What did Sauron look like?

when we think of sauron we often picture the eye of sauron but what did he look like did he even have a proper body at the time of the lord of the rings hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek on this channel we cover the best in fantasy and science fiction books and tv shows the lord of the rings a song of ice and fire the witcher and so on if you like the sound of that there's a subscribe button on the bottom right of your screen it's a curious thing that we never actually properly meet the title character of the lord of the rings the lord of the rings is of course sauron he forged the one ring to control all the others and although we feel his presence everywhere in the books we never actually see him we catch a couple of glimpses of the eye of sauron which we'll come on to in a bit and a partial description from gollum who is hardly the most reliable of witnesses but that's it so what did he look like it's led many to wonder whether he even had a physical form the answer of course starts in the mists of time early in the silmarillion before middle-earth even began sauron was one of the maya the spiritual beings who aided the valar he was immortal and could take on different physical forms at will he seemed to have used this ability quite a lot in the early days and not just keeping to human form in the tales of baron and luthien in the first age of middle-earth we read of him turning himself into a mighty werewolf to fight huan the hound of valinor huan and luthien defeated him in combat at which point we read that then sauron shifted shape from wolf to serpent and from monster to his own accustomed form and then he took the form of a vampire great as a dark cloud across the moon his own accustomed form seems to have been much like a man that's how he appeared most of the time but vampire werewolf serpent human he seems to have been quite appearance fluid shall we say by the time the second age came around he was hatching his cunning plan of making and distributing rings around the peoples of middle earth and he appeared to the elves as anata the lord of gifts we don't have a full description of anata other than that he appears to have been l for human-like and of fair hue which is a very tolkienish way of saying he looked beautiful he certainly didn't seem to give off much of an aura of evilness to calibrimbor and the other elves of aragion when he forged rings with them then at the end of the second age when his plans with the rings had gone awry and he was then trying to bring numenor down from within we read that he appeared as a man or one in man's shape but greater than any even of the race of numenor in stature and it seemed to mend that sauron was great though they feared the light of his eyes to many he appeared fair to others terrible but to some evil so this sounds like yet another human form he took on it's this form that we will almost certainly see in the forthcoming lord of the rings tv show but that's not the end of sauron's physical changes when numenor was destroyed he was destroyed with it or at least his physical body was his spirit survived and made its way back to middle earth we read in the silmarillion that sauron was not of mortal flesh and though he was robbed now of that shape in which he had wrought so great and evil so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of men yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea and came back to middle earth and to mordor that was his home there he took up again his great ring in 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 sour on the terrible few could endure this is the sauron we saw in the flashback at the very beginning of the lord of the rings movies of a tall imposing figure wielding a massive mace against the armies of elves and men as we know that ended in defeat for sauron again and the ring was cut from his hand last time he lost his body he took some time a few short years building a physical appearance for himself again but this time without his ring it took much much longer we read that he forsook his body and his spirit fled far away and hid in waste places and he took no visible shape again for many long years indeed it seems to have been more than a thousand years before he could take up any physical shape at which point he based himself in the stronghold of dolgoldur in southern merkwood known only as the necromancer there's some tooing and throwing there as he grows in strength flees then returns then flees again this time to mordor but it's clear that through this time sauron was rebuilding his strength including his bodily form he was hampered by not having the ring but he definitely was a physical being by the time of the lord of the rings not just a spiritual one remember when gollum was captured in mordor before the lord of the rings he was tortured apparently by sauron personally and he remembered that sauron had only four fingers on the black hand one having been chopped off by isildu or all that time ago this makes complete sense of course his bodily death at the destruction of numenor took from him the ability to change his form at will so the body he rebuilt as it were in the third age looked the same as the one that faced allendyl gilgalad and isildur all that time ago right down to only having four fingers on one hand and thankfully we do have a description of this physical appearance from tolkien himself in one of his letters 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 demeanor and countenance so what did sauron look like like a large human terrible to behold a dark lord in appearance as well as nature but he didn't always look like that beforehand he still looked commanding or inspiring but could look beautiful he wanted to take over the world by guile and manipulation not just by conquering it and his appearance matched that and sometimes he took on other shapes whatever he needed or wanted at the time but what links all of this his eye or eyes right back in the first age we're told that he had daunting eyes in the second age that some feared the light in his eyes and in the third age the symbols used to represent him again and again are the black hand and the red eye it's one of the greatest visuals of peter jackson's films how they show the eye of sauron as a representation of him it appears in the books too frodo sees it in the mirror of galadriel the eye was rimmed with fire but it was itself glazed yellow as a cat's watchful and intent and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit a window into nothing it is perhaps this that makes us wonder whether sauron is physically there or just a spirit just an eye but we should be in no doubt that sauron was a physical being during the lord of the rings the orcs and others often talk of him being able to go from place to place and gollum saw him in person the fact that we don't see him in person is therefore in my view a deliberate literary decision on tolkien's part not ever seeing or fully understanding the main antagonist of the story just ramps up the fear and uneasiness of the journey into mordor where is he what does he look like what is he capable of it's why horror films tend not to show the monster or baddie until near the end trying to keep the audience jumping at shadows fear of the unknown can be much more visceral than knowing your enemy tolkien takes this one step further by never showing us the enemy fully we see sauron's influence everywhere we feel his eyes searching but the threat is never given true form this also allowed tolkien to place sauron as a more conceptual evil that must be defeated rather than just a stereotypical evil villain and the story is undoubtedly better for it what did saron look like at one time great and powerful and beautiful and at another great and powerful and terrible evil has many faces if you'd like to see more lord of the rings videos please click on the link on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some content i produce exclusively for my patrons please click on the link on the right of your screen that's all for this time thanks for watching and i'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

Views: 639,634

Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, lord of the rings, the lord of the rings, lotr, sauron, what did sauron look like, sauron appears, does sauron have a body, eye of sauron

Id: XjDQ5k_nBQI

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021