Who's the baddest of them all?

[Shauna <wind3213@hotmail.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 47998


> 	That's largely because they think he's been dead for...how 
long is 
> it? one thousand, two thousand years? Very long time. 
Perhaps at the 
> beginning, they were afraid to say his name. And they are 
afraid of his 
> language, the language of Mordor; though perhaps that's only 
sensible, 
> given that it seems to have a power of its own.


One thing to keep in mind (without going into too much of a 
tangent on LotR) is that while for humans and hobbits the 'death' 
of Sauron was thousands of years ago, many of the elves were 
alive before Sauron fell.  So you have two different dynamics - for 
the mortals, it's an ancient evil that should not be named, but for 
the elves, it is a power they're more familiar with.  I think the latter 
is more similar to the Harry Potter dynamic, but it's through the 
eyes of the former that the story is told.


> He's not a god exactly, not as I recall


I meant in more of a pantheistic sense - not as an all-powerful 
Christian-type god.  He's immortal, extremely strong, and has all 
sorts of nifty powers - reading minds, changing shapes, making 
pretty ring-wraiths...



> 
> 	But I'd definitely say that of the two, Voldemort is to be
> preferred. Voldemort has several weakneses, and makes 
mistakes; it's at
> least possible to anticipate and fight him. 


Yes.  Exactly.  Sometimes people forget that they didn't *really* 
win.  If Gollum hadn't interfered at the last moment, by pure 
chance (or divine grace), then Sauron would have won, and that 
would have been it.

Somehow I doubt that's what JKR has in mind for the Harry 
Potter series.  I think Harry will defeat him in a more classic way - 
through the discovery of a weakness inherent in his evil.

~ Shauna