How could Sauron defeat death?

[Barry Schwarz]

It is repeated several times in The Silmarillion that the Valar could
not remove the Gift of Ilúvatar from Men. So how is it that merely
possessing the One Ring, not necessarily wearing it, could postpone
the inevitable indefinitely. The ring contained no power that was not
inherently Sauron's to begin with. And he was only a Maia.

How is it that wearing one of the Nine could do the same. It was
fashioned by Elves with presumably even less power.

[Julian Bradfield]

Post by Barry Schwarz
It is repeated several times in The Silmarillion that the Valar could
not remove the Gift of Ilúvatar from Men. So how is it that merely
possessing the One Ring, not necessarily wearing it, could postpone
the inevitable indefinitely. The ring contained no power that was not
inherently Sauron's to begin with. And he was only a Maia.

Answer 1: don't ask embarrassing questions:)
Answer 2: this is why the book repeats several times that the Rings do
not give more life, they just stretch it out thinner and thinner.
Whether you find that a satisfactory answer, I don't know.

Post by Barry Schwarz
How is it that wearing one of the Nine could do the same. It was
fashioned by Elves with presumably even less power.

Indeed. Furthermore, how could Isildur, a mere mortal, keep the men of
Erech back from true death until they fulfilled their oath?

[Paul S Person]

Post by Barry Schwarz
It is repeated several times in The Silmarillion that the Valar could
not remove the Gift of Ilúvatar from Men. So how is it that merely
possessing the One Ring, not necessarily wearing it, could postpone
the inevitable indefinitely. The ring contained no power that was not
inherently Sauron's to begin with. And he was only a Maia.

But a Maia is not a Man.

He does not /have/ the Gift of Ilúvatar, and so there is nothing to
postpone.

He disappears at the end for one of two (or more) possible reasons:

1. Without the Ring he is, in fact, Nothing.
2. He has to be called back to the West to go there, and he wasn't.

#2 has the advantage of applying to Saruman as well.
Feel free to add other possible reasons!

Post by Barry Schwarz
How is it that wearing one of the Nine could do the same. It was
fashioned by Elves with presumably even less power.

As the other poster pointed out, for mortals, the rings mere stretched
out their life. To little butter over too much toast, as it were.

[Stan Brown]

Post by Barry Schwarz
It is repeated several times in The Silmarillion that the Valar could
not remove the Gift of Ilúvatar from Men. So how is it that merely
possessing the One Ring, not necessarily wearing it, could postpone
the inevitable indefinitely. The ring contained no power that was not
inherently Sauron's to begin with. And he was only a Maia.

The Ring _did_ contain power that was not Sauron's originally. Sauron
did not simply transfer some of his existing power into the Ring.
Rather, he used that power to make the Ring a master Ring, a Ruling
Ring. Think of a man using a lever to pry a boulder out of the
ground, or turning a key that starts a powerful motor. Sauron with
the Ring was far more powerful than he had been before; but if it
were destroyed then so would be much of his power, forever.

Gandalf says in "The Shadow of the Past" that Sauron let "a great
part of his own former power" pass into the Ring. He'd have no
motivation to do that if he was merely weakening himself by X amount
and strengthening the Ring by the same amount. The only possible
reason for transferring much of his own power to the Ring was that
this would trigger an additional transfer of power to the Ring from
some other source. In /History of Middle-Earth" we find out that that
other source was the "Morgoth-element" in all the material of the
world.

As for removing the Gift of Men, neither the Valar nor Sauron did
they. The Valar gave long life to the Númenóreans, but they had to
die eventually. The Great Rings gave long life to their mortal
bearers, but _not_ immortality. When they were slain they really
died, and when the One Ring was destroyed, they ran out of "borrowed
time" and also died.