The Eye of Sauron

[CAB]

So Gordis and DPR, it looks like you have both been pulled back and forth on this issue. I know the feeling.

Personally, I think Sauron in the Third Age was probably cyclopean (thanks Alcuin).

Originally Posted by The Dread Pirate Roberts

It is clear the guy lacked depth perception in a metaphorical sense as well as having a narrow view.

I never thought of that before. Noticing symbolism is definitely one of my weak areas. Thank you for pointing this symbolism out.

Originally Posted by The Dread Pirate Roberts

There is no reason "the eye" can't be used as an expression in regard to one person and literal in regard to another.

I agree and will go a step further. The expression may possibly have led to the literal. If Sauron found useful his reputation as "all seeing", pre-Downfall, it may have inspired him to assume a cyclopean form after the Downfall. Or, if the "all-seeing" reputation belonged more to Morgoth, he may have assumed the form to make others believe he was Morgoth. (I read before that Sauron wanted others to think he was Morgoth returned, but I can't recall where).

Originally Posted by The Dread Pirate Roberts

However, what about references to being under "the Eye" while in Sauron's presence?

Actually, I think the quote Gordis provided earlier is a good example of this.

There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dûr, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.

Certainly this would refer to someone being in Sauron's presence and it says "eye" not "eyes".



So far, no one has mentioned what I think is the scene most pertinent to this discussion: Frodo looking into Galadriel's Mirror.

But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness. In the black abyss there appeared a single Eye that slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, like a cat’s, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing.

Then the Eye began to rove, searching this way and that; and Frodo knew with certainty and horror that among the many things that it sought he himself was one. But he also knew it could not see him –not yet, not unless he willed it.

Here Frodo isn't looking at a metaphor, or "nickname", or reputation. He is looking at Sauron. I know this isn't absolute proof (since Frodo doesn't see any other part of Sauron's body but his single eye) but I think it is pretty strong evidence that Sauron in the Third Age possessed only one eye.

[Gordis]

Originally Posted by CAB

So far, no one has mentioned what I think is the scene most pertinent to this discussion: Frodo looking into Galadriel's Mirror.

Here Frodo isn't looking at a metaphor, or "nickname", or reputation. He is looking at Sauron. I know this isn't absolute proof (since Frodo doesn't see any other part of Sauron's body but his single eye) but I think it is pretty strong evidence that Sauron in the Third Age possessed only one eye.

But there was also Pippin's video-conference with Sauron over the Palantir. Pippin didn't mention the cyclopean appearence of the Dark Lord. Neither did Gollum. The latter, however, found it noteworthy to mention four fingers on Sauron's hand.

[CAB]

Originally Posted by Gordis

But there was also Pippin's video-conference with Sauron over the Palantir. Pippin didn't mention the cyclopean appearence of the Dark Lord. Neither did Gollum. The latter, however, found it noteworthy to mention four fingers on Sauron's hand.

I would say that this evidence could go either way. If they expected to see a being with one eye (and that seems pretty reasonable) then they might have felt surprise to see that Sauron actually had two, and said so. Saying nothing on the matter would seem to indicate that they saw what they expected to see.

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

As you say, it could go either way. If they expected to see two eyes but only saw one, they might make a bit of a big deal of it. I think I would.

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by CAB

Certainly this would refer to someone being in Sauron's presence and it says "eye" not "eyes".

But you also have expressions like 'giving someone the evil eye' or 'keeping an eye on someone' which also uses 'eye' in singular but gets used for two-eyed people as well.

[Gordis]

There was an interesting theory advanced by Olmer in the old thread:

Originally Posted by Olmer

Normally people are aware when somebody is looking at them even without palantir.Try to stare at somebody's back, eventually person becomes uncomfortable and turns around.

The third eye DOES exist in our body and this is a device for communication on body's energy level, only it's still in primodial stage in human.
Sauron is a higher being with energy amount surpassing humans many times, therefore his subliminal potential for communication is immense.
The Eye of Sauron, as I see, is a cluster of pulsating, fiery energy deep inside his mind (literally, it's what we call the Third Eye), which is he able to send at will far and away.
Something like some seers are doing.
Nothing paranormal, just highly enhanced body function.

You can read about the Third Eye here. Note its special connection with "Spiritual world"

I think I come to like this idea.

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

I haven't clicked the link yet but the only thing I would slightly disagree with in Olmer's post is that I don't think it is a trait/skill/characteristic that humans haven't attained yet but rather one that we once possessed but have almost lost.

[CAB]

Originally Posted by The Dread Pirate Roberts

As you say, it could go either way. If they expected to see two eyes but only saw one, they might make a bit of a big deal of it. I think I would.

Me too. And it is quite possible that they expected to see two eyes. The two eyed body plan is quite common among vertebrates after all. But we really don't know what they expected to see.

Originally Posted by Eärniel

But you also have expressions like 'giving someone the evil eye' or 'keeping an eye on someone' which also uses 'eye' in singular but gets used for two-eyed people as well.

True enough. But Tolkien wasn't using an old expression here. He was making a straight-forward statement, at least it seems so to me. And this statement wouldn't lose anything by replacing "eye" with "eyes". Still, I admit this could go either way also.

Originally Posted by Gordis

There was an interesting theory advanced by Olmer in the old thread:

You can read about the Third Eye here. Note its special connection with "Spiritual world"

I think I come to like this idea.

Olmer does put forth an interesting idea here (basically all of his ideas are). This is a possibility.

[Alcuin]

I am confused. At this point, are we now debating the choice between:

1. Sauron is cyclopean - that he literally has only one physical eye
2. "The Eye of Sauron" is merely a figure of speech for his hateful gaze and special attentions

Is there another possibility?

[Gordis]

Yea, I think that the third possibility is that he had 3 eyes: two ordinary ones, and a third a bit inconventional... somewhere on his forehead.
Perhaps the latter was only visible in the Spirit World.

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

I think the third eye was huge and detatched. He kept it sitting on top of the tower at Barad-dur.

Or not.

[jammi567]

I don't know why Sauron couldn't be a single eye as portrayed in the movies. I'm not sure that he would have been able to have been able to create a new body without his ring, so he might have been stuck as a spirit without a physical body, so transforned himself into an eye so that he could see everything that was going on around him.

As for the Gollum issue, I'm not sure about that (again). I don't see Sauron personally overseeing the torture of someone. On the other hand, this is the One Ring we're talking about...if he had a phisical body in the first place. If not, then it might have simply been the spirit of the Ring having got to Gollum.

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by jammi567

I don't know why Sauron couldn't be a single eye as portrayed in the movies. I'm not sure that he would have been able to have been able to create a new body without his ring, so he might have been stuck as a spirit without a physical body, so transforned himself into an eye so that he could see everything that was going on around him.

I think I clearly remember that in Letters, Tolkien describes Sauron has having a man-like body: his description has always rather reminded me of that of the Balrog, Durin’s Bane. His incarnation in the late Third Age was apparently burning (like a balrog), and he had hands and presumably arms, at any rate: Gollum saw him, and he was missing one finger from which his precious Ring had been cut. I would rather prefer not to dig up the citation: I am either aging rapidly or extremely tired from salt-mining or both; but if you demand it, and no one else will oblige you, I will endeavor to find it over the weekend.

That being said, if you prefer Sauron as one giant, flaming eyeball, resting magically between two prongs atop his fortress of Barad-dûr, ignore those who begrudge you your mental image; in return, do not demand they change their vision to suit yours. (I personally regret all the pictures of Bilbo I have seen over the years, however finely illustrated: they have almost driven out my own mental image that I formed many decades ago when I first read The Hobbit.) I have known some people who, unpleasantly aroused, resembled nothing else so much as a flaming eyeball suspended in midair.

As far as the thread is concerned, however, I think there was substantially more to Sauron’s body than a single eye; but his Eye was what his visitors seem to have most vividly recalled. Gollum – former Ringbearer that he was – noticed his hands. Sauron seems to have paid esssspecial attention to Gollum’s poor handses, too. That would imply that Sauron was present while Gollum was questioned: no doubt, he questioned the poor creature personally: whom else could he trust, and who could do a better job?

Besides, he probably wanted to keep an eye on Gollum.

[The Dread Pirate Roberts]

Originally Posted by jammi567

I don't know why Sauron couldn't be a single eye as portrayed in the movies.

"`That would be Minas Ithil that Isildur the son of Elendil built ' said Frodo. `It was Isildur who cut off the finger of the Enemy.'
`Yes, He has only four on the Black Hand, but they are enough,' said Gollum shuddering. 'And He hated Isildur's city.'" ~The Two Towers - Book IV - Chapter 3

From Letters (156):

But they were still living on the borders of myth – or rather this story exhibits 'myth' passing into History or the Dominion of Men; for of course the Shadow will arise again in a sense (as is clearly foretold by Gandalf), but never again (unless it be before the great End) will an evil daemon be incarnate as a physical enemy;* he will direct Men and all the complications of half-evils, and defective-goods, and the twilights of doubt as to sides, such situations as he most loves (you can see them already arising in the War of the Ring, which is by no means so clear cut an issue as some critics have averred): those will be and are our more difficult fate.

*Implication is that Sauron was "incarnate as a physical enemy."

And finally, from Letters (246), Tolkien discusses a possible Sauron v. Frodo confrontation at Mount Doom:

But if he still preserved some sanity and partly understood the significance of it, so that he refused now to go with them to Barad-dûr, they would simply have waited. Until Sauron himself came. In any case a confrontation of Frodo and Sauron would soon have taken place, if the Ring was intact. Its result was inevitable. Frodo would have been utterly overthrown: crushed to dust, or preserved in torment as a gibbering slave. Sauron would not have feared the Ring! It was his own and under his will. Even from afar he had an effect upon it, to make it work for its return to himself. In his actual presence none but very few of equal stature could have hoped to withhold it from him. Of 'mortals' no one, not even Aragorn. In the contest with the PalantÃ*r Aragorn was the rightful owner. Also the contest took place at a distance, and in a tale which allows the incarnation of great spirits in a physical and destructible form their power must be far greater when actually physically present. Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic. In his earlier incarnation he was able to veil his power (as Gandalf did) and could appear as a commanding figure of great strength of body and supremely royal demeanour and countenance.

[Gordis]

To this evidence please add 4 more occasions in LOTR that suggest that Sauron could very well move, and was not hanging atop his Tower.

1. Shagrat's orders was to keep all the prisoners intact until Sauron "sends or comes Himself"
2. Denethor says: "[Sauron] will not come save only to triumph over me when all is won. He uses others as his weapons.."
3. Aragorn's heralds cry before the Black Gate: ‘Come forth!’ they cried. ‘Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth! Justice shall be done upon him."
(And behold - there came rolling a great fiery eyeball...)
4. The road from Barad-Dur to Sammath Naur was always kept clean for Sauron:

The path was not put there for the purposes of Sam. He did not know it, but he was looking at Sauron’s Road from Barad-dûr to the Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire. Out from the Dark Tower’s huge western gate it came over a deep abyss by a vast bridge of iron, and then passing into the plain it ran for a league between two smoking chasms, and so reached a long sloping causeway that led up on to the Mountain’s eastern side. Thence, turning and encircling all its wide girth from south to north, it climbed at last, high in the upper cone, but still far from the reeking summit, to a dark entrance that gazed back east straight to the Window of the Eye in Sauron’s shadow-mantled fortress. Often blocked or destroyed by the tumults of the Mountain’s furnaces, always that road was repaired and cleaned again by the labours of countless orcs.

Perhaps there is even more evidence that I can' recall right away.

[Gordis]

See Hammond and Scull's J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (Figure 181; reproduced below) for Tolkien's own abortive sketches of Sauron, intended for the dustjacket of The Return of the King. This should give you at least some idea of how Tolkien himself envisioned Sauron
Sauron by Tolkien

That I have found here:

[BeardofPants]

I much prefer the family guy version where sauron's "lighthouse" eye is frantically looking for his contact lens.

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Gordis

See Hammond and Scull's J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (Figure 181; reproduced below) for Tolkien's own abortive sketches of Sauron, intended for the dustjacket of The Return of the King. This should give you at least some idea of how Tolkien himself envisioned Sauron
Sauron by Tolkien

That I have found here:

I had forgotten about that illustration.

Two questions:

1. Is that Sauron after the Ring has been destroyed, reaching out toward the Captains of the West and the expeditionary force of Dunedain and Rohirrim?
2. Does he have one eye or two? (If he has a third eye, it must be in the back of his head, as many children recall their mothers claiming...)

[Noble Elf Lord]

These new arguments make me even more strongly think that the PalantÃ*r was focused on - not his eye(s O.o ), but on a spiritual image of himself. Perhaps the PalantÃ*r could be used to see into the Spirit-world as well? = In the Spirit-world, Sauron was indeed an Eye - giant flame-wreathed being, while in the physical realm he had a body of a very tall man with an "emberous" skin.

Ponder this: for the Elves who made the PalantÃ*ri, the Spirit-world was as true as this. Surely they added the chance for the beholder to see into it as well? Most just didn't know this. That would explain the different tales of his appearance. Also, that wouldn't argue with the thoughts of his Eye being a device of fear, and fear foremost. And since part of him is in the Spirit-world, that would grant him extra senses, albeit different from those of the Nazgûls; their vision being poor and that of Sauron's very good, piercing to be sure.

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Noble Elf Lord

for the Elves who made the PalantÃ*ri, the Spirit-world was as true as this. Surely they added the chance for the beholder to see into it as well? Most just didn't know this. That would explain the different tales of his appearance. Also, that wouldn't argue with the thoughts of his Eye being a device of fear, and fear foremost. And since part of him is in the Spirit-world, that would grant him extra senses, albeit different from those of the Nazgûls; their vision being poor and that of Sauron's very good, piercing to be sure.

That’s a very neat idea; however, there is nothing in the somewhat extensive material on the palantÃ*ri that would indicate that a viewer using a palantÃ*r could see anything other than what a Man could see with his eyes. For instance, they did not work in the dark, nor could light be projected through them in order to see. Communication was possible as long as the person on either end intended to communicate: the communication was mind-to-mind, but deliberate, as is speaking. (It might be similar to ósanwe-kente, the mind-to-mind communication in which Elrond, Galadriel, Celeborn, and Gandalf engaged sitting together the night before Galadriel and Celeborn passed over the Redhorn Gate to return to Lórien near the end of RotK.) As examples, while Sauron did cause Pippin pain while looking through the palantÃ*r, he could not force him to speak any other way (by “entering his mindâ€�); Sauron could not force Aragorn to reveal more than he desired, and Aragorn, as the rightful owner of the Stone, wrenched it away from him; and Sauron could not even see Pippin at first, presuming that it was Saruman.

That being said, it does not address your idea that in the wraith-world, or “the other side�, or whatever you want to call it, Sauron was not a large, flaming eyeball in desperate need of Visine.

One question we might consider is this: did Sauron refer to himself as “The Eye� in the Second Age? He was binocular in the Second Age by all accounts; if that was his moniker then, we will know that it was a turn-of-the-phrase, and not meant literally.