Why Sauron?

Cafe Society
1

Not the poster, but the “Dark Lord”

I’ve read the Silmarillion and LOTR 20 years ago, and idle my way through some of the other back story. Melkor/Morgoth’s motivation is set up pretty well, he is the devil and jealous of God and angry at God for creating him and everything else, so he wants to subjugate it cruelly. Kinda one dimensional, but I get it. No individuation from reality because he is so momentous that he almost is reality. (Same deal with evil emperor in Star Wars). Archtypeal evil.

We even understand Smaug’s motivation and Saruman’s motivation. Sort of.

But what is Sauron’s motivation through all of this? Yeah, he is all that is left of high ranking evil after Morgoth is banished to the outer darkness for all eternity, yada, yada. But he is at least a whole order of power lesser in nature, although still the most powerful of the Maiar. Why does he want to make the ring in the first place and try to subjugate good? He is smart enough to know that if he suceeds, he is likely to draw the personal intervention of the Lords of the West just like Morgoth. And what made him think that rearing his ugly head even a little bit after their intervention at the end of the first age and his refusal to surrendur and his flight wouldn’t draw the celestial coppers at the first sign of his stinking evilness arising, so why would he bother? Is he so one dimensional that he doesn’t realize that he is only a toy protagonist for plot purposes? A cheap shadow immitation of Morgoth, the real thing? If he succeeds, does he get to let Morgoth back in the world and therefore curries favor, deciding it best to serve in hell than rule it? Presumably, if Morgoth had succeeded, he was powerful enough to ruin the whole ball of wax and even the Valar might not have been able to stop him if he’d really gotten his act together. But Sauron? Ooooo, he’s gonna screw things up like and create a totalitarian world for Men, while the Elves take refuge in Valinor.

And having defeated him at the end of the Second Age, why no serious intervention by the Lords of the West to keep him from reincarnating as The Lidless Eye. Now there’s a fearsome image (from the book, not the silly movie interpretation), a floating flaming lidless eye. Yawn. How did this thing physically protect itself from assault? Hypnotize its enemies like a dragon? Stare them down? Why do Orcs obey its commands? Presumably as Morgoth’s chief Lt., if he had chosen balrog form, he would have been even more powerful than Gothmog, Lord of the balrogs, but apparently he did not take this form, being more polymorphic and a bit more devious. Even the balrog of Kazad Dum had better motivation – laying low for many ages taking an oppotunistic grab at the ring when it trespassed on its realm/hiding place.

Yeah, I understand that Sauron wants his ring back, and made the rings to subjugate the various races. But as a character, I don’t understand why.

2

I think this is due to the fact that they weren’t going to intervene the first time even to defeat Morgoth, they came only due to the pleadings of a certain Elf so was a one time deal. Presumably they are reluctant to intervene since they believe Eru has some great all encompassing plan for his creation. So a similar attempt to bring them east after Morgoth was lost at sea.

3

Maybe he was abused as a child.

Or it can simply be that he has a notion of how things should be, and is trying to bring that notion to pass. After all… few villains see themselves as villains. He doesn’t see himself as “stamping out goodness”… he just sees himself as setting things right.

4

Tolkien describes Sauron’s motivation in terms of jealousy of the elves. Lust for power is also probably a good deal of it.

We can get clues from the other characters in LotR who do evil, but I think Gollum is the closest. Gollum is motivated by greed, selfishness, and lust for power (however limited – I mean, strangling young orcs in the dark, sheeeeesh. But still, power is what it is.)

And Gollum and Sauron are identified in Tolkien. Frodo goes out to confron the Ultimate Evil, the Great Dark Lord… and the confrontation with Ultimate Evil turns out to be a confrontation with Gollum. Tolkien was, seems to me, making a statement about the nature of evil. All sorts of works of fiction portray evil as a Mastermind, something “admirable” – the archvillians of the superheroes, for instance, are viewed as something god-like, aloof, above normal humanity. Sauron is portrayed in that way, but the real evil (to Tolkien) is the nasty, grovelling-in-the-dirt, unpleasantness of Gollum. (Aside: That’s why Sauraman winds up being Sharkey – same point.)

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Remember also that Melkor was the mightiest of the Ainur in the beginning, and even in rebellion is brilliance was great. Many, many Ainur were attracted to him. Kinda like the older brother who can do no wrong, then rebels a la James Dean.

And Melkor didn’t instantly go bad, either. Initially he only added parts to his music of the Ainur which were not in accordance with Eru’s theme, to increase his own power and glory. As he spiritually diminished, he could only envy and mock and hate, but he could do more than that in the beginning.

So Sauron was attracted to his brilliance even before the creation of Ea. He saw the power and the glory and was drawn to it. And since Melkor’s rebellious music was written into the creation, and was a part of it, it naturally resonated with Sauron.

These very points are addressed in the HOMES volume entitled “Morgoth’s Ring”. The title refers to Arda itself, because of Melkor’s rebellion. Much is covered about Sauron’s motivations in that book. JRRT left copious notes about the nature of evil. CJRT does a good job editing them. It is tough slogging at times, tho, with all the damned footnotes

6

Not much to add, except never underestimate the power of bad Mexican food on your disposition.

7

The new board software has given me a few surrealistic moments. Not the least of which is seeing that, after losing his power and being driven out of Mordor, Sauron ended up in Birmingham, Alabama.

I think Spoofe is correct in observing that Sauron doesn’t see himself as evil. In some sense, “good” and “evil” don’t really exist in Tolkien. They are just different “artistic visions” for want of a better expression. In my opinion, the most “evil” character in Tolkien isn’t Morgoth, it’s Ungoliant. Morgoth has a creative vision. He wants to build something. Ungoliant, by contrast, is a nihilist.

The other point is that, quite possibly, Morgoth and Sauron are doing exactly as Illuvatar wishes. The universe created by the music is, in some sense, a short-term experiment. There was “before” and there will be an “after.” In fact, IIRC, not all of the Ainur who participated in the music even went into the world. It’s likely that once the universe has run its course, Morgoth, Sauron, Manwe and all the rest will be sitting down for a “what have we learned” de-briefing.

There is some evidence for this in the Silmarillion. IIRC Illuvatar makes some comment to Morgoth to the effect that, “You think you’re so clever but you don’t realize that all of your themes in the music actually come from me. You’ll see that all the bits you added will actually harmonize perfectly well and make the work better than it would have been.” I also recall some incident where Ulmo who was helping out those in Middle Earth despite the command of Manwe not to do so as observing that, even though he appeared to be thwarting Manwe’s will, he was still playing his part just as he was required to do. Everything is driven by the great music, even disobediance.

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Something else to remember is that in the Silmarillion, after Morgoth’s final defeat by the lords of the west, Sauron came close to true repentence. The thing that kept him from turning to good completely was his fear of being judged by the Valar. He was afraid to go back to the West to stand before them, so he ran back to his stronghold and went back to his old ways.

9

Gollum/Smeagol is probably one of the best depictions of evil in literature, as smarter people than I have already said. His motivation is perfectly clear. So is his ordinariness, which is what makes it so effective.

I’ve picked up Morgoth’s Ring in the bookstore a few times and read some pages, and it looks very interesting, but Prof Jr. Tolkien has perhaps taken up too many footnotes and pages speculating authoritatively, which isn’t as much fun as what we do here.

Wouldn’t some character development for Sauron have been wonderful? The rest of the stuff is like an endless Russian novel with eternal exposition, why not Sauron? I do like the point that Sauron turns out to be Gollum that someone made above.

Remember, what the Doormouse said,
Feed your thread!

10

In both life and literature, pride and evil often go hand in hand. By the same token, Osama bin Ladin is surely smart enough to have realized that he’d get a smackdown from the United States, after he reared his ugly head. And yet, rear his head he did. Why? I don’t know. I presume that Sauron acted from similar motivations, but I wouldn’t expect to understand those motivations. In fact I would be very frightened if I did.

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Well, I was gonna go to Cleveland, but I do have my standards.

12

Hey! Some of us here resent that. I mean, do you have something against spontaneously combustible rivers, or something?

13

Does anybody see a parallel between JRRT’s Sauron and Neil Gaiman’s Lucifer?

I don’t know if I do, but based on some of the replies we have an “arch-villain” who wants to create his version of order (or free will) upon creation. Is this an “evil scheme” on the part of the antagonist?

Sauron seems to be truely evil; Gaiman’s Lucifer has a different vision about the fate of the universe than his creator. But what part are these villains playing in their creators plan?

Eru, in JRRT’s world holds all the cards–why allow Morgoth and Sauron to do the damage they do? Gaiman’s Lucifer wonders himself about his role in the rebellion and Fall. “I was just fufilling one small part in His great plan.” he tells Dream. ~ "If not me, someone else would have done it.

Are the bad guys created and allowed to to their thing by the good guys?

Anybody like the finale of “Preacher”?

14

There is certainly a strain of this in many religions. What happens to Christianity if Pilate decides to take the high road?

15

I kind of liked the way Sauron had no character development, because that way he remained a mystery, and the reader only knew as much about him as they would shadows.

Plus, Sauron’s history wasn’t as “in your face” as other major characters. He caused the downfall of Numenor by feeding into the Numenorians’ egos. He operated behind the scenes, corrupting them a hair’s width each passing day until they finally thought they could take on the gods. His is the lurking influence, the weeds that grow in the cracks of the impenetrable fortress, that someday become sequoyas and crumble the bulwark.

Gak, I should change the text color to purple on that last one…

16

A few things:

  1. Sauron may know, deep down, that he’s gonna get busted one day … but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a great ride. Look how long it took for the Valar to come after Morgoth. Sauron must figure he’ll be able to last at least that long–and, esp. by the Third Age, he has enough amassed power to conquer all of Middle Earth. So he likely would have been even more in charge than Morgoth was. Plus, he has some scores to settle. You think he isn’t itching to get his hands on Galadriel? He has a lot of revenge fantasies fueling him, I’m sure.

  2. The Valar don’t intervene that much for a couple of reasons:
    a) They’re afraid that they’re going to damage the world too much (as they did in each scuffle with Morgoth), and that pains them.
    b) In the middle of all that damage, the fragile Children (elves, men, dwarves, etc.) could easily be accidentally wiped out. So they’re always weighing the damage they might cause against the suffering that will occur if they do nothing.
    c) They’re under mandate from Eru not to intervene too much–they’re supposed to be there to help the Children, but not to rule them completely. The kids are supposed to be allowed to make their own mistakes.
    d) Finally … they’re still kind of PISSED at the men and elves in Middle Earth. Many men were wicked, and even those good Numenoreans that fled the destruction are still kind of tainted. Then you’ve got the few remaining Noldor like Galadriel who never came back West to repent for the kinslayings. So the Valar aren’t in too big a hurry to help them get out of their own messes. (Even though, to my thinking, Sauron is their business, since he’s one of their own… but that’s why they sent Gandalf to help rectify that situation.)

  3. As an aside, I always found it interesting that Melkor and Sauron did their greatest evil by being a HELP to others, rather than a hindrance. Sauron was known as “the lord of gifts” before they figured out how evil he was, and his knowledge helped the elves in the creation of the Rings. (Which he used to his advantage, of course.)

17

This is a really interesting point.

There has been plenty of debate on whether JRRT had Nazi Germany in mind when he wrote various parts of TLOTR. While I don’t think much can be made of this, the idea of the banality of evil and the necessary participation of bureaucrats/petty clerks in the process of systemic evil is one of the big ideas of the '40s.

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From the Very Secret Diary of Ringwraith No. 5 :