XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name@mail.its.in.danmark
"Eruvatar" skrev i meddelelsen
news:4f709fa6$0$8496$c3e8da3$cc4fe22d@news.astraweb.com...
> Question: When Numenore was destroyed along with the Numenorean fleet
> Sauron went down into the Abyss where his pleasing human guise was
> destroyed and he from what I have read took on a new and terrible form
> rather quickly but after the ring was cut from his finger by Isildur it
> took him around 2500 years to regain any sort of shape. Why would there
> be such a disparity in the length of time needed to take shape between
> these seperate instances?Just wondering.
Two reasons are given. One is that an Ainu may take on a body in two
ways: as a raiment, to be discarded without much effort when no longer
needed, and as a true body. There is a bit of a sliding scale between the
two. The latter happens when the Ainu actually uses the body for more than
just show. Begetting children is one thing that ties an Ainu closely to the
body. Working evil is another, and that's what Sauron very much did with
his, as did Morgoth. Both became not only tied to their bodies, but they
lost the power to shape their bodies as they pleased: they became fixed in
the hideous and terrifying shapes that were reflections of their evil
efforts. The Istari were on purpose clothed in bodies of the latter sort:
real, not feigned.
When such a body is destroyed by a violence, much of the power that went
into building it is gone. Thus Sauron became weaker each time he died.
When he formed a new body after Akallabęth he still had a good deal of
strength left. Next time over he had less strength left and therefore a
harder time of it.
The second reason is the Ring. It anchored him to the world. When he
died in the Akallabęth he managed to take the Ring with him back to
Middle-earth - Tolkien explicitly states this in one of his letters. Aided
by the Ring, at the time in his actual possession, his re-shaping went much
quicker and smoother than the next time, when the Ring still existed but he
was no longer in possession of it.
This also explains why Sauron could be expected never to take shape again
at all after his last death. After his deaths at the Akallabęth, the Last
Alliance *and* now the War of the Rings, he had spent even more of the
strength that was native to him; and the Ring was not only removed from his
possession but unmade altogether.
Kirina.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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