What is the significance of Sauron never having a physical presence in the Lord of the Rings?

Question

So I noticed that in *Lord of the Rings* Sauron acts as a very interesting villain. He never makes a corporeal appearance, nor does he have any acting dialogue. He's mentioned plenty of times through other characters, history, and lore, but never makes an appearance himself. I know the canon mythology is that Sauron doesn't have a physical body from his rebirth, but what is significant about that?

Answer 1

One important thing to remember is Tolkien heavily imprinted The Lord of the Rings with Christianity and the fantasy genre. As a devout Catholic and lover of mythology many elements in his stories can be seen as allegory of sorts. In The Silmarillion (the book is mostly about the lore and mythos behind The Lord of the Rings) It is reavled more in depth that Sauron was a sort of higher being and attendant to those directly below the creator of all things. He essentially become evil because he heavily admires the main evil in the universe (Morgoth). He has a heavy desire for order and efficiency you see this in his rapid creation of orcs. By the time he is the 2nd in command he is a master shape-shifter and is only interested in bettering and working for his leader. He is both literally and goal wise without form and takes it from others. When he returns after Morgoth is gone he is essentially only imitating him. However, in the third age Sauron does actually have a permanent form as he loses his ability to change shape. He becomes an evil barely larger than man being. He goes from a beautiful angelic being, to a powerful formless being of evil to a permanent fixture of evil and hate. As to really why he appears like this it can be very difficult to ascertain as the mythos is extremely complicated and for most very hard to follow. Going by influences and quotes from Tolkien himself i think its reasonable to assume Tolkien felt by straying from the ultimate creators vision and plan on his own, it left him without real purpose and form until the only thing left of him was a distorted sense of being. Many people in LOTR have farirly clear motives and singular causes Compare this to the nebulous desires of Sauron.