Volume 4 Number 1 Article 1 9-15-1976 Sauron is Watching You: The Role of the Great Eye in The Lord of the Rings Edward Lense Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Lense, Edward (1976) "Sauron is Watching You: The Role of the Great Eye in The Lord of the Rings," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 4 : No. 1 , Article 1. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol4/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Finds a source for the Eye of Sauron, and other representations of baleful eyes in Tolkien’s work (“one of the most pervasive and compelling patterns of imagery”), in the Celtic mythological figure Balor of the Evil Eye. Additional Keywords Balor of the Evil Eye (figure in Celtic mythology); Celtic mythology; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Sauron; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Knowledge—Celtic mythology; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings—Symbolism This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol4/iss1/1 Sauron is Watching You: The Role of the Great Eye in The Lord of the Rings by Edward Lense One OF THE GREATEST STRENGTHS OF The Lord of the Rings i s baleful eyes, copies of Sauron's Great Eye, are everywhere, Tolkien's use of figures from C eltic and Nordic mytholo­ and, naturally, make the good characters very nervous; the gies as inhabitants of his secondary world. Dwarves, Elves, sense of being constantly watched by terrible eyes is an Wizards, and even Ores seem almost fam iliar compared to such important part of the texture of life in M iddle-earth. Sau­ beings as Shelob or Treebeard; they form a bridge between ron's (or Balor's) Eye is, then, both a link to Celtic myth the traditions of the primary world and the realities of and the center of one of the most pervasive and compelling Tolkien's secondary world. However, Tolkien did not confine patterns of imagery in The Lord o f the Rings. himself to such well-known figures. He was, as a Medieval­ Balor is a central character in the oldest forms of Cel­ ist, fam iliar with many more arcane legendary characters, so tic (especially Irish) mythology, but he is almost as elu­ well-acquainted with them that his imagination could work on sive a figure as Sauron him self, since he is mentioned only them as naturally as if he talked to them every day. Beorn occasionally in the sagas. He was a king of the F o m o ir e , an i n The H obbit, for example, is a character in his own right, evil race who ruled Ireland until they were defeated by the and never seems to be an echo of Norse mythology;1 in any Tuatha De Danaan , a godlike race who strongly resemble Tol­ case, Tolkien has imagined him so thoroughly that even when kien's Elves. The F o m o ire in general were a great deal like a reader is aware of his origin he remains a living charac­ Sauron as he appeared in the Third Age; that is, they were ter. Sauron, too, is not a figure from mythology under a evil spirits who took on hideously deformed bodies. new name, but a character imagined by Tolkien; nonetheless, Although the legends about them are fragmentary and con­ it is clear that he is modeled on Balor of the Evil Eye, one fused, one thing is clear: every Fomorian had one arm, one of the most unpleasant figures in Celtic mythology, whom he leg, and one eye.1 2 The only physical representation of Sau­ closely resembles in almost every way. ro n i n The Lord of the Rings , a bust executed by the Ores It seems unlikely that Tolkien intended his readers to and put on an old statue, looks exactly like the head of a recognize Balor in the character of Sauron, since such a F o m o ria n : recognition adds little to the story. It is more likely that the Irish legends about Balor "inspired" Tolkien by Its [the statue's] head was gone, and in its giving him the images he needed to build up his own figure place was set in mockery a round rough-hewn of absolute evil. In particular, tradition gave Tolkien the stone, rudely painted by savage hands in the Evil Eye, the most striking feature of both Balor and Sau­ likeness of a grinning face with one large red ron. Further, the Great Eye and its lesser counterparts eye in the midst of its forehead.3 served him as convincing emblems of evil (all the negative characters have really nasty eyes), and as a wav of creating a strong sense of dread thoughout the work. Burning and 2Aiwyn and Brinley Rees, C eltic Heritage (London: Thames and Hudson), p . 40. For further information about Balor, see Alexander Haggerty Krappe, Balor With the Evil Eye: 1 John Arnott MacCulloch, ed ., The Mythology o f A ll Races (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1930), II, 293. Studies in C eltic and French Literature (New York, 1927) . 3J. R. R. T o lk ien , The Lord of the Rings (New York: B a l- 3 This is not the only way in which Sauron resembles the This eye, even allowing for the hyperbole of Celtic sagas, F o m o ir e . That race lived in deformed bodies because they is obviously supernatural, like Sauron's. It was also the were evil, and the reason Sauron is so horrible to look at source of Balor's strength, and the evil power that made the is the same. His outward form, which can only be guessed at F o m o ir e successful in battle. When Balor died, killed by a aside from the Eye, reflects his true nature in a way that stone slung through the eye, his army disintegrated—prod­ his original, beautiful body did not: ded along by the way the eye came out the back of Balor's head and killed twenty-seven of his own w arriors.8 The Sauron was indeed caught in the wreck of Nume- effect is much the same as when Sauron's army scattered nor, so that the bodily form in which he long after the last battle at the Black Gate. had walked perished; but he fled back to Middle- The basic way in which Tolkien drew on Balor of the Evil earth, a spirit of hatred borne upon a dark Eye for Sauron the Great is quite clear, and, as I have men­ wind. He was unable ever again to assume a form tioned, it is hardly surprising that he should have used that seemed fair to men, but became black and such a model given his deep learning in Celtic mythology and hideous, and his power thereafter was through his ability to see legendary figures as living beings. But terror alone. (Ill, 393) the most interesting thing about this borrowing and re­ This change resembles that of Dore's illustrations for P a r a ­ working is not the ways in which Sauron resembles Balor but d i s e L o s t , in which Satan visibly decays from an archangel rather'the Ways in which, through Tolkien's imaginative use to the kind of hideous shape that Sauron and Balor share of his source, Sauron transends Balor as a figure of primal w ith him . 1 evil. The difference between them is clear if you compare Aside from his physical resemblance to Balor and the Balor's eye with the eye that appears in G aladriel's mirror: F o m o ir e , Sauron is the ruler of a land much like theirs. But suddenly the Mirror went altogether dark, Mordor is, essentially, a Celtic hell to match the Celtic as dark as if a hole had opened in the world of heaven of the Uttermost West. Several critics have already sight, and Frodo looked into emptiness. In the pointed out that the Undying Lands are based on Tir na nOg, black abyss there appeared a single Eye that the Land of Youth, the Celtic Earthly Paradise that lies in slowly grew, until it filled nearly all the the Atlantic, i.e ., in the farthest West.4 While not Mirror. So terrible was it that Frodo stood strictly a supernatural realm like Valinor, Mordor has, rooted, unable to cry out or to withdraw his nonetheless, all the marks of the traditional Land of the gaze. The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was Dead as A.