Eye of Sauron
From the One Wiki to Rule Them All, the Lord of the Rings Encyclopedia.
- "Concealed within his fortress, the lord of Mordor sees all. His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh. You know of what I speak, Gandalf: a great Eye, lidless, wreathed in flame."
- —Saruman
Eye of Sauron was the symbol used on armor, shields, etc for the orcs of Mordor. Sauron uses it to show how he "sees all."
The term is often used to apply to Sauron himself within The Lord of the Rings, and, as a result, Peter Jackson actually depicted the Dark Lord as a floating, fiery eye in his Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. In Tolkien: The Illustrated Encyclopedia published in 1991, author David Day states that "in the Year 1000 of the Third Age, he [Sauron] manifest himself in the form of one great, lidless Eye. It was like the eye of a huge cat, wreathed with flame, filled with hate, and ringed in darkness." This portrayal is directly contradicted by a letter in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien in which it is stated that Sauron had a humanoid form at that time, large, but not gigantic.
So far, the Eye of Sauron is considered both a figurative and literal figure.
