The audience can see a few examples of his fears in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of the trilogy, such as when Aragorn challenges Sauron in the Palantir, and it is clear that he fears the heir of Numenor’s return to come and strengthen the kingdoms against him. Or when, in the last moment, he realizes that Frodo has put on the ring of power close to the fires of Mount Doom, and he suddenly understands the plot to destroy it, and the imminent danger that this places him in.
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But one unlikely character that it seems strange for Sauron to fear is Gollum. Although Gollum is a tricksy and threatening creature, who often appears as though he is going to strangle Frodo and Sam in their sleep, he is just one small being in a much larger battle for power. He is not mighty like the kings of old, with the ability to muster great legions against Sauron’s army, he is not a skilled wizard with magical and illustrious powers at his command, he is nothing more than a stoor hobbit, who has been corrupted by the long years of being a ring-bearer. So why would the mighty Sauron fear such a seemingly insignificant being?
The answer is knowledge. Everyone knows that knowledge is power, and unfortunately Sauron made the mistake of giving Gollum the knowledge that would ultimately undo his entire plan. When Sauron’s forces brought Gollum to the tower of Bharad Dur to torture him, Sauron’s biggest oversight was that he needed the information Gollum had in regards to where the one ring of power was (Shire, Baggins) but he was, at the same time, unknowingly passing information onto Gollum, about the inner workings of Bharad-Dur, the army of orcs amassing there, and the depth of Sauron’s power, as well as his dependency on the ring to regain his physical form.
Then, for some unfathomable reason, Sauron made the biggest mistake of all: he let Gollum go. None of this previous information would have mattered if he had simply killed the prisoner after extracting the location of the ring like normal. However, in letting Gollum go, he allowed the creature to take his secrets out of Mordor for the first time ever, secrets that would later become his undoing. He also allowed Gollum to learn of the secret way in and out of Mordor, through Cirith Ungol, the path by which Gollum later lead the ring-bearer back into the lands to destroy the ring. It is unclear if Sauron let Gollum go because he believed that Shelob would kill him and he wouldn’t make it very far anyway, or if he thought that Gollum would go and retrieve the ring for him from The Shire, and then he could swoop in and snatch it up with ease.
But Gollum has a remarkable way of disappearing, and Sauron was not able to find him again for many years. When he learned of Gandalf and Aragorn’s pursuit of the creature, he then realized his mistake, and realized that he had given far too much power to someone who might later come back to haunt him. The difficulty that Sauron has when it comes to Gollum is that Gollum treads the fine line between good and evil.
There is a very clear paradigm within the books of evil characters being evil, and good characters being good, and this makes it very easy for each opposing side to predict what the other will do. Sauron knows that Aragorn and Gandalf will try to fight back and defeat him, because they want to protect Middle Earth, and they know that Sauron will stop at nothing to get the ring back, because he wants to destroy Middle Earth. But there’s a chaos within Gollum, a struggle between his corruption and his redemption, and this makes him very hard for Sauron to discover or control.
In many ways, Gollum is one of the most resistant characters to Sauron’s evil will and the temptation of the ring, and it takes him nearly 500 years to succumb to its desire, which ultimately results in him destroying it. In this sense, Gollum is one of the most powerful characters in the book, because he never does what people expect, and this makes him elusive and dangerous, even to the like of the dark lord himself.
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