Persons who’ve read The Lord of the Rings while not high on crack have surely noticed that the title character never appear. As a reader, does this seem a virtue or a failing to you?
So we’re clear, I’m mostly interested in talking about the book, not the movies (though I fully expect lots of y’all to ignore that.
I would argue that he does appear, whenever Frodo (or anyone else, of course, but mostly Frodo) sees the Flaming Eye.
And lots of y’us will also ignore your unclosed parenthesis, there, too.
I WAS DISTRACTED BY WORK!
I swear, I never had to put up with nitpicking like this when I kept remote-controlled explosive charges implanted at the base of everyone’s amygdalas.
Sauron also appears in the movies at the very beginning of FOTR, of course, as he swings that badass mace and kills Elendil (of blessed memory) and dozens of other warriors.
Overall, I think it’s for the best that he doesn’t appear in the books. Sauron’s described so sparingly and is such an awful and awesome presence, even Tolkien’s writing might not do him justice compared to the mental image which the reader is otherwise free to conjure up.
If he appeared at all, I’d have him do so just for a paragraph or two, when Gollum puts on the Ring right at the brink of the Cracks of Doom, and the Dark Lord realizes in a panic just how close to catastrophe his realm has come. So we’d get a glimpse of him just moments before he was destroyed forever, which could be kinda cool.
Well, the story is told from the perspective of the good guys, who had no agents in the camp of Sauron.
The alternative is to see him as something less than monolithic, powerful and evil, as we see that he’s got to take crap from Orc Generals who can’t get their shit straight, mouthy ring-wraiths and uncooperative Haradrim.
It’s a virtue. Nothing can surpass the imagination of the reader; a description of what (if you don’t know the Legendarium) is the ultimate face of Evil can only be a step down from what one imagines in one’s mind.
Stephen King wrote about this extensively in his horror treatise Danse Macabre. He says that on the Outer Limits, they referred to it as showing the bear. As I recall, he discussed the fact that, when you finally show the bear, the audience jumps. Let’s say it’s a ten foot bug. The audience jumps, but a few seconds later, they’re sort of thinking “well, that’s not so bad. I was imagining a hundred foot bug!” But if you show a hundred foot bug, the audience (after jumping) thinks “Well, that’s not so bad. I was imagining a thousand foot bug!” Ad inifinitum.
And let’s face it: one person’s fear is another person’s belly laugh. Is it more frightening if Sauron is all reptillian and drippy looking, or if Sauron is a being of angelic beauty (as in fact he was when he decieved the Elves)? The closest Tolkien gets to describing Sauron is when Gollum says in terrified recollection something about his having only nine fingers, but they are enough. That’s scary.
Jackson worked well with this, by only showing Sauron as a huge (but not ten stories tall huge, more within the very extremes of natural growth huge) humanoid figure with magnificently worked, cruel armor covering him entirely. To me that was far scarier than the Balrog or the Orcs we saw in much greater detail.
A good writer can make a character’s presence real without having that character voice any lines or make an actual appearance. I think JRRT did just fine in that effort.
I vote good thing, for many of the reasons already mentioned.
I think this is an important point. My own preference is for a story to be limited to the point of view of the protagonist(s), not the antagonist. Some writers jump around from character to character and apparently believe they have to include obligatory scenes of the Big Bad Guy interacting with his minions or engaging in acts of villainy so we’ll see just how badass he is, but I personally Do Not Like this approach to storytelling.
Interesting that he refers to the monster as a “bear”, there-- it calls to mind a Shakespeare scene I saw once. One of ol’ Will’s more problematic (and infamous) stage directions is “Exit, pursued by a bear” in The Winter’s Tale. When the local troupe performed it, rather than putting someone in a bear suit to chase Antigonus off the stage, they just played sound effects of a bear roaring, and had the actor look up in horror at the obviously very large and very frightening (but unseen) grizzly. It worked quite well.
It’s a good thing. We get the idea. He’s a big, supernatural, angel-like being of evil power. We don’t need to see him, especially when he is trying to regain his power.
It’s enough to know that he came close and that Frodo stopped him(uh, along with others).
Has anyone ever seen Sauron and Skald together at the same time?
I’m just askin’.
:: holds up both hands for inspection ::
You’ll note that I have the standard six digits per hand (rather than the five you poor freaks sport) and am not missing any.
Per hand?
Or only on your right hand?
Did you once commission a sword from a man named Montoya?
Aha!
Don’t be silly. Swords are the weapons of brave men, and I am committed to dastardy as a matter of principle.
Yes, but it can be beneficial for a dastard to be thought a brave man.
Did Sauron make a better run at being evil than Morgoth?
I am reading “The Children of Hurin”. It was said that the tale of Turin was 6000 years before the War of the Ring. According to this webpage ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Arda ) Morgoth only lasted 5590 years before being cast into the void. 
Seconded. Mind you, this wouldn’t work if Tolkein had taken the same approach to the main characters, unless your imagination is very good… It’s generally a good idea to leave characters who are outside of normal human experience as somewhat mysterious. It’s usually beyond the author’s skill to make the truely alien convincing.
It’s probably a good idea that he wasn’t in the books. It makes him seem more menacing the widens the scope of evil in the books. Of course in the movies they had to show him, you need some kind of a visual payoff in a visual medium.
In horror, you always lose the fear of the monster as soon as you see it. Your imagination is better than anything an author or filmmaker can conjure up. In this way, Sauron’s absence works in the books. Having him show up and start spouting dialogue would turn him into a campy supervillain.
I’m actually rereading LotR again right now. I’m almost finished “The Fellowship of the Ring”.
Doesn’t Sauron get one spoken line somewhere between “The Two Towers” and “Return of the King”?
If I remember correctly, it happens when Frodo puts on the Ring, and hears the voice of Sauron addressing him all the way from Barad-Dur (or was it one of the other hobbits and the Palantir? scratches head)
Anyway, I seem to recall him speaking once, which was memorable for that very reason.