Evil in Middle-earth in the context of "Gollum"

Sauron (/ˈsaʊərɒn/) is the title character and the main antagonist in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where he rules the land of Mordor. He has the ambition of ruling the whole of Middle-earth using the power of the One Ring, which he has lost and seeks to recapture. In the same work, he is identified as the "Necromancer" of Tolkien's earlier novel The Hobbit. The Silmarillion describes him as the chief lieutenant of the first Dark Lord, Morgoth. Tolkien noted that the Ainur, the "angelic" powers of his constructed myth, "were capable of many degrees of error and failing", but by far the worst was "the absolute Satanic rebellion and evil of Morgoth and his satellite Sauron". Sauron appears most often as "the Eye", as if disembodied.

Tolkien, while denying that absolute evil could exist, stated that Sauron came as near to a wholly evil will as was possible. Commentators have compared Sauron to the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, and to Balor of the Evil Eye in Irish mythology. Sauron is briefly seen in a humanoid form in Peter Jackson's film trilogy, which otherwise shows him as a disembodied, flaming Eye.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional continent of Middle-earth, Mordor (Quenya: [ˈmɔrdɔr]; Sindarin for 'Black Land', Quenya for 'Land of Shadow') is the realm of the Dark Lord Sauron. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, and to the south of Mirkwood. Mount Doom, a volcano in Mordor, was the goal of the Fellowship of the Ring in the quest to destroy the One Ring. Mordor was surrounded by three mountain ranges, to the north, the west, and the south. These both protected the land from invasion and kept those living in Mordor from escaping.

Commentators have noted that Mordor was influenced by Tolkien's own experiences in the industrial Black Country of the English Midlands, and by his time fighting in the trenches of the Western Front in the First World War. Tolkien was also familiar with the account of the monster Grendel's unearthly landscapes in the Old English poem Beowulf. Others have observed that Tolkien depicts Mordor as specifically evil, and as a vision of industrial environmental degradation, contrasted with either the homey Shire or the beautiful elvish forest of Lothlórien.

Tolkien's monsters are the evil beings, such as Orcs, Trolls, and giant spiders, who oppose and sometimes fight the protagonists in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium. Tolkien was an expert on Old English, especially Beowulf, and several of his monsters share aspects of the Beowulf monsters; his Trolls have been likened to Grendel, the Orcs' name harks back to the poem's orcneas, and the dragon Smaug has multiple attributes of the Beowulf dragon.The European medieval tradition of monsters makes them either humanoid but distorted, or like wild beasts, but very large and malevolent; Tolkien follows both traditions, with monsters like Orcs of the first kind and Wargs of the second. Some scholars add Tolkien's immensely powerful Dark Lords Morgoth and Sauron to the list, as monstrous enemies in spirit as well as in body.Scholars have noted that the monsters' evil nature reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholicism, a religion which has a clear conception of good and evil.

The fictional cosmology of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium combines aspects of Christian theology and metaphysics with pre-modern cosmological concepts in the flat Earth paradigm, along with the modern spherical Earth view of the Solar System.

The created world, Eä, includes the planet Arda, corresponding to the Earth. It is created flat, with the dwelling of the godlike Valar at its centre. When this is marred by the evil Vala Melkor, the world is reshaped, losing its perfect symmetry, and the Valar move to Valinor, but the Elves can still sail there from Middle-earth. When Men try to go there, hoping for immortality, Valinor and its continent of Aman are removed from Arda, which is reshaped as a round world. Scholars have compared the implied cosmology with that of Tolkien's religion, Catholicism, and of medieval poetry such as Pearl or Dante's Paradiso, where there are three parts, Earth, Purgatory or the Earthly Paradise, and Heaven or the Celestial Paradise. Scholars have debated the nature of evil in Middle-earth, arguing whether it is the absence of good (the Boethian position) or equally as powerful as good (the Manichaean view).

Magic in Middle-earth is the use of supernatural power in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth. Tolkien distinguishes ordinary magic from witchcraft, the latter always deceptive, stating that either type could be used for good or evil.

Several of the races of Middle-earth are inherently able to work magic, from the godlike Ainur (including Wizards and Balrogs, both being members of the angelic race of Maiar) and the immortal Elves to Dragons and to some extent also Dwarves. Men and Hobbits could not directly work magic, but could make use of more or less magical artefacts made by others, such as Númenorean swords (made by Men with Elvish blood) and the Phial of Galadriel given to Frodo. Some of the magical artefacts were of great power, including the Palantíri or Stones of Seeing, but by far the most powerful was the One Ring, made by the Dark Lord Sauron and embodying much of his former power.