Why was Bilbo not discovered by Sauron during his extended stay with the Wood Elves? [duplicate]

Question

Currently reading The Hobbit to my daughter, and we came to the Barrels out of Bond chapter where the Dwarves are captured and imprisoned by the Wood Elves. Bilbo sneaks in with his magic ring of invisibility and eventually sets them all free.

But here's what piqued my curiosity: in the chapter it makes clear that Bilbo wore the one ring constantly for a very extended period of time: it specifically states he was down there at least two weeks and then - it's much less clear - possibly for even longer while he came up with and implemented his plan to rescue the Dwarves.

However in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is constantly terrified of putting on the ring lest he (and the ring) should be located by Sauron. So why does Bilbo, wearing the ring for several weeks, escape detection?

The obvious thought is that Sauron was simply not powerful enough at this time. But that seems a pretty thin claim in many ways. Sauron was powerful enough to be "recognised" as a dangerous sorcerer in his guise as the Necromancer, and to start to gather his followers together. You'd have thought that simply locating the Ring would require a pitiful amount of comparative effort.

Furthermore I believe it's implied in The Lord of the Rings that it becomes increasingly dangerous to use the Ring the closer it gets to its maker (I don't have a reference for this - might be my imagination). If so, things become even more inexplicable since Thranduil's palace wasn't actually all that far from Dol Guldur, where Sauron was holed up.

Any explanation? Or do we have to chalk it up to the poetic license due to a world in development?

Answer 1

Because putting on the Ring doesn't cause you to be detected by Sauron.

However in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is constantly terrified of putting on the ring lest he (and the ring) should be located by Sauron.

This isn't the case at all. Frodo only wears the Ring a total of 6 times in LotR - at Bombadil's house, in the Prancing Pony, on Weathertop, twice at the Breaking of the Fellowship, and on Mount Doom - and the only times Sauron is aware of him are the first time at the Breaking (where Frodo actually went looking first) and on Mount Doom (where Frodo claims the Ring for his own in the heart of Sauron's realm).

The times Frodo is afraid to put on the Ring are when he's being tracked by the Ringwraiths, and is under temptation to wear it so that they can have power over him in the shadow-world (because they have no power in the physical world). It's nothing to do with fear of detection by Sauron.

It's actually quite safe to wear the Ring otherwise.

Aside from what it will do to you of course, but otherwise the worst that can happen is that you'll turn into a Gollum over time, then finally become a wraith yourself.

Remember: Gollum had it for hundreds of years and was never detected.

Also consider Sam.

Sam actually wore the Ring in Mordor itself.

Without any clear purpose he drew out the Ring and put it on again ... He ran forward to the climbing path, and over it. At once the road turned left and plunged steeply down. Sam had crossed into Mordor. He took off the Ring ...

(RotK Book VI Chapter 1: The Tower of Cirith Ungol)

But yet Sam wasn't detected by Sauron either, so it's quite clear that putting on the Ring, even in Mordor, is safe enough to do.

It seems to me that the whole notion of "putting on the Ring causes Sauron to detect you" is a movie construct, because that's where it does happen, but you need to forget about that and focus on what happens in the books, and only what happens in the books.

Answer 2

I don't know the exact dates, but while Bilbo and the Dwarves were travelling alone, Gandalf and the Lothlorien elves were driving the Necromancer out of Dol Guldur - from whence he removed himself to Mordor.

Perhaps he was preoccupied with moving house. You know how that can be.

Answer 3

The true answer would be that Tolkien hadn't conceived of Sauron or the Rings of Power at the time of writing the Hobbit. It's just another magic ring, only later when he developed his legendarium did it gain all the significance it has in The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion.

However, if you want a rationalisation, I would say this. The shadow realm is extensive and presumably Sauron cannot be watching everywhere at once, otherwise Aragorn and Gandalf wouldn't have bothered to draw his attention with the palantír and by leading the army to the black gate. Sauron wasn't looking for the ring while Bilbo was in the elf kingdom because he didn't know Gollum had found it in the river, and he was being distracted by the attack from the white council.

Although Sauron only perceives the ring being worn twice anyway. Once when Frodo is on Amon Hen and deliberately looks into the red eye, and once when they're on Orodruin. It doesn't draw his attention when Sam wears it at Cirith Ungol. Just putting the ring on doesn't seem to be enough to get his attention.

Answer 4

Sauron was still kind of homeless and not yet fully settled into Mordor. He would need a couple of decades to complete the move-in process. Even then he had to know the Ring still existed, it was after all a part of him but he had no power or base strong enough to do anything about it. As in chess, he needed to get his pieces pre-positioned before making the push for dominion. The Ring also was 'laying low' until it's master was ready for it.

Answer 5

Another factor to consider: Elvish cities, pretty much without exception, are magically concealed from external threats. I believe this is explicitly mentioned in The Hobbit regarding Rivendell (if memory serves, Gandalf says that nobody can find it if Elrond doesn't want them to). In the First Age, the city of Gondolin was so well hidden that Morgoth himself was unaware of its existence. It seems plausible to me that the Wood-elves' city would at least somewhat disguise the presence of a Ring-user from Sauron.

Answer 6

It could be that putting on the Ring made Frodo intensely aware of Sauron's presence, and the movie is depicting his terror of being seen, not any actually imminent detection by Sauron. For all we know, that enormous baleful eye was completely in Frodo's mind.

Answer 7

I would like to add up that in The Lord of the Rings it's said that "Frodo must scape from the Sauron's eye by avoiding to wear the ring", so as far as I remember in The Hobbit that eye hadn't existed yet, it was not until (as said in above posts) Sauron recovered all his power that it was raised.