Good guys of LOTR clueless?

[Maédhros]

Do you really think it's possible that Sauron didn't understand the way his own Ring worked?

You have a very good point. But remember that it is a quote from Gandalf and not Sauron. I do not have my books with me at the moment (not for looking at them right now though), but what I have understood from them is that Sauron thought that his Ring was lost. And he could do just fine that way.

[the phantom]

But remember that it is a quote from Gandalf and not Sauron

Oh, I remember. The fact that Gandalf said it is my entire point. Gandalf didn't know what he was talking about.

but what I have understood from them is that Sauron thought that his Ring was lost

I agree with you, and if we're right then Gandalf was very wrong. That's why I started wondering if we can trust a single thing that Gandalf and the other good guys say about Sauron?

(not saying they're meaning to lie, just that they're extremely misinformed, I would imagine Sauron is very good at the counter-intelligence/misdirection sort of thing and perhaps the good guys were in a worse predicament than we ever thought, I mean, being clueless about your enemy is pretty bad)

[davem]

I'm not sure we can attribute complex thought processes to Sauron, at least not by this late stage in his devolution. He seems to me to be focussed so much on his desires that he doesn't analyse the situation in great detail. I think he was so caught up in achieving dominance, convinced of his inevitable victory & simply not thinking of defeat. He's probably a whole lot less smart than Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel or any of his enemies. I think Galadriel can say with absolute truth that she Knows all his thought, because his thought isn't all that complex. Take Morgoth. His whole desire was to reduce everything to primal chaos, yet where would that have left him?

To my mind Sauron is very powerful, but not very bright, & probably lots of thoughts passed through his 'mind', but none of them would register sufficiently to overcome his basic desire. I think its entirely possible that he didn't know how his Ring worked, or at least had forgotten. His focus always is power, control, domination.

Look at the Nazgul, & the Mouth. They are simply not 'intelligent' creatures. They have become over the millenia focussed into 'devices', with a single purpose, like automata. Sauron simply doesn't have the capacity for complex, detached reasoning, the analytical capability that you're attributing to him . He's certainly powerful, but he's stupid, because he can only conceive desire for control. At the end, when Frodo stood at the Sammath Naur, & suspect that his reaction wasn't 'intellectual' - ie, that he realised his situation & his danger. I suspect he suddenly suffered a kind of unexpected 'spiritual' punch in the guts, & went into a blind panic, like a terrified animal.

[Legolas]

The 'discrepancies' you point out and attribute to characters in the story are obviously points that should be attributed more to the author. As presented in the original post, these assertions are misdirected. In the first thing pointed out, the quotes about the Ring's possible destruction, is that really Gandalf being stupid? I don't think so. More than likely, it's the author who was writing the book as he went. That is, when taken at face value - out of context, as they've been presented. The difference between the two statements can be explained by the passage of time. Gandalf had found out a lot between those scenes. He had been to Orthanc and seen what Sauron had done to Saruman - especially in reguards ; moreover, he now knew that Gollum had escaped (the quote comes from the Council of Elrond after Legolas had given his news of hte escape). Saruman's mention of searching for the Ring changed his perspective on Sauron's hopes of finding it. Gandalf wasn't stupid; there was simply very little to go on in the beginning. Over the course of that first volume is where the story begins fittingly - as the plans of Sauron begin to unravel and Gandalf now has enough to see the full picture.

Really? Form Morgoth's Ring (myths transformed, VII, ii)-

One doesn't even have to read the statement that follows to see the discrepancy in your own assertions - the quote that follows was written after the writing and publishing of Lord of the Rings. Any writings from before your quote cannot be expected to totally line up with the quote itself. They may loosely, but it could be (and may very well be) that Tolkien had changed his perspective on the matter (not necessarily a 180-degree change, but still a change). Such a development in thought is bound to cause some "discrepancies" with earlier writings.

[tar-ancalime]

Do you really think it's possible that Sauron didn't understand the way his own Ring worked?

Yes, absolutely! There had never been a ring like it before--that's what makes it the One Ring--and certainly it had never been destroyed before. Who was to say what would happen when it was cast into the fire? For all Sauron (or anyone else) knew, destroying the Ring could have ushered in a new age of...oh, let's say, Orc cotillions.

[Findegil]

First of all I agree compltely with what Tar-Ancalime said.
I also think that it is very important to look a the times addressed by the quotes.
When Gandalf says that Sauron thought the ring was destroied by the Elves, he reffers to the time after his defeat by the Last Alliance. What did Sauron knew to let him think so?
- As jet any such defeat had seen him recover soon, but know he had much more trouble to do that.
- There were two great Lords of the Elves and he could be sure that at least Elrond did know about the Ring. In addition there was this young man who had already two times crossed his plans to destroy the last White Tree, and had just now dealt him a deadly blow and afterwards cuted the Ring from his finger.
-> The natural conclusion seems clearly that they had destroyed his Ring.

But later Sauron learned that the Ring still existed, by which way we don't know but it is possible that it was by contact with the nine, since we can belife that Sauron did know if the elvischrings would lose their power with the destrction of his ring.
With that info Saurons picture changed:
- Three of his biggest enemies left after the war of the Last Alliance in conclave and on the spot to do it had not been willing to destroy the Ring.
->Thus know body could be.

It is attested that Sauron did not understand the motiv of Gollums unbreakable resistence against him. This could only mean that he never understood the ability of the ring to creat a disire to posses him completly independent from the disire for power or might that the possesion of the ring promissed. Since the desire to posses the ring was it that secured it from destrucion (atested by Isildur and by Frodo) Sauron had missinterpreted the motives of his enemys in not destroing the ring in the Second age. For Sauron they were all struggeling for power of their own. And Saruman was a prime example that he was right.

Respectfully
Findegil

[Osse]

Good speculation on how Sauron percieved the power of his Ring to affect others Findegil!

Sauron could never really understand that his ring held more of a pull than just the desire for power, and that it in itself was what drew the person (basically) not just the power it gives. Like you say, why should he? All he knows is that it gives huge power, and that he desires the power... it is part of him remember.

How then could he feel that anyone would possess the ring if they did not want the power associated with it? How could he possibly concieve that anyone would want to destroy it. His assumptions that whoever possessed it was just carrying it until it was given to a more powerful wielder, did not go without at least some justification. I can now sympathize with his reasoning, or more importantly lack thereof...

[The Saucepan Man]

Great post, Findegil. Makes perfect sense to me.

As I see it, Sauron was judging others by his own standards and ascribing to them his own motives. He assumed that those who came into contact with the Ring would inevitably attempt to use it to gain power, rather than destroy it. And this assumption was not entirely unjustified in light of the behaviour of Saruman (one of the "wise").

His fear on perceiving Frodo with the Ring at Sammath Naur is occasioned by the sudden realisation that, if someone could make it all the way to Mount Doom with the Ring without having attempted to use it to gain power, then they might just be capable of destroying it. The passage refers to him suddenly realising the "magnitude of his own folly". In other words, it only occurred to him at that moment that his assumption that anyone bearing the Ring would inevitably try to use it to gain power might actually be incorrect.

As matters turned out, he was right that (Bombadil excepted) no one could willingly destroy the Ring, but for the wrong reasons. As Findegil has pointed out, it disn't occur to him that the Ring could coerce someone to simply desire possession of it, without regard to enhancing their power, to such a degree that they would be incapable of destroying it. So, but for the intervention of "providence" he needn't have feared.

[Rimbaud]

Quite, and I think Sauce has been striking proverbial nails on their teeny-tiny heads: Sauron was quite right. Excepting the chap with brightly-coloured boots, who doesn't really fit in with the rest anyway, nobody was capable of destroying the Ring. Nobody, deliberately, ever did so.

Further to Gandalf's quote regarding Sauron's belief in the Ring's destruction: it is clear that Sauron was sore wounded by the Ring-finger-smiting incident, and when he repaired for a good long time to the dark recesses of the world, must have believed that his injury was resultant upon the Ring's destruction, not merely the severing of himself from it. As has been ably described above, the realisation that this was not the case would have distinctly changed his outlook, and confirmed his prior belief that none could willingly destroy it afresh.