At the Black Gate, Sauron does not first answer the Captains of the West with a sword. He answers with a voice. That is easy to overlook, because the scene stands on the edge of open war. Aragorn, Gandalf, Éomer, Imrahil, and the remaining strength of the West have come before the Morannon with a … Read more
Everyone asks why Sauron did not guard Mount Doom more carefully. But that question may already be thinking too much like Sauron. It assumes the War of the Ring was finally decided by military oversight, by a gap in surveillance, by a failure to secure the one place where the Ring could be destroyed. On … Read more
Sauron’s power is easy to misunderstand. On the surface, he looks like a ruler of overwhelming force. He has Mordor. He has Barad-dûr. He commands Orcs, trolls, siege engines, spies, armies from the East and South, and the Nine Ringwraiths. By the end of the Third Age, the Free Peoples know that if the war … Read more
Everyone asks why Sauron did not guard Mount Doom better. But that may be the wrong question. The more disturbing answer is not that Sauron was careless. It is that he was brilliant in a way that made one kind of thought almost impossible for him. Sauron understood power. He understood fear. He understood ambition. … Read more
Most people think the Eye of Sauron is easy to explain. It is Sauron. A giant burning eye. A shape of fire. A terrible presence watching from the top of Barad-dûr, searching Middle-earth until the Ring is found. But in the text, the answer is stranger than that. The Eye is not simply Sauron’s body. … Read more
Most people think the Necromancer hid in Mirkwood because Sauron was not yet strong enough to return to Mordor. That is true, but it is not the whole truth. The deeper answer is more unsettling. Dol Guldur was not merely a refuge for a defeated Dark Lord. It was a mask. It allowed Sauron to … Read more
The One Ring is often remembered for one simple power. It makes people disappear. Bilbo puts it on in the tunnels beneath the Misty Mountains and vanishes from sight. Gollum uses it for secrecy and hunting. Frodo wears it and slips out of the visible world. Sam, for a brief time in Mordor, bears it … Read more
Near the end of the War of the Ring, Sauron makes a mistake so enormous that it destroys him. He looks in the wrong direction. While Frodo and Sam are moving through Mordor with the One Ring, Sauron’s attention is drawn outward—toward Aragorn, toward the Captains of the West, and toward the small army marching … Read more
Most people remember Sauron as an Eye. A lidless, searching, burning presence over Mordor. A force that sees, commands, threatens, and reaches. He is everywhere in The Lord of the Rings, and yet he is almost never directly there. That is the strange thing. The story is named after him. The entire war turns upon him. … Read more
Most people hear the word “Necromancer” and think they already understand it. A dark lord.A forbidden art.An army of corpses pulled from the earth. So when Sauron is called “the Necromancer,” it is easy to imagine him as a kind of grave-sorcerer, raising the dead in the manner of later fantasy stories. But Middle-earth is … Read more