Quote:
Originally Posted by Mithadan
But what I am really talking about is the torment Sauron must have experienced at the loss and absence of the Ring. If Gollum and Frodo are representative examples, the loss of the Ring is akin to perpetual withdrawal from a physical addiction. It is pure agony. Does Sauron experience this? And if he does, would you have sympathy for him at least as regards his suffering?
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First, thank you for the compliment, Mith.
Second, I was aware of the question you raised regarding Sauron's possible suffering. I was inferring that we could in no way sympathize with Sauron in Lord of the Rings, because Tolkien does not allow us. We do not understand Sauron's motivations (save, of course, the basest and most imperialistic). There is a certain empathy we feel for the tortured soul of Gollum, because we came to know him well in The Hobbit and LotR. He is perhaps one of the three or four funniest characters in the books, and we are always captivated by the funny bad guy, aren't we? Sauron, on the other hand, is always looming and omnipotent.
If you are like me, you read the Hobbit and LotR before the Silmarillion was published, and I did not get pertinent information and a fuller picture regarding the Dark Lord until reading the LotR Appendices after completing the story. We meet Sauron with a sense of dread in the Hobbit, where he is simply the nameless Necromancer, and even in LotR he is the faceless great burning eye. There is not much there to get hold of, and literally nothing that resembles aspects of our own lives (nothing gains sympathy more than shared experiences or familiar pains).
Third, did Sauron experience pain having the Ring withheld from him? I don't believe it was the same agony incurred by Frodo or Gollum -- Sauron was of the Ainur and a great Maia, after all, and did not experience the same pains even Gandalf felt because Sauron did not have to bottle his Maiaric power in the mean confines of a human body as the Istari did (Sauron's corporeal manifestions as the beautiful Annatar and the foreboding black Lord of Mordor are more deified than human). What Sauron suffered was nagging doubt, which is a feature Tolkien instills in almost every great villain of his works (certainly Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman). The intense anxiety Sauron suffers seems inordinate to an immortal from a logical sense, but is in line with models in Greek myth. This fear and doubt caused Sauron to 'blow his wad early' on a number of occassions, which is uncharacteristic of a deity who planned patiently over thousands of years the downfall of Numenor, Arnor and Gondor. Though uncharacteristic of his overarching and grandiose multimillenial plan for domination, his sometimes rash, ill-timed and undisciplined actions directly relate to the loss of the Ring or the fear of someone else wielding the Ring. The Ring in essence defeated the maker on several levels.