel:[T 38]
The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.[T 38]
Later, Tolkien writes as if Frodo and Sam really glimpse the Eye directly. The mists surrounding Barad-dûr are briefly withdrawn, and:
one moment only it stared out ... as from some great window immeasurably high there stabbed northward a flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye ... The Eye was not turned on them, it was gazing north ... but Frodo at that dreadful glimpse fell as one stricken mortally.[T 39]
This raises the question of whether an "Eye" was Sauron's actual manifestation, or whether he had a body beyond the Eye.[T 40] Gollum (who was tortured by Sauron in person) tells Frodo that Sauron has, at least, a "Black Hand" with four fingers.[T 41] The missing finger was cut off whenIsildur took the Ring, and the finger was still missing when Sauron reappeared centuries later. Tolkien writes inThe Silmarillion that "the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure" evenbefore his body was lost in the War of the Last Alliance.[T 35] In the draft text of the climactic moments ofThe Lord of the Rings, "the Eye" stands for Sauron's very person, with emotions and thoughts:[T 40]
The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him [Frodo], the Eye piercing all shadows ... Its wrath blazed like a sudden flame and its fear was like a great black smoke, for it knew its deadly peril, the thread upon which hung its doom ... [I]ts thought was now bent with all its overwhelming force upon the Mountain..."[T 40]
Christopher Tolkien comments: "The passage is notable in showing the degree to which my father had come to identify the Eye of Barad-dûr with the mind and will of Sauron, so that he could speak of 'its wrath, its fear, its thought'. In the second text ... he shifted from 'its' to 'his' as he wrote out the passage anew."[T 40]
Since the earliest versions of the Silmarillionlegendarium, as detailed in theHistory of Middle-earth series, Sauron underwent many changes. The prototype or precursor Sauron-figure was a giant monstrous cat, the Prince of Cats. CalledTevildo,Tifil andTiberth among other names, this character played the role later taken by Sauron in the earliest version of the story of Beren and Tinúviel inThe Book of Lost Tales in 1917.[T 42] The Prince of Cats was later replaced byThû, the Necromancer. The name was then changed toGorthû,Sûr, and finally to Sauron.Gorthû, in the formGorthaur, remained inThe Silmarillion;[T 11] bothThû andSauron name the character in the 1925Lay of Leithian.[T 43]
The story ofBeren and Lúthien also features the heroic hound Huan and involved the subtext of cats versus dogs in its earliest form. Later the cats were changed to wolves or werewolves, with Sauron becoming the Lord of Werewolves.[T 44]
Before the 1977 publication ofThe Silmarillion, Sauron's origins and true identity were unclear to those without access to Tolkien's notes. In 1968, the poetW. H. Auden conjectured that Sauron might have been one of the Valar.[3]
Sauron, like everything else, is created good (theAugustinian view),[4][5] and seems to embody evil which is as powerful as good (theManichaean view), but is rather the absence of good (theBoethian view).[6]
Tolkien stated in hisLetters that although he did not think "Absolute Evil" could exist as it would be "Zero", "Sauron represents as near an approach to thewholly evil will as is possible." He explained that, like "all tyrants", Sauron had started out with good intentions but was corrupted by power. Tolkien added that Sauron "went further than human tyrants in pride and the lust for domination", since he was an immortal (angelic) spirit. In Tolkien's words, "He began as Morgoth's servant, became his representative in the Second Age, and at the end of the Third Age actually claimed to be 'Morgoth returned'".[T 45]
Tom Shippey writes that Tolkien's depiction of Sauron embodies an ancient debate within Christianity on the nature ofevil. Shippey notesElrond's statement that "nothing is evil in the beginning. Even [the Dark Lord] Sauron was not so".[T 3] He takes this to mean that Sauron was created good, and became evil by moving away from the good.[6] The first part of Elrond's statement is taken by scholars to imply anAugustinian universe, created good.[4][5] The second part of Elrond's statement, Shippey writes, is theBoethian view, where evil is the absence of good. Shippey adds that Tolkien sets this alongside theManichaean view that good and evil are equally powerful, and battle it out in the world.[6]Tolkien's personal war experience was Manichean: evil seemed at least as powerful as good, and could easily have been victorious, a strand which (Shippey writes) can be seen in Middle-earth.[7]
The classicist J. K. Newman comments that "Sauron's Greek name" makes him "the Lizard", from Ancient Greekσαῦρος (sauros)'lizard or reptile', and that in turn places Frodo (whose quest destroys Sauron) as "a version ofPraxiteles'Apollo Sauroktonos",Apollo the Lizard-killer.[8]
Gwenyth Hood, writing inMythlore, compares Sauron toCount Dracula fromBram Stoker's 1897 novelDracula. In her view, both of these monstrous antagonists seek to destroy, are linked to powers of darkness, are parasitical on created life, and areundead. Both control others psychologically and have "hypnotic eyes". Control by either of them represents "high spiritual terror" as it is a sort of "damnation-on-earth".[9]
Edward Lense, also writing inMythlore, identifies a figure fromCeltic mythology,Balor of the Evil Eye, as a possible source for the Eye of Sauron. Balor's evil eye, in the middle of his forehead, was able to overcome a whole army. He was a leader of the supernaturalFomorians. Lense further compares Mordor to "a Celtichell", just as the Undying Lands of Aman resemble the CelticEarthly Paradise ofTír na nÓg in the furthest (Atlantic) West; and Balor "ruled the dead from a tower of glass".[10]
The Tolkien scholarVerlyn Flieger writes that if there was an opposite to Sauron inThe Lord of the Rings, it would not be Aragorn, his political opponent, nor Gandalf, his spiritual enemy, butTom Bombadil, the earthly Master who is entirely free of the desire to dominate and hence cannot be dominated.[11]
Sauron's opposite, as analysed by Verlyn Flieger[11]
In the 2001–2003film trilogy directed byPeter Jackson, Sauron is voiced byAlan Howard. He is briefly shown as a large humanoid figure clad in spiky black armour, portrayed bySala Baker,[15][12] but appears only as the disembodied Eye throughout the rest of the storyline.[16] In earlier versions of Jackson's script, Sauron does battle with Aragorn, as shown in the extended DVD version ofThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The scene was removed as too large a departure from Tolkien's text and was replaced with Aragorn fighting a troll.[17] Sauron appears as the Necromancer in Jackson'sThe Hobbit film adaptations, where he is voiced byBenedict Cumberbatch.[18]
Sauron's rise to power in the Second Age is portrayed in the Amazon prequel seriesThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.[24] He first appears disguised as the non-canonical human character Halbrand,[25] and then in the second season as Annatar (a canonical alias of Sauron), both played byCharlie Vickers.[26] The Halbrand persona was conceived to make the audience share the feeling of being deceived by Sauron, and to ensure he would not overshadow other characters. Afterwards, he would be allowed to function like other classic TV villains (such asWalter White orTony Soprano), orLucifer inJohn Milton'sParadise Lost.[27] Vickers said he was unaware of his character's true identity until filmingthe third episode. He admitted he began to suspect when lines fromJohn Milton'sParadise Lost, a narrative poem about thebiblical story of thefall of man, were used during an audition.[25]Jack Lowden portrays the character's First Age and early Second Age form in flashback in thesecond season premiere.[26] The depiction ofevil in Arda as embodied in Sauron shifts both in Tolkien's writings and in the Amazon series. The prequel adopts Tolkien's use of bothAugustinian andManichean attitudes to evil.[28]
The Eye of Sauron is mentioned inThe Stand, a 1978post-apocalyptic novel written byStephen King. The villainRandall Flagg possesses anastral body in the form of an "Eye" akin to the Lidless Eye. The novel itself was conceived by King as a "fantasy epic likeThe Lord of the Rings, only with an American setting".[29] The idea of Sauron as a sleepless eye that watches and seeks the protagonists also influenced King's epic fantasy seriesThe Dark Tower; its villain, theCrimson King, is a similarly disembodied evil presence whose icon is also an eye.[30]
In theMarvel Comics Universe, thesupervillainSauron, an enemy of theX-Men created in 1969, names himself after the Tolkien character.[31] In the comic seriesFables, byBill Willingham, begun in 2002, one character is called "The Adversary", an ambiguous figure of immense evil and power believed to be responsible for much of the misfortune in the Fables' overall history. Willingham has stated "The Adversary", in name and in character, was inspired by Sauron.[32]
^This is made clear in the chapter "The Council of Elrond", where Glorfindel states that "soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it".[T 3]
^This conflicts with earlier versions of the story, in which Orcs existed before the wakening of the Elves, as inThe Fall of Gondolin.[T 18]
^The story of the Song of Creation was presented by theValar "according to our modes of thought and our imagination of the visible world, in symbols that were intelligible to us".Tolkien 1994, p. 407
^Tolkien 1955, Appendix A, "The Stewards": "In the last years of Denethor I the race of Uruks, black orcs of great strength, first appeared out of Mordor." (Denethor I died in TA 2477.)
^Bainbridge, William Sims (September 2010). "Virtual Nature: Environmentalism in Two Multi-player Online Games".Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture.4 (3):135–152.doi:10.1558/jsrnc.v4i3.135.
