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Volume 4 Number 1 Article 1

9-15-1976

Sauron is Watching You: The Role of the Great Eye in

Edward Lense

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Recommended Citation Lense, Edward (1976) " 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

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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, , sense of being constantly watched by terrible eyes is an , and even Ores seem almost fam iliar compared to such important part of the texture of life in iddle-earth. Sau­ beings as or ; they form a bridge between ron's (or Balor's) Eye is, then, both a link to Celtic 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. 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 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 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 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, is, essentially, a Celtic hell to 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 , 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. C. L. Brown describes it: itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and Some distinguishing marks of the tower of the intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened dead in European tradition are known. It is on a pit, a window into nothing. (I, 471) made of glass or iron; it has iron doors; it is Sauron's Eye is "terrible," but it is not terrible merely occasionally adorned with human heads stuck on because it is a weapon (although it i s a powerful weapon): pikes; it is beyond a terrible river or is cut rather, it is a "window into nothing," the opening into the off by marshes or thickets.5 abyss, an emblem of ultim ate despair. He and the other evil The marshes in this case are the , which, as you beings of the work are eaten up with hatred of the living: would expect, are haunted by the ghosts of warriors slain in damned themselves, they want to be avenged for their fall by battle. They form the barrier that heroes must cross to get dragging the rest of the world down with them. The fire or into the supernatural realm, and, like Mordor itself, they the cold light of their eyes is Tolkien's (very traditional) are physically real and part of this world, yet full of a way of expressing their rage and hatred. Sauron's Eye is so power that makes them otherwordly at the same time, like much worse than Balor's, then, because Balor is merely a Lothlorien and Imladris. The tower of the dead is repre­ figure of death, Sauron of damnation. That is why when sented both by Minas Morgul with its wavering corpse-light Frodo felt the Eye as he stood on Amon Hen, hundreds of and revolving turret, and, of course, the Dark Tower, the miles from Mordor, he "lost all hope": facing Balor's eye in "mountains of iron" in the heart of Mordor. In any case, a battle must have been unnerving as well as dangerous, but topography is not tne only sign that Mordor is a land of the facing Sauron's despair and his power at the same time would dead: even though it is peopled with living men from the be immeasurably worse. South and East and with Ores, its rulers are spirits of the Sauron is utterly cruel, and the Eye is also an emblem dead. Sauron himself has died twice already and is hardly of that cruelty, itself part of his despair. The Captain of in this world at all, and his chief servants, the NazgQl, the NazgQl uses its terror to threaten Eowyn before the are, like the barrow-wight and the oath-breakers, dead men gates of Minas T irith: under powerful spells. Tolkien even uses the word "undead" Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or in reference to the Captain of the Ringwraiths. he w ill not slay thee in thy turn. He w ill It appears that Sauron's deformed body and his role as bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, king of the land of the dead make him analogous to a king of beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be th e F o m o ir e like Balor, who ruled the dead from a tower of devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked glass. But the definitive link between them is the evil to the Lidless Eye. (Ill, 141) eye. Brown thought of Balor as "a personification of the evil eye or of death,"6 and the evil eye is certainly the All of Sauron's malice is concentrated in the image of the most formidable thing about him. The Irish saga of "The Lidless Eye. In this case the eye is an instrument of tor­ Second Battle of Moytura" describes it as something of an ture; in the Mirror of it shows intense anxiety, ultim ate weapon: as it restlessly seeks out Galadriel to destroy her. When An evil eye had Balor. That eye was never Frodo feels it on Amon Hen, he is aware of the same destruc­ opened save only on a battle-field. Four men t i v e w i l l : used to lift up the lid of the eye with a pol­ And suddenly he felt the Eye. There was an eye ished handle through its lid. If an army in the Dark Tower that did not sleep. He knew looked at that eye, though they were many thou­ that it had become aware of his gaze. A fierce sands in number they could not resist [a few) eager w ill was there. It leaped towards him; w a r r io r s .7 almost like a finger he felt it, searching for him. (I, 519) lantine, 1965), II, 395. Further references, noted in the But, most of all, the Eye embodies Sauron's power. It can text, are to this edition. search out Frodo from hundreds of miles away, and "leap 4See Sandra L. M ie s e l, "Some M o tifs and S o u rces fo r Lord towards him" so effectively that its presence is almost pal­ of the Rings," Riverside Quarterly, 3:2, 127, and Paul H. pable; its great power is even more evident when Frodo feels K ocher, Haster of Hiddle-earth: The Fiction of J . R. R. T o l­ it again in the Dead Marshes on the borders of Sauron's k ie n (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1972), p. 12. re a lm : 5 A. C. L. Brown, "Arthur's Loss of Queen and Kingdom," S peculum , 15:1 (January 1940), 3-4. The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hos­ 6 Ibid., p. 6. tile w ill that strove with great power to ’ Whitley Stokes, trans., "The Second Battle of Moytura," Revue Celtique, 12 (1891), 101. 8 Stokes, trans., "The Second Battle of Moytura," p. 101.

4 pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and been important to Tolkien; he used the same image a little flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its later, in ' account of the march of the oath- deadly gaze, naked, immovable. (II, 301) breakers, in which, after 's victory at Umbar, the host of the Dead "stood silent, hardly to be seen, save for This image, which occurs several times in the work, is a red gleam in their eyes that caught the glare of the ships already a great expansion on Balor's eye: Tolkien has trans­ that they were burning" (III, 187). This particular detail formed it from a straightforward emblem of death into a com­ of the ships is, I think, the most frightening image of the pelling symbol of power and hatred, a piercing force that Dead that Tolkien presents, and it is certainly a fitting wants to strip its enemies naked and destroy them. Had he one, since that army is made up of evil ghosts; it is an left it at that, it would have been a convincing expression integral part of the horror of Mordor even though Aragorn of Sauron's evil w ill. But he went on to tie almost all of uses it against Sauron. the evil beings of Middle-earth together by giving them The ghostly eyes of the Witch-king and the other dead lesser versions of the Great Eye, so that a reader is con­ men may be terrified and chilling, but, aside from the Great fronted with its terrible image again and again in many dif­ Eye itself, no evil character's eyes can match 's for ferent forms. sheer gaudiness. Gollum's eyes glowed with a pale or green Sauron's eye is burning, "rimmed with fire," and so are flame even in The : the eyes of other evil creatures, no doubt because they feel something of his rage. Grishnakh, for example, though he is As suspicion grew in Gollum's mind, the light merely an ore and not an evil spirit, has eyes that flame up of his eyes burned with a pale flame. when he suspects that the is within his grasp: "His fingers continued to grope. There was a light like a pale He [Bilbo] turned now and saw Gollum's eyes like but hot fire behind his eyes" (II, 73). Shelob, an evil small green lamps coming up the slope.9 spirit in spider form, has eyes that are much more formida­ b le : In , where there are over a dozen references to the light in his eyes, the two colors even seem to cor­ Not far down the tunnel, between them [Frodo respond to his moods: a pale light indicates that he is rel­ and Sam] and the opening where they had reeled atively happy, a green light that he is upset. At times he and stumbled, he [Frodo] was aware of eyes looks like a traffic light. When he is debating within him­ growing visible, two great clusters of many- self whether or not to betray Frodo and Sam, for example, windowed eyes—the coming menace was unmasked the lights switch back and forth rapidly (II, 303). Or, at last. The radiance of the star-glass was again, when Frodo traps him at the Forbidden Pool, he is broken and thrown back from their thousand glad at first: "He came close to Frodo, almost nose to nose, facets, but behind the glitter a pale deadly and sniffed at him. His pale eyes were shining." But then, fire began steadily to glow within, a flame "suddenly he turned back. A green light was flickering in kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. his bulging eyes. 'Masster, m asster!' he hissed. 'Wicked' Monstrous and abominable eyes they were.... Tricksy! False!"' (II, 376). ( I I , 419) The strange lights in Gollum's eyes are not merely decoration, but emblems of the evil that the Ring has cre­ Shelob, like Sauron in the Mirror of Galadriel, is reduced ated in him. Once he had been a hobbit, more or less like by metonymy into "monstrous and abominable eyes": the rest Frodo and Sam, and there is certainly no reason to think of her spider-like body is invisible and, at the moment, that his eyes flashed green and yellow t h e n . Rather, the seems almost irrelevant. Her greed and malice are the fire horror of his eyes, as of his whole physical appearance, is behind her eyes, and that fire is far more awful than the something external to him. The Ring has destroyed him, but mechanical horror of her body. even so it is possible at times to see the old Smeagol The fell light of such beings is not necessarily a within the ruined Gollum. When that happens, when the evil flame, though; since evil beings in the work are essentially of the Ring is muted, the light can vanish along with his lifeless, it is appropriate that their eyes should often hatreds. The only time Tolkien describes this change is the have a cold gleam, something like the chilling little flames scene on the stairs of C irith Ungol, where for a moment Gol­ and corpse-lights of the Dead Marshes. These pallid lights lum is at peace watching the ' quiet sleep: are like weak reflections of the flames in Sauron's Eye. The barrow-wight is typical: "He [Frodo] thought there were two eyes, very cold though lit with a pale light that seemed Gollum looked at them. A strange expression to come from some remote distance" (I, 193). after passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam his fall is much the same; noted that "in his eyes faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. (II, 411) there seemed to be a white light, as if a cold laughter was in his heart" (I, 338). Unlike such entirely evil beings as Sauron and Shelob, Gol­ The Ringwraiths' eyes are less closely described, which lum can change, and the signal for his recovery of himself is natural enough since they are invisible. But, again, the is that the light fades from his eyes; because the evil is terror of their Captain's presence is concentrated in his not really part of him as he was in the beginning, he can be eyes. In the only scene in which the narrator is close to "cured" still, as Gandalf often insists. But the cure is him, as he stands on the Pelennor Fields confronting Eowyn, fragile, and here, when Sam at his most boorish broke the the hidden eyes are the most terrifying thing about him: "A peaceful mood, Gollum "withdrew him self, and a green glint crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was flickered under his heavy lids." there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes: the Lord of All of these evil eyes, even Gollum's, are basically the NazgQl" (II, 141). His first act is to deliver to fiowyn lesser versions of Sauron's Eye, and are lighted by the same his speech about how "thy flesh shall be devoured, and they evil will for power that drives him. Not only do they shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye." On the resemble his Eye in physical appearance, but, taken next two pages, Eowyn "raised her shield against the horror together, they are as ubiquitous as his. It seems that no of her enemy's eyes"; Merry, nearby, "hardly dared to move, matter where you go or what you do in M iddle-earth, you will dreading lest the deadly eyes should fall on him"; and the inevitably find yourself confronting someone like GrishnSkh great Nazgul, preparing (as he thought), to finish off or Gollum, or, if you are really unlucky, Sauron himself. Eowyn, "bent over her like a cloud, and his eyes glittered." Frodo, exposed to the Eye because he is carrying the Ring, It would be strange anywhere but in The Lord o f the Rings feels the powerful hostile will that strives to "pin you that these eyes, visible only as a g litter, should be the under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable," but, while he is most terrifying thing in such a scene. Other writers would more subject to this feeling than anyone else in the work, surely stress the more spectacular images here: the over­ he is not alone in his feeling that he is being watched, whelming darkness, the flying , the Nazgul's empty that invisible eyes are trying to get at him. This sense robes, the fires and clamor and ruin of the battle all begins with his feeling of lurking danger just before he around. But it is characteristic of Tolkien that the hyp­ leaves Bag End, and continues steadily through his long notic eyes should impress and cow Merry and Eowyn more than all the rest, and that Tolkien himself should return to them 9 J . R. R. T o lk ie n , : or, There and Back Again, so consistently. Those glittering ghostly eyes seem to have Revised Edition (New York: Ballantine, 1966), pp. 89-90. 5 journey. S till, his and Sam's experiences as they approach of watchfulness is acute. Mordor is not the only land that Mordor demonstrate this sense of dreadful watchfulness most has eyes: there are spies everywhere, ruthless and effi­ clearly, because Mordor is full of watchful eyes. It is an cient, and there are also barrow-wights, ores, and even evil place, and, in The Lord o f the Rings, part of the malign willow- watching you and waiting to get you. It definition of an evil place is that it is watching you. is not much of an exaggeration to say that large parts of Frodo's first reaction to Mordor as he approaches it, The Lord o f the Rings read like the record of a paranoiac's but is still far away, sets up the recurring image of the delusions. This paranoid vision is not entirely a matter of Shadow itself as an eye, an eye powerful enough to spot him terrible eyes that fill the world: they are dreadful in them- even as he climbs down from the Emyn Muil: themselves, but also reminders that Frodo, Aragorn, Gandalf, I wish [he says] we could get away from these and their companions are in constant danger. In a sense, how hills! I hate them. I feel all naked on the however, no reminders are ever necessary, since the plot'of east side, stuck up here with nothing but the the work is, in the simplest terms, a story of flight and dead flats between me and that Shadow yonder. pursuit. It is true that the direction of flight is to w a r d There's an Eye in it. (II, 267) the pursuers, but it is flight nonetheless, from the moment when Frodo first hides from a Black Rider in the middle of Of course the Eye is Sauron's own, looking out sleeplessly until he finally stands exposed to the Eye at the from the Dark Tower. But it is not the only eye in Mordor. edge of the Crack of Doom. The complexities of the strug­ There are also the NazgQl overhead: "While the grey light gles, battles, marches, and bluffs that Gandalf sets up are lasted, they cowered under a black stone like worms, shrink­ only devices to keep the Eye looking in the wrong places; ing, lest the winged terror should pass and spy them with Gandalf, especially, sometimes seems like a madman who spends its cruel eyes" (II, 301). all his time constructing elaborate plots to keep his enemies Even aside from the patrolling Ringwraiths, Mordor has off balance. He is given to saying things like, "His Eye is other sentries. The Black Gate is a nest of eyes, its two now straining toward us, blind almost to all else that is watch-towers "full of sleepless eyes" (II, 308). Even moving" (III, 191). One of the things it is blind to, as after Frodo and Sam leave the Gate, defeated, to look for Gandalf intends, is the fact that Frodo is approaching Mount another way into Mordor, "for many miles the red eye seemed Doom to unmake the Ring. It is characteristic of Sauron to stare at them as they fled" (II, 324). But Minas Morgul, that he should be looking in the wrong place, but it is also the haunted city, is no better. warns them against characteristic that he should be looking with great intens­ it, calling it "a place of sleepless malice, full of lidless i t y . eyes" (II, 382), and their sight of the place bears him out: The sense of watchfulness that Gandalf is referring to starts very early in The Fellowship o f the Ring-, long before In the walls and tower windows showed, like anything seems to have happened, Bilbo starts to worry countless black holes looking inward into empti­ because his gold ring has been "growing on my mind lately. ness; but the topmost course of the tower revolved slowly, first one way and then another, Sometimes I have felt it was like an eye looking at me" (I, 61). This is the kind of remark that leads to kind sugges­ a huge ghostly head leering into the night. (II, 397) tions about taking a nice long rest, but after this point there is no rest or escape from threatening eyes until the The holes "looking inward into emptiness" recall the des­ Ring has gone into the fire. Under the strain of constant cription of Sauron's Eye in the Mirror of Galadriel; it is surveillance, the Company come to seem far more paranoid the same force and the same inner emptiness that makes these than Bilbo. Aragorn dives to the ground when he sees a windows so sinister. flock of crows, as if they were fighter planes; Frodo sees Once Frodo and Sam are in Mordor, the sense of being even the moon over as "a watchful eye" (I, 359); watched is even more acute. The windows of the Black Gate Sam sees "a log with eyes" floating down the Anduin (I, and of Minas Morgul are bad enough, but they cannot match 495). From such beginnings the tension increases steadily the Silent Watchers who guard the pass of Cirith Ungol. throughout the work as one evil being after another appears, These Watchers, at first, seem -to be merely symbolic guard­ always with chilling or burning eyes, and, most of all, as ians, like the stone lions in front of the New York Public Frodo repeatedly feels the power of Sauron's Eye that is Library. But they are a good deal more than that: they are always at the point of finding him out. The pressure of alive in their own mysterious way, and guard the pass by imminent discovery becomes intense during the last journey their w ill. Sam discovers their malice when he takes a good into Mordor, and reaches its climax when the Eye finally, look at them: but too late, sees Frodo: The monstrous Watchers sat there cold and s till, The was suddenly aware of him, and revealed in all their hideous shape. For a his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the moment Sam caught a glitter in the black stones plain to the door that he had made; and the of their eyes, the very malice of which made him magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him quail,... (III, 218) in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. (Ill, 275) It is natural that Sam should feel that something is strange when he* sees the glitter in their eyes, since no one (espe­ Tolkien's phrasing is unusually ironic here: Sauron's cially Sam) expects statues' eyes to glitter. The fact that belated understanding of what has been going on comes to him the statues are Watchers makes it even more appropriate that in a "blinding flash," but he has actually been blind all their hostile will should emanate most of all, as it seems, along. The things that make his Eye terrible are the things from their eyes. Nonetheless, it is striking that Tolkien" that lead to his fall: the malice that makes him look out should choose this particular image: just as he stresses the from his own land toward enemies that he wants to destroy, glint of the Nazgul's eyes during the fight with Eowyn, so the anxiety that makes him look only for armies which can here he concentrates the horror of the Watchers on their d e s tr o y h im by brute force (the only power he really under­ black glittering eyes rather than (as other writers might) stands), the despair that makes Frodo's love for the Shire, in their awesome size, their vulture-like faces, or their and his willing self-sacrifice, incomprehensible. As a great stone claws. result of his blindness, then, Sauron is defeated and passes Almost all of the eyes of Mordor are especially eerie into the void, and the evil eyes that have been such an because they are like the eyes of skulls: they are windows important part of the texture of Middle-earth vanish with in deserted towers, the openings of caves, the stone eyes of him. He does no better than Balor in his last battle: Balor the Silent Watchers. This kind of imagery complements the died because his eye was better as a target than as a burning or chilling eyes of spirits like Shelob and the weapon, Sauron because his Eye could see everything except barrow-wight, and, further, intensifies the imagery of Mor­ what really mattered. dor as a land of the dead. At the same time, of course, the The Eye failed Sauron, but it did not fail Tolkien. His presence of so many unpleasant eyes creates a strong sense skill in building up a simple motif from an obscure saga of dread, a feeling that the watchers will see you at any resulted in one of his most persuasive and memorable images: moment and destroy you. the Eye is not only all that a reader needs (or wants) to Frodo and Sam feel this dread most intensely on the last see of Sauron, but an effective emblem of all the dread and stages of their journey, but, while less intense, it is sense of menace that Sauron inspires in Middle-earth. And, present throughout most of the work. Even in The Fellowship most of all, it is a brilliant concrete representation of o f th e R in g , where the Company is far from Mordor, the sense the nature and power of absolute evil. 6