XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name@mail.its.in.danmark   
      
   "sean_q"  skrev i meddelelsen   
   news:jHedq.30649$oz6.5152@newsfe11.iad...   
      
   > So I can't imagine the most powerful and dangerous Creature   
   > in Middle Earth passively allowing some puny mortal to remove   
   > his black, hideous finger. He must have been held down by a crowd   
   > of Elves and/or Men, or tied up with Elven rope or some   
   > other restraint.   
      
      We know that in the last contest Gil-galad and Elendil died.  I strongly   
   presume that they and perhaps others, Isildur included, fought against   
   Sauron.  Sauron died, as far as an ainu can die.  Perhaps he died in the   
   same way as Gandalf on the mountaintop.  Perhaps that did not imply a sharp   
   and sudden severance between fëa and crippled hroa, but a more gradual   
   slipping of control of the latter by the former, and still a rather   
   traumatic experience.   
      He took Gil-galad and Elendil with him in death.  But what happened to   
   him after that was different from what happened to Gandalf after he died.   
   Isildur survived and cut the finger off Sauron's helpless body.  Had he not   
   done so it is possible that Sauron would have recovered in his body, or that   
   losing his body (AGAIN!) would have been less hurtful to him.  Certainly he   
   was badly crippled by losing the Ring to Isildur.  It might have been   
   comparable to a battlefield coup de grâce, where a dying or at least badly   
   wounded and helpless warrior is dispatched into finality as he is lying   
   there.   
      
   Corvus.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)