LotR Sauron vs. Silm Sauron?

[Lalwendë]

Nogrod I'm with you on this one! I have problems with Sauron in LotR too. I suppose I'm used to meatier bad guys and here we have almost a metaphorical evil.

But then how Sauron works as an enemy I think is by the things which he does and causes. We see Orcs, Balrogs, Fell Beasts, Ringwraiths, Trolls, and of course, the effects of those Rings. Sauron in that respect does not need a 'face'. Like many other evils that have ridden the psyches of this world (fears of reds under the bed, terrorists, bogeymen in the wardrobe, global warming etc) we don't always need a face, it's enough to be scared witless by possibility and our own fears eating us up.

In LotR, he's almost become so evil that he doesn't even need to be seen any more. Now that's real evil power!

As a character though, Sauron is much, much more interesting elsewhere. Oh I'd love to see him dancing in the lightning on Numenor - what an image!

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Skip

Well, one thing about LotR and TH is that we never get to see the bad guys succeed with anything. This isn't the case in CoH or the Silm, where it's the baddies that stand strong and united while the good guys quibble and fight amongst themselves and ultimately fail. I suppose it has something to do with the format of storytelling, the first two being fairy-tales, the latter epics.

Originally Posted by Lal

But then how Sauron works as an enemy I think is by the things which he does and causes. We see Orcs, Balrogs, Fell Beasts, Ringwraiths, Trolls, and of course, the effects of those Rings. Sauron in that respect does not need a 'face'. Like many other evils that have ridden the psyches of this world (fears of reds under the bed, terrorists, bogeymen in the wardrobe, global warming etc) we don't always need a face, it's enough to be scared witless by possibility and our own fears eating us up.
In LotR, he's almost become so evil that he doesn't even need to be seen any more. Now that's real evil power!

I think you are hitting the nail right to the head here!

The evil principle introduced metaphorically under the name of Sauron couldn't be "meaty" or "juicy". It would have to be formless and behind the curtains so that we only meet his minions. And maybe the prof. was thinking like that when he wrote the LotR? It sounds plausible indeed - until someone with the "letters" comes forwards and proves me just downright wrong...

But when he was writing the Silm he realised that he could not keep up with that allegory of evil as such as there was Melkor and all that "actual history" there making Sauron more like a minion himself than the Real Thing. So he had to write Sauron as a personality that fitted the overall history and took his place there?

Or whatever the order of these writings are...

But what bugs me - and even if I didn't think of this explicitly yesterday when I opened this thread - it feels like Melkor in the Silm is much more flesh and blood even if he should be the embodiment of all evil if anyone is (or to be more exact: the abstraction, the concept of evil itself looked at from the point of view of the "fallen angel" legend). But Sauron as his minion feels like a great abstract principle more than flesh and blood in the LotR... and still fits his role as a "meaty character" in the Silm.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

I think you are hitting the nail right to the head here!

The evil principle introduced metaphorically under the name of Sauron couldn't be "meaty" or "juicy". It would have to be formless and behind the curtains so that we only meet his minions. And maybe the prof. was thinking like that when he wrote the LotR? It sounds plausible indeed - until someone with the "letters" comes forwards and proves me just downright wrong...

That made me think...you've reminded me of the sketch Tolkien drew of his son Michael's nightmare which was of a sinister black arm and hand they called 'maddo' creeping down the curtains...I tried to find a pic of it online but couldn't, and in a way I'm glad because the drawing gives me the heebie-jeebies.

So Tolkien had a history in real life of giving names and identities to shapeless horrors....

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

So Tolkien had a history in real life of giving names and identities to shapeless horrors....

What is religion but giving names (LotR) and stories (Silm) for different forces & ideas; hopes & fears? Trying to reach the unreachable by uttering it?

[Aiwendil]

Interesting topic! Just to correct one point, though:

Originally Posted by Nogrod

But when he was writing the Silm he realised that he could not keep up with that allegory of evil as such as there was Melkor and all that "actual history" there making Sauron more like a minion himself than the Real Thing. So he had to write Sauron as a personality that fitted the overall history and took his place there?

Or whatever the order of these writings are...

It was actually closer to the other way around. The cunning 'deceiver' Sauron of the Silmarillion is pretty well established in the pre-LotR writings. The first version of the 'Lay of Leithien', written between 1925 and 1931, is, I would say, the first place where Sauron as we know him in the Silmarillion is clearly portrayed.

So if anything, we have Tolkien moving from a vividly characterized villain to a faceless one, rather than the other way around. However, it's worth noting that in the post-LotR material, particularly the extensive revisions to the 'Lay of the Leithien', 'deceiver' Sauron is retained; in other words, post-LotR Sauron is more like pre-LotR Sauron than he is like LotR Sauron.

Given this, I think the differences between his portrayal in LotR and the Silmarillion have more to do with his roles in the respective works than with any re-thinking of the character by Tolkien.

[Morthoron]

Well, the faceless Sauron of LotR is purposeful by Tolkien, as the 'Great Eye' description and the 'Mouth of Sauron' are indicative of the facelessness and impersonalized abstraction of the Dark Lord. This is perhaps Tolkien's manner of showing the diminution of the heroes of LotR in comparison to Sauron himself.

The heroes directly involved in the conflict, such as Aragorn and Gandalf (and even more so the Hobbits), are no longer on par with Sauron, or at least the egoistic Dark Lord feels he no longer needs to meet his foes face-to-face; whereas, there was a danger imminent in previous encounters (with Gil-Galad and Elendil, Pharazon, Huan and Finrod, for instance), that either precluded intermediaries from involvement or required direct intervention on Sauron's part.

In his megalomania (for I believe Sauron had become megalomaniacal, as opposed to over-confident or conceited, as those persons with megalomania also worry, mistrust and suffer paranoia), Sauron would not deign to meet in combat these 3rd Age has-beens and never-wases; instead, he imbues the WitchKing and Nazgul with powers necessary to marshall his troops, and he trots out the Mouth of Sauron to treat with sarcasm and disrespect the little lords of Gondor and their toy army at the Morannon.

By the end of the 3rd Age, Sauron has become a living symbol of incarnate evil, godlike in power and unapproachable. A symbol, not a personification.

[Lalwendë]

Morthoron has given me a thought there with that good post. If you think about what Tolkien was trying to say about Totalitarianism with Lord of the Rings, then it makes sense that Sauron is 'faceless' as he is indeed a virtually symbolic evil figure.

If you contrast him with other megalomaniacs, both real and fictional, he stands up well against them, being the kind of leader who instead sends his henchmen out to be his 'public face' while he hides in Barad-Dur acting as master of puppets.

Like Big Brother in 1984 we don't need to 'meet' him as readers, we just need to know he is there watching the protagonists; and like Hitler he has no need to go onto the battlefield as he has his untermenschen to do that. Modern monsters do not show their faces, they just need to be an 'icon', that is more than enough to scare everyone into submission. Taking this argument to its extreme edge, you could say that Sauron is the best 'brand name' in Middle-earth; instead of golden arches he has a golden ring, and instead of a little tick, he has an 'eye'...