Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Since I had such a lovely warm welcome to the lore forum, I feel emboldened (uh-oh, right) to ask another question that has come up for me.

I'm on a re-read on the Fellowship currently (it's been quite a few years), and I'm just at the point where Gandalf is beginning to reveal the true nature of the One Ring to Frodo. Something in the dialogue is confusing to me, however:

'And this is the dreadful chance, Frodo. He believed that the One had perished; that the Elves had destroyed it, as should have been done. But he knows now that it has not perished, that it has been found..."
-Fellowship of the Ring, The Shadow of the Past

My question is: How could Sauron have thought the Ring was destroyed? (My confusion comes from the utter destruction that results in the Ring being destroyed).

Did he simply not realize how complete the destruction would be? Or, am I getting ahead of myself and making assumptions about how complete the destruction was at the very end? (It's been a long while since I read all the books, as I mentioned).

Ooh, welcome back @Sil’s Fool . There may be a few possibilites.

One of them, Gandalf just doesn't know what he's talking about. Granted, when it's a character like Gandalf, this is less likely, but as a character in the story, he can make errors, misstatements, or just be wrong. One of his larger errors is actually overlooking the One Ring for so many years when it was "under his very nose." After Bilbo's departure this prompts Gandalf to kick it into gear and discover the truth about Bilbo's ring, but maybe not all the details were true? What if he was just saying that to Frodo to sort of wash over his own mistake for not discovering the truth sooner?

It could also be, Sauron had no reason to feel his ability to build a new body was tied to the Ring. He reformed after the destruction of Numenor, and again after being killed during the Last Alliance. In a letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien writes that even if he was not in possession of the Ring, that power was in rapport with him:

While he wore it, his power on earth was actually enhanced. But even if he did not wear it, that power existed and was in 'rapport' with himself: he was not 'diminished.' Letter #131

It's possible that Sauron had no reason to believe the Ring's destruction would lead to his own destruction, because even when he did not have it, his power wasn't diminished. He had reformed after losing the Ring in the Last Alliance, and after finding out it had not been destroyed his main fear was it would be used against him.

There's three options here. Perhaps Gandalf doesn't know what he's talking about. It wouldn't be the first time that he says something that doesn't quite make perfect sense when talking Ringlore, and we know it isn't a subject he focused on until it became clear that Saruman's knowledge of it wasn't producing the desired results. If we needed to suppose Gandalf was wrong in order to go forward, we could do that.

But we don't. There are two options that work with it being true, that Sauron did think the Ring was destroyed. The first is that Sauron didn't fully understand how dependent he was on the Ring until after he had spent some time in the Third Age recovering. Sauron's knowledge of his own Rings is, too, imperfect. After all, if he had known that the Seven would do little to subjugate the Dwarves, he probably would have given all of the Sixteen to Men, trying some other way to get the Dwarves enthralled. But he's partially in the dark. It could have been the realization that the Ring wasn't destroyed that finally put together the last pieces of the puzzle in his mind, letting him realize certain things we as readers take as given. You need to remember that Sauron's purpose in making the One Ring was control; while it functioned like a phylactery, that wasn't the reason it was made, and it might be completely unintentional side effect.

The third option is that the Ring wasn't inherently so tied to his own destruction. It was a reservoir of his power, and a reservoir that apparently did not deplete in the same way the power that remained with him did as he used it. Over the millennia and through multiple deaths, that reservoir of power in the Ring would have become a greater and greater percentage of the total power left available to him. In this way, one could conjecture that the Ring being destroyed immediately after being made, while removing a large portion of his power, wouldn't have been absolutely disastrous. One could conjecture that it might be only after he could only make a body by drawing on the (now large) portion of his power locked away in the Ring that the destruction of the Ring would have him fall so low as to never recover.

Personally, I favor the third option.

I'm actually going to go in a slightly different direction from the folks who have posted before and suggest that you were on the mark in questioning the completion of Sauron's destruction at the end of LoTR.

Nothing and nobody in Middle-Earth seems to ever be totally destroyed. The firstborn children, the Elves, are rehoused in Mandos on experience of physical death. The dwarves believe that they have halls there, as well. Nobody knows what happens to humans after death--but, they do have a role to play, we are told by the Silmarillion in the times to come.
Likewise, higher beings do not seem to fully be destroyed. What makes Gandalf's recovery remarkable is his return to Middle-Earth (like Glorfindel, who returns from Aman) and not his continued existence in some form -- even if only in spirit -- in Aman or in the Eru's halls. Morgoth is defeated twice -- but never killed, just imprisoned once and exiled (cast out beyond the world, into the Void) the second time. This is important -- even Morgoth, the root of almost all that is dark or evil or twisted or foul in the world, does not suffer total elimination. He is rather rejected by the Valar when he finally grovels before them and cast out, presumably permanently set to wander without a body. He is judged, found lacking, but not destroyed.

Similarly, we see Sauron lose his body at least twice in the events of the Legendarium (I say at least because he does consider it when wrestling Huan during the Sil, but prefers to flee in the form of a vampire). The first time we see it for sure is with the Fall of Númenor. The island sinks, and Sauron sinks with it -- losing his physical body and only barely escaping. He is defeated(ish, although he's actually won a pretty significant victor) and on the retreat (although also finally free of the Númenorians) and travels back to Mordor before finding himself a new form. The second time, something similar seems to have happened. He is physically destroyed -- only this time, his defeat is more thorough. He must have wandered in spirit form for quite a while, since it is a full millennium later that he arrives in Dol Guldur. As a small additional note, when Gandalf talks about Isildur's failing to destroy the ring he talks specifically about how Barad Dur is cast down, but the foundations were not destroyed.
It is also possible that Sauron was similarly physically destroyed when the White Council attacked Dol Guldur, but I'm not sure and I don't want to make assumptions.

We've learned two pretty important things -- Sauron can survive colossal physical destruction on a large enough scale to reshape the world and sink Númenor into the sea. He can do this by rising up in spirit form and escaping. Second, he can persist in this spirit form -- for centuries, if need be.

So, what happens at the end of the Lord of the Rings? The ring is destroyed and Sauron's towers crumble. His works are undone -- the foundation of Barad Dur is destroyed. And he rises up over the land of Mordor before being scattered by a wind from the rest. This is the same thing that happens to Saruman and, I'll argue, the same thing that happened to Morgoth. Finally recognizing his defeat, Sauron begs -- and is rejected. He has missed his chance for forgiveness, and will go the way of his master. I think he is permanently disembodied and cast out into the Void -- but not totally destroyed.

All this to say, it is possible that had the Valar not intervened there, in that final moment (sending the wind that blew out of the west) Sauron would have been able to ... just drift around for a while like an unpleasant little cloud. Maybe he eventually could find a new body. Maybe it really did take a power greater than any known to the Hobbits -- the Valar, or Eru even, who is suggested to have guided Bilbo's hand in "randomly" finding the Ring (as well as a number of other "lucky coincidences"). All this to say: I don't think the destruction of the Ring is the permanent destruction of Sauron, just the more permanent destruction of Sauron's physical form and the final undoing of his physical works.

EDIT: Moments after posting, I realized there's a quote that does indicate Sauron is not fully destroyed, just cast out in the way of Morgoth. From the Valaquenta: "In all the deeds of Melkor the Morgoth upon Arda, in his vast works and in the deceits of his cunning, Sauron had a part, and was only less evil than his master in that for long he served another and not himself. But in after years he rose like a shadow of Morgoth and a ghost of his malice, and walked behind him on the same ruinous path down into the void."

@Boromir88 -- Thanks for the warm welcome back! :)

I find myself thinking that the possibility that his destruction was not nearly so complete in the end makes the most sense. I am additionally intrigued by the idea that the more times he died, the more his power was tied into the Ring, and the more consequences the Ring's destruction would/could have for him.

And I suppose, since he had never experienced the Ring being destroyed (and I don't know enough about any additional information on the making of the Rings to speak more to this), and he had not created such a thing before, he probably could not fully know what the consequences would be if the Ring were destroyed.

Burnt Toast: I find myself thinking that the possibility that his destruction was not nearly so complete in the end makes the most sense. I am additionally intrigued by the idea that the more times he died, the more his power was tied into the Ring, and the more consequences the Ring's destruction would/could have for him.

Yes there is a spot where Tolkien mentions it took Sauron much longer to rebuild his body after his death during the Last Alliance:

After the battle with Gilgalad and Elendil, Sauron took a long while to re-build, longer than he had done after the Downfall of Numenor (I suppose because each building-up used up some of the inherent energy of the spirit, which might be called the 'will' or the effective link between the indestructible mind and being and the realization of its imagination).' Letter 200

So, Elenhir's theory about the Ring being more like a reservoir of power starts making more sense. In combination with Letter 131 where Tolkien states that even if he was not in possession of the Ring, Sauron's power was not 'diminished' it remained in 'rapport' with him. The letter continues and it is interesting...

Unless some other seized it and became possessed of it. If that happened, the new possessor could (if sufficiently strong and heroic by nature) challenge Sauron, become master of all that he had learned or done since the making of the One Ring, and so overthrow him and usurp his place. This was the essential weakness he had introduced into his situation in his effort (largely unsuccessful) to enslave the Elves, and in his desire to establish a control over the minds and wills of his servants. There was another weakness: if the One Ring was actually unmade, annihilated, then its power would be dissolved, Sauron own reduced to a shadow, a mere memory of malicious will. But that he never contemplated nor feared Letter 131

So, in theory, if Sauron died enough times, he could have been defeated to the point that he didn't have enough power to rebuild another body. (It already took him much longer after the Last Alliance than it had during the Downfall of Numenor). Problem with this, is during the War of the Ring, the resistance to "fight the long defeat" against Sauron was already weakened to the point that Sauron's victory would have been inevitable unless

1. The Ring was destroyed or

2. A powerful enough and heroic person (like Gandalf, or perhaps Tolkien guesses that Galadriel or Elrond) would have had the strength if they desired to use the Ring to usurp Sauron. Gandalf and Elrond decided at the council not to use the Ring for that purpose. Galadriel makes her choice when Frodo offers her the Ring in Lothlorien.

But, the Ring did not have to be destroyed to defeat Sauron to the point that "he would be reduce to a shadow, a mere memory of malicious will" A strong enough possessor could master the Ring's power, usurp his place and thus break that "rapport" the Ring had with Sauron.

@Boromir88 that makes sense; somewhere in the Trilogy I think there is also a reference to the idea that if the Ring is destroyed Sauron will become a malice "gnawing itself in the dark" unable to grow in power or take physical form - meaning he was still there, just weakened to the point that he is no longer a threat. I can't find the reference, though (anyone know where it is? It's gonna bug me now).

Possibly the reason he didn't know what the destruction of the Ring would do to him is that it never occurred to him that destruction of the Ring was even possible. In the Two Towers Gandalf says "that we should wish to cast him down and have NO ONE in his place is not a thought that occurs to his mind. That we should try to destroy the Ring itself has not yet entered into his darkest dream."

@Amhran It’s in The Last Debate, ROTK. “If it is destroyed, then he will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his rising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in the beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed forever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot grow again or take shape.”

@Bombadillo That's much as I see it.

Burnt Toast wrote: ↑Sun Jun 21, 2020 7:10 pm My question is: How could Sauron have thought the Ring was destroyed? (My confusion comes from the utter destruction that results in the Ring being destroyed).

Just to say, I don't think this question has been answered and I don't think it will. Here is one of a (very) few places where our author let his plot escape from him.

edit: i understand i will have to quote chapters and verse and quote too the succinctly put points laid out by Boromir88. But it will take time to do so. My intuition, though, is that while everything laid out by Boromir88 makes sense it sounds too much like special pleading.

In the essay on fairy-stories JRRT talks of the oldest recorded fairy story, recorded on an ancient Egyptian papyrus, in which one brother enchants his heart and places it somewhere else. i believe JRRT saw some analogy between this fairy-element of the enchanted heart and the operation Sauron performed with his ring. In the story world of the enchanted heart, at any rate, destruction of the heart in one place would surely = death of the (heartless) body in another. Granted that Sauron does not put all of himself in the Ring, but its destruction would surely feel as a death to him and feel different to that if another had wrested control of the Ring for himself.

simon wrote: ↑Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:20 pm

Burnt Toast wrote: ↑Sun Jun 21, 2020 7:10 pm My question is: How could Sauron have thought the Ring was destroyed? (My confusion comes from the utter destruction that results in the Ring being destroyed).

Just to say, I don't think this question has been answered and I don't think it will. Here is one of a (very) few places where our author let his plot escape from him.

Haha! If that's true, then I'll consider this thread some sort of accomplishment. XD
Regardless, thanks to all for engaging. I've learned a lot!