Sauron and Voldemort: the Two Unfaces of Evil

The opposite literary bets of Tolkien and Rowling

Sauron and Voldemort are often lumped together in readers’s minds. They are both, after all, “the Dark Lord”¹. In a sense, however, they are near opposites — some would say, they suffer from near opposite problems: Sauron from underexposure, making him too vague to be a character; Voldemort from overexposure, making him too familiar to be a threat.

Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort and Sala Baker as Sauron

The Shadow

For more than two decades, all that was available about Middle-earth was The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Reading only these books (barring the dreaded Appendixes), it is hard to know what Sauron even is, let alone his character. He is kept hidden from the viewer at all times, seen only at a glance. From day one critics have complained that:

As for Sauron, the ruler of Mordor (doesn't the very name have a shuddery sound.) who concentrates in his person everything that is threatening the Shire, the build-up for him goes on through three volumes. He makes his first, rather promising, appearance as a terrible fire-rimmed yellow eye seen in a water-mirror. But this is as far as we ever get. Once Sauron's realm is invaded, we think we are going to meet him; but he still remains nothing but a burning eye scrutinizing all that occurs from the window of a remote dark tower. This might, of course, be made effective; but actually it is not; we never feel Sauron's power.

Edmund Wilson, “Oo, THOSE AWFUL ORCS !”

All the suspense built over Sauron, Wilson argues, is wasted by the fact we never get to see behind the curtain.

But Sauron at least gets to keep his threatening air of mystery. Poor Voldemort suffers a different fate.

He Who Must Not Be Named

Lord Voldemort, we are told, is one of the most powerful and cruel wizards to ever live. This, however, puts the Harry Potter series in a dilemma.

Harry Potter starts the series as an eleven-year old, growing at the rate of one year per volume, and fights Voldemort in person in all but two books. The fact that Harry is a child facing insurmountable odds leads the story to repeatedly make use of deus ex machina:

• In Philosopher’s Stone, Voldemort finds out he cannot touch Harry, because the boy is protected by the love protection created by his mother’s sacrifice. This protection had not been established previously.

• In Chamber of Secrets, Harry defeats Voldemort by stabbing his diary with a basilisk fang. We’ll find out later in the series that the diary carried part of Voldemort’s soul, and that basilisk venom is one of the few things capable of destroying it. As of book two, however, none of this had been established. For all we know, Harry stabed a book because he felt like it.

• In Goblet of Fire, Voldemort recovers his powers and finds a way to bypass Harry’s protection, by using Harry’s blood to reconstruct his own body. When the two duel, however, their wands connect and create a Priori Incantatem. The spell regurgitates shadows of Harry’s parents, who then buy their son time to escape. Priori Incantatem had been established… as a spell which made a wand recreate its last performed spells in reverse order. A glorified wand search history.

• In Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort tries to possess Harry, but is unable to, because… the power of love or something.
  Which, of course, had been established previously by Lily’s love protection. But I thought Voldemort had nullified that in the last book? Or can Voldemort only touch Harry’s love-impregnated body, but not his love-impregnated soul? (God, that’s a weird sentence to write.)
  Anyway, half a point for Joanne. Moving on.

• In Deathly Hollows, Voldemort finally kills Harry. However, Harry is able to return to life because Voldemort, by using Harry’s blood back in Goblet of Fire, has unintentionally transferred Lily’s protection to himself. Therefore, the love protection inside Voldemort’s blood anchors Harry to life — much like the Horcrux inside Harry anchors Voldemort. There is also a weird thing with wand loyalties and golden flames, but please let’s not get into that.

  And that is… fine. All the information had (at last!) been established previously, even if the way it fits together requires some mental gymnastics. It is convoluted, but in the same way a (good) mystery book may be.

Voldemort keeps failing to kill a teenager; out-of-universe because of deus ex machina, in-universe because he keeps forgeting obscure but highly relevant facts about magic. The result is that Voldemort seems less threatful as the series progresses.

Choices, Choices, Choices

This is not meant to be a dunk on either Tolkien or Rowling. In each case, the author has made a bet — and in each case the bet paid off.

Tolkien hides Sauron from the reader at all times, at the risk of turning him into a non-character. And yet, that is not what happens. Sauron, in fact, is so threatening he became one of literature’s most iconic villains. It’s an old trick horror writers know well: what the reader imagines is often worse than anything that you may give him. Stephen King argues in Danse Macabre that suspense cannot be kept forever: sooner or later, the writer has to put on his scary mask and yell “Boo!”.

Maybe true in horror stories. But Tolkien, writing in a different genre, pulls it off. Sauron is the Shadow: and we all know from childhood that we fear the dark not because we see terrors in it; but because we don’t.

Similarly, Rowling overexposes Voldemort, at the risk of making him unthreatening. And yet Voldemort works, precisely because we are not meant to fear him.

In a way, what Voldemort wants is to be Sauron: a being beyond death², the immortal dark king of the world. However, for as much as he pretends not to, he is still just Tom Riddle. Just a man. The literary effect of Voldemort, when the Harry Potter books are seen as a whole, is not fear, but pity. He is a testament to how low one can fall, and each attempt at becoming superhuman makes him more subhuman.

Sauron and Voldemort’s under and overexposure are not mistakes. They are calculated decisions. We could perhaps try to imagine the books without these compromises. We could; but that would be an exercise in imagination, not in literary criticism. It would be (if I may make a preposterous comparison) like adding arms to the Venus de Milo. Some works are cohesive enough in themselves that we would not dare to change them — not even in the name of improvement.

1. Linguistic digression: in Portuguese their titles are different, even if they mean the same thing. Sauron is the “Senhor do Escuro”, “Senhor” being Lord (the word is used, for example, when referring to Jesus Christ) and “Escuro” being both the adjective dark and the noun [the] dark.

Voldemort’s title, on the other hand, is translated as “Lorde das Trevas”, “Lorde” being a lusuphonization (bordering on barbarism) of Lord, and Trevas being a somewhat archaic word for darkness. It is used, for example, in the beginning of Genesis:

A terra estava sem forma e vazia; as trevas cobriam o abismo e o Espírito de Deus pairava sobre as águas.

Gênesis 1:2, Bíblia Ave Maria

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:2, King James Bible

Rigorously, trevas is the plural of treva, so Voldemort should be “o Lorde da Treva”. But the singular is almost never heard.

2. Though, in fact, Sauron is beneath death. In Tolkien’s Legendarium, death is a gift from the One God Ilúvatar to Men. Elves and Maiar, even after their bodies are destroyed, cannot leave the world, and are bound to its fate.