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I think that what's really at play here is Tolkien's 'ear' for language-games. There's a wonderful pun at work surely: the eye/I of Sauron, blazing out across the landscape. He's not able to manifest as a body but as an ego only. The lack of physicality and the overwhelming nature of his gazing self ("I") is in direct contrast to the intense physical suffering of Frodo (as his body is attacked by morgul blade, sting and starvation, then tooth) and the slow erosion of his own self, his own "I" which finally succumbs to the Ring. In the end of course, it is the humble "I/eye" of Frodo, which looks for and after others, that triumphs over the prideful "I/eye" of Sauron that wishes to call all other eyes to regarding its own gaze.
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Scribbling scrabbling.
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