Sympathy for the Devil?

[Mithadan]

One of the tragic themes of LoTR is the grief of the Ringbearers. A person's inability to possess or loss of the Ring is a supreme torment. The mere glimpse of the bauble leads Smeagol to murder his best friend in order to possess it. Bilbo, after carrying it for only a matter of hours, has it slip off his finger in front of a cadre of Orcs and his first instinct is neither to flee nor defend himself, but rather to search his pockets for the missing Ring. Gollum traverses the length and breadth of Middle Earth pursuing Bilbo and his lost Precious. Bilbo accuses Gandalf of trying to steal it after his Birthday Party. Gandalf fears to handle it. Galadriel lusts after it. Saruman is corrupted by his desire for it. It drives Boromir to near insanity. Gollum starves himself to near death first guiding Frodo and then chasing him through Mordor. Frodo, despite knowing that it is utterly evil and after a year's travel and efforts focused upon destroying it, cannot do so. Even after it is destroyed it torments him. The Ring becomes the focus and compulsion of all who have possessed it and deeply affects even those who merely know of it.

The Ring was found by Deagol in T.A. 2463 and was destroyed in 3019, 556 years later. Over this span of time the Ring, or the inability to posess the Ring, worked tremendous grief upon many people. Examining the discussions of Gollum and Frodo in LoTR, it appears the loss of the Ring is an almost physical torment; an aching loss incapable of being assuaged. We feel sorrow for Frodo and even learn to have sympathy for Gollum, unlikeable creature that he was. And why should we not have empathy for Gollum's agony? Think of it! He lost the Ring in 2941 and spent 78 years of pain without it. The pain of its loss shrivelled him and ground him down like wheat between two stones.

But, let's see. Isn't there someone who was forced to endure it's loss for an even greater period of time? Say, 3019 years? Shouldn't we have some sympathy for Sauron?

[Inziladun]

Nice one, Mithadan!
Sauron obviously wanted the Ring as an instrument of power, but would he have been in thrall to it in the same manner as others who desired it?
After all, it was basically himself, wasn't it? The power and will within the Ring were at first part of him. Gollum, Isildur, Boromir, and even Saruman were striving to attain power that was not native to them in their beginning, whereas Sauron was attempting to regain that portion of his divine ability he had lost.
Sauron certainly never gives any indication that he becomes as pitiful as Gollum in his desire for the Ring. In fact, he was able to rebuild his strongholds and armies , and manage a war quite adequately without it. It is to me beyond argument, however, that lust for the Ring was in the end his undoing, as the thought that Aragorn or someone else might claim it caused him to mismanage things at the end and allow the Ring-bearer into Mordor.

[Hakon]

I cannot have sympathy for Sauron. As Inziladun said the ring is part of himself. He just wants something that is him back. It is like when someone was once in good shape and they are now obese, they want to lose the wait and get back that old body. To Sauron the ring is the old body. He wants it more than anything. I always feel bad for Gollum though, it is like he could not possibly escape the power of the ring and had to give in to it. I also feel sympathy for the Nazgûl.

[radagastly]

The only answer to any question you might have on this issue is, NO! Sorry, but there is no scenario in which Sauron might "come clean!" He never tried to "come clean," he never wanted to "come clean," He never gave a @#*T% about Aman's feelings (Much less, Middle Earth's.) While within Tolkien's Middle Earth, there may be variations of just how evil someone is, but there is no question about just how evil The Dark Lord is, regardless of anything he might do to persuade.

[Hakon]

Well if someone is evil or not is simply perspective. You have to remember that when you are discussing good and evil.

[Morthoron]

Sauron is a cipher -- a faceless blank. There is little to like about him, or anything to feel sympathetic about. He is not an anti-hero on the monumental level of Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost, and Tolkien did little to flesh out the character; whereas Milton created a Puritan's version of James Dean -- a rebel with claws, so to speak. Clearly Satan is the most interesting character in Paradise Lost (to both the reader and to Milton himself), so much so that the poet William Blake stated of Milton:

"The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it."

We do not sense the rebel in Sauron as we did with Morgoth. Sauron is more Morgoth's accountant, a dry piece of toast who learned much from Morgoth's mistakes, preferring to work his evil through others, and hence the making of the Rings of Power in the first place. We only get hints and snatches of Sauron's character in condensed form in the Akallabêth and Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age , and he is a far more intriguing character in the 2nd Age than ever he was in the 3rd.

Simply put, we cannot sympathize with Sauron because we really don't know him. Tolkien never gave us the opportunity.