Did Sauron Die When the One Ring was Destroyed?

Q: Did Sauron Die When the One Ring was Destroyed?

ANSWER: Yes, Sauron died a physical death of the body, the same as any Elf, Man, Hobbit, Orc, Troll, Oliphaunt, horse, or other creature died in Middle-earth. There are people who argue in semantic quibbles, attempting to distinguish between Sauron’s death and any other death in Middle-earth, but these arguments are based on false logic and in some cases deliberate attempts to reimagine the story.

One of the worst arguments is Helge Fauskanger’s statement that “Sauron did not actually ‘die’ when the Ring was destroyed, but he was so horribly maimed and reduced that he could never again be any threat.”  This is complete and utter nonsense.

J.R.R. Tolkien himself speaks of death within Middle-earth in many different terms and contexts, but he never distinguishes between the death of any living creature from the death of any self-incarnated creature.  The author establishes in no uncertain terms that:

1. Valar and Maiar “clothe” themselves in organic bodies
2. Maiar do experience physical death
3. Sauron’s body was destroyed multiple times
4. He was reduced to a spirit (bodiless)

The conclusion that Sauron died several times is inescapable when you examine the facts cited below unless you fall back upon the “Uzi Rule”, which is a false logical argument predicated on the absence of a denial from the author using specific words (e.g., “Tolkien never said the Orcs did not carry Uzis so they must have all been armed with submachine guns”).

For example, in Letter No. 156 (a draft) Tolkien wrote to Robert Murray, SJ:

Gandalf really ‘died’, and was changed: for that seems to me the only real cheating, to represent anything that can be called ‘death’ as making no difference. ‘I am G. the White, who has returned from death’. Probably he should rather have said to Wormtongue: ‘I have not passed through death (not ‘fire and flood’) to bandy crooked words with a serving-man’. And so on. I might say much more, but it would only be in (perhaps tedious) elucidation of the ‘mythological’ ideas in my mind; it would not, I fear, get rid of the fact that the return of G. is as presented in this book a ‘defect’, and one I was aware of, and probably did not work hard enough to mend. But G. is not, of course, a human being (Man or Hobbit). There are naturally no precise modern terms to say what he was. I wd. venture to say that he was an incarnate ‘angel’– strictly an γγελος:2 that is, with the other Istari, wizards, ‘those who know’, an emissary from the Lords of the West, sent to Middle-earth, as the great crisis of Sauron loomed on the horizon. By ‘incarnate’ I mean they were embodied in physical bodies capable of pain, and weariness, and of afflicting the spirit with physical fear, and of being ‘killed’, though supported by the angelic spirit they might endure long, and only show slowly the wearing of care and labour.

As he quotes himself from the book, even Gandalf tells other characters that he died (“passed through death”) without saying the exact words “I died”.

In Letter No. 200 addressed to Major R. Bowen in 1957 Tolkien wrote:

I note your remarks about Sauron. He was always de-bodied when vanquished. The theory, if one can dignify the modes of the story with such a term, is that he was a spirit, a minor one but still an ‘angelic’ spirit. According to the mythology of these things that means that, though of course a creature, he belonged to the race of intelligent beings that were made before the physical world, and were permitted to assist in their measure in the making of it. Those who became most involved in this work of Art, as it was in the first instance, became so engrossed with it, that when the Creator made it real (that is, gave it the secondary reality, subordinate to his own, which we call primary reality, and so in that hierarchy on the same plane with themselves) they desired to enter into it, from the beginning of its ‘realization’.

They were allowed to do so, and the great among them became the equivalent of the ‘gods’ of traditional mythologies; but a condition was that they would remain ‘in it’ until the Story was finished. They were thus in the world, but not of a kind whose essential nature is to be physically incarnate. They were self-incarnated, if they wished; but their incarnate forms were more analogous to our clothes than to our bodies, except that they were more than are clothes the expression of their desires, moods, wills and functions. Knowledge of the Story as it was when composed, before realization, gave them their measure of fore-knowledge; the amount varied very much, from the fairly complete knowledge of the mind of the Creator in this matter possessed by Manwë, the ‘Elder King’, to that of lesser spirits who might have been interested only in some subsidiary matter (such as trees or birds). Some had attached themselves to such major artists and knew things chiefly indirectly through their knowledge of the minds of these masters. Sauron had been attached to the greatest, Melkor, who ultimately became the inevitable Rebel and self-worshipper of mythologies that begin with a transcendent unique Creator. Olórin (Vol II p. 279) had been attached to Manwë.

And in Letter No. 245 Tolkien responded to Rhona Beare’s question “What happened to Elves when they died in battle?” by writing:

As for the Elves. Even in these legends we see the Elves mainly through the eyes of Men. It is in any case clear that neither side was fully informed about the ultimate destiny of the other. The Elves were sufficiently longeval to be called by Man ‘immortal’. But they were not unageing or unwearying. Their own tradition was that they were confined to the limits of this world (in space and time), even if they died, and would continue in some form to exist in it until ‘the end of the world’. But what ‘the end of the world’ portended for it or for themselves they did not know (though they no doubt had theories). Neither had they of course any special information concerning what ‘death’ portended for Men. They believed that it meant ‘liberation from the circles of the world’, and was in that respect to them enviable. And they would point out to Men who envied them that a dread of ultimate loss, though it may be indefinitely remote, is not necessarily the easier to bear if it is in the end ineluctably certain: a burden may become heavier the longer it is borne.

Here he casually says “even if they died”, and yet you’ll find many people who argue that Elves do not truly “die” because their spirits remain within Space and Time.

In Tolkien’s fiction death has nothing to do with where the spirit goes after the body dies. Death is what happens to the body, not to the spirit. In his long letter to Milton Waldman, Tolkien said “The Second Age ends with the Last Alliance (of Elves and Men), and the great siege of Mordor. It ends with the overthrow of Sauron and destruction of the second visible incarnation of evil.” And also “Isildur, Elendil’s son, cuts the ring from Sauron’s hand, and his power departs, and his spirit flees into the shadows.” At this point in the story, Sauron was dead. He also died when Numenor was destroyed. Each time his body was destroyed he died, and only when the Ring was destroyed was he reduced to such a weakened state that he would never be able to self-incarnate again. Sauron could never “live” in Space and Time again. And we can look at Letter No. 200 again, where Tolkien wrote:

It was because of this pre-occupation with the Children of God that the spirits so often took the form and likeness of the Children, especially after their appearance. It was thus that Sauron appeared in this shape. It is mythologically supposed that when this shape was ‘real’, that is a physical actuality in the physical world and not a vision transferred from mind to mind, it took some time to build up. It was then destructible like other physical organisms. But that of course did not destroy the spirit, nor dismiss it from the world to which it was bound until the end. After the battle with Gilgalad and Elendil, Sauron took a long while to re-build, longer than he had done after the Downfall of Númenor (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). The impossibility of re-building after the destruction of the Ring, is sufficiently clear ‘mythologically’ in the present book.

Finally, in Letter No. 211 Tolkien addressed the point again where he wrote:

Sauron was first defeated by a ‘miracle’: a direct action of God the Creator, changing the fashion of the world, when appealed to by Manwë: see III p. 317. Though reduced to ‘a spirit of hatred borne on a dark wind’, I do not think one need boggle at this spirit carrying off the One Ring, upon which his power of dominating minds now largely depended. That Sauron was not himself destroyed in the anger of the One is not my fault: the problem of evil, and its apparent toleration, is a permanent one for all who concern themselves with our world. The indestructibility of spirits with free wills, even by the Creator of them, is also an inevitable feature, if one either believes in their existence, or feigns it in a story…

Many of the same people who argue that Sauron did not really die also cite extensively from Tolkien’s discussion of the Elvish fëa (spirit) and hröa, in which he speaks at great length about how Elves experienced (physical) death (of the body) and what it meant for them. But he never leaves an exception for the death of any character. There is only one type of death in Middle-earth, where the body is slain or expires, but there are many different types of spirits, of which those of Men (and Hobbits) depart and “seek elsewhere”.

You cannot be reduced to a mere spirit, as Sauron was, without first experiencing a physical death (of your body).

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