*

“You know of what I speak, Gandalf.

A great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame.”

*

I recall struggling to formulate this image when first reading Tolkien’s masterpiece.

Even with the help of the cover illustrations it seemed to me then an incredibly ‘difficult’ adversary to picture.

Subsequent artists and filmakers have done a pretty decent job of making the image real and sufficiently menacing.

But what of the symbolism?

What can it mean that Sauron only ever appears as an eye?

*

Continue reading at Stuart France