Was Sauron a cat? (WARNING - Tolkien geekiness)

Cafe Society
1

(From http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=342873)

Happy to oblige. :slight_smile:

“Original” may not have been the best word to use; however, I would still maintain that Sauron originated in Tevildo. The series Tevildo > Lord of Wolves > Thû > Gorthaur > Sauron doesn’t involve any major discontinuities in rôle or personality. I was extremely pleased to see that Jackson depicted the Eye of Sauron as a cat’s eye in the first movie, which gave me hopes of great things to follow - unfortunately, these hopes were to be painfully dashed. :slight_smile:

Tevildo is described as speaking “by the evil spirit that was within him”. I don’t recall any reference to this “evil spirit” as being a definite “enchantment”, or coming from Melko(*) in any other way. I would also note that Sauron is not one of the original Ainur that joined with Melkor in the Great Song, but was corrupted by him “in the beginnings of Arda” (published Akallabêth) - a process that, at the angelic level of the Ainur, might be said to involve enchantment.

  • OK, Tinúviel does address Melko as “Morgoth” in a draft of the story, but he’s still “Melko” in the main text, and the etymology of “Morgoth” at this stage of the development of the overall narrative is also debatable. :slight_smile:
2

Welcome Tevildo

Good to see another Tolkien fan.
Sauron himself was not a cat. He was a Maiar who would often take on a Giant Wolf form.
In Tevildo was the pre-curser to Sauron before the Lord of the Rings took shape, I think it would be fair to say the Position of evil represented by Sauron was originally an Evil Cat Spirit.
Jim

3

BTW: I shoud mention that **Qadgop the Mercotan ** is our resident expect on Tolkien.

Bonus points if you know where his obscure character name came from.

4

Glad ya took me up on my offer!

Sadly, I don’t have time at the moment to fully research the Tevildo/Sauron history, but I am off next week, so it can become a pet project!

Otherwise, I would take exception to your conclusion that Sauron didn’t join Melkor in his corruption of the Music. Frankly, we don’t know whether merely attuning one’s song to Melkor’s automatically meant said Ainur was thus corrupted. Maybe some atttuned to him in the first theme, then fell away during the second or the third. Maybe some stuck with him the whole thing, but didn’t leave the Timeless Halls for Arda. Maybe some did go to Arda, but ended up rejecting Melkor and serving Manwe faithfully. Maybe some sang with Melkor, served Manwe, and got seduced back into his service later.

JRRT have provided us with a program for who sang what in Ainulindale. :wink:

5

Careful, Jim! We’re treading on Proto-Middle Earth history here, where things are slippery, Beren was an elf, and Gwerlum spun her webs. The dark Vala twins Makare and Measse presided over pain and blood. Much is uncertain.

6

This is a good point. The fact that Sauron was one of the Maiar subject to Aulë, rather than to Melkor, does not necessarily preclude the idea that he was one of the Ainur that followed Melkor in the song. However, it is canon that Melkor “seduced” Sauron “in the beginnings of Arda” - Sauron wasn’t an intrinsic follower of Melkor, unlike the Balrogs. I feel that my point on “enchantment” still stands. :slight_smile:

7

Well, back in the day when he was good looking and handing out serious bling-bling rings to the lords of men and dwarves and was known for his bitchin’ raves, I’d imagine he was considered something of a hip cat.

8

Is it not “hep-cat”? A subject for the main page, perhaps. :slight_smile:

9

Was Sauron a cat?

(note my emphasis)

I don’t know if the pun is intentional, but it sure made me laugh!

10

Not to quibble overmuch (which would be sooooo unlike me :wink: ), but do we even know that for sure? Those Ainur which were associated with fire and flame did not all immediately follow Melkor. Consider Arien, a spirit of fire who rejected Melkor from the very beginning. She later guided the sun. She was said to be a Maiar of Vana. It’s possible some Maia of fire who became Valaraukar didn’t in the beginning follow Melkor.

Tho Lungorthin does sound like he followed Melkor from the very beginning. At least if you believe the Lays of Beleriand.

I do look forward to hitting the books to research these ideas further!

11

Looking forward to the results of your research. :slight_smile:

Can we at least agree that there are three distinct types of “evil” Ainur:

a. Ainur that joined with Melkor in the Great Song. I don’t recall any of these being named or identified, and I agree with you that not all of these Ainur who entered Arda would have necessarily been followers of Melkor.

b. Ainur that came into Arda as followers of Melkor. I would say that Ungoliant and all the Balrogs (with the possible exception of Kosomot/Gothmog) are in this category.

Gothmog is exceptional, as he’s described in some texts as “Son of Morgoth”; it’s possible, if this description is held to be accurate, that he was begotten in Arda rather than directly “sung into being” by Eru.

Note that Gandalf calls the Balrog of Moria “Spawn of Melkor” in the BBC Radio version. However, I think it’s highly unlikely that Gandalf would use the word “Melkor” in this context, so we can dismiss this as non-canonical. In the text, it’s just “a Balrog of Morgoth”.

c. Maiar that came into Arda as followers of other Valar, and changed their allegiance to Melkor later on. Saruman is undeniably in this category, and I would argue that Sauron is, too. Was Tevildo? Discuss. :slight_smile:

12

When I first read the published version of the Silmarillion, I remember that I was sort of puzzled by Sauron’s strong association with werewolves. In LOTR, then, it seemed like it would have made more sense for his manifestation as an Eye to appear as that of a wolf; yet the Eye was plainly described as resembling a cat’s.

After some thought, I finally reasoned that Sauron was originally Lord of Werewolves while a Maiar, but after his corruption by Morgoth, he began to take on characteristics symbolic of his spiritual debasement, just as Gothmog, the Ringwraiths, the orcs, and Gollum did. As the worst of the lot, Sauron naturally acquired catlike traits, since cats are thoroughly and irredeemably evil.

I’m interested to learn that there may in fact be some basis for my theory in the unpublished texts; it certainly makes more sense than Sauron being a wolf-spirit that somehow has cat’s eyes (which would appear to identify him as a fox of some type). Isildur should have realized that Sauron, a Maiar with cat’s eyes, would therefore have nine lives, and so eventually would be back in black.

However, I’m still uncertain how Queen Beruthiel fits into all this.

13

Well, regardless of cat physicality:

  • Sauron certainly plays with his prey (evidence: the torture of Gollum, and Thror in Mirkwood)
  • He is self-absorbed, smug, and self-confident (evidence: not imagining anyone would try to destroy the ring, overestimating his armies)
  • He sits in one place and stares all around, sometimes at things that aren’t there
  • He likes bright shiny objects (rings), and probably yarn-like toys (Shelob’s webs)
  • He starts out fair and cute, but then loses those attributes as he ages from kitten to cat
  • He purrs at Denethor through the palantir
14

Do cats own other cats? Sauron referred to Shelob as his cat.

“My cat” he calls her, though she owns him not.

15

Heh-heh. I thought someone was referring to Sauron the Doper. My knowledge of Lord of the Rings only goes as far as knowing it was a box office smash. :wally

16

Man… totally off-topic, but I was curious to see whether the movie trilogy had incorporated any cat (or wolf) motifs into Sauron’s Second Age armor as an allusion to any of this background, so I pulled *The Lord of the Rings: Weapons and Warfare * by Chris Smith off the bookshelf to check.

Damn. Just… damn. I’d read it before, of course, but still… these movies must have involved more collective knowledge of history and craft, more rigorously applied thought and consideration about background subject matter, than any other film ever made. How can a series of films about totally fictional nations and events contain so much more attention to historical accuracy than films about actual history?

17

:stuck_out_tongue: Because these films were made by Mondo Tolkein Geek Moviemakers, instead of your run-of-the-mill moviemakers-the ones who make regular historical films. Peter Jackson knew his potential audience’s penchant for the detail that Tolkein put into the original work, and realized that if he didn’t keep the same attention to detail, he would go down in flames. He either had to do it well, or not do it at all.

18

Valid for the first one, but not for the second. No true fan will ever forgive Jackson for what he did to Faramir. And resorting to the worst kind of “as-you-know” exposition to explain the state of the war should have turned off any legitimate movie-goers, too.

19

I certainly won’t get into the could have/should have argument about Jackson’s storyline. I am not defending the whole movie, just the attention to detail. I, for one, had several WTF moments with the storyline (ELVES! At HELM’S DEEP! They aren’t SUPPOSED to BE THERE!).

Carry on. I will be watching the debate over the OP with interest. :slight_smile:

20

Meh. I didn’t mind Faramir’s temptation, and evetual rejection. I considered it a big flaw in the book that he could turn away so easily from such a talisman of power.

I’m still annoyed about the elves in Helm’s Deep, tho. That and not showing Denethor with a Palantir, to explain his madness and despair.

No matter. I’m still grateful for PJ bringing us his vision of LOTR. Seeing and hearing what others thought of it keeps it ever-new for me.

And PJ went far beyond the needs of the fanatical JRRT follower in designing the costumes and armor. 95% of it passed under what the movie-viewer could detect. PJ’s stated goal is that he wanted such detail so it would impress the intensity of the experience on the actors.

I still haven’t cracked HOMES II yet, Tevildo. So I can’t fully address your points (yet). But shooting again from the hip, I would say this about your points:

a) Probably an accurate guess, but still just that. We just don’t know enough to say whether or not attuning your own music to Melkor’s automatically resulted in following him. Remember, even at that point in the Music, Melkor wasn’t actually evil, yet. Only grandiose, proud, and arrogant.

b) Probably true, but Ungoliant is a rather special case. Corrupted by him in the Timeless Halls, she seems to have decided to follow her own muse, rather than follow Melkor.

c) A distinct category, and one which Sauron very well might have been in. He was described as having might and skill little less than Aulë. I’m sure others were in this category too. But was Tevildo the Prince of Cats? IIRC, JRRT had abandoned Tevildo before he even came up with the schema of corrupted maia. In the early days, there were lots of undefined spirits roaming around, available for use, it seems. But I’ll have to reread more about that.