How does Sauron communicate to the entities under his control?
Hello Tolkien fans! I’m most of the way through reading Fellowship for the first time and I was hoping you all could clarify something for me (I welcome spoilers). Because Sauron is mostly spoken about vaguely, and said to have control/influence over many types of creatures, and I’m not sure if he even has a physical form, I have been assuming that he has some form of mind control/influence that reaches far across middle earth.
But to me, that would mean that as soon as one of his minions finds the Fellowship, they should basically be inundated with a total onslaught of Saurons minions from that point on, as getting the one ring is Saurons primary goal (I think). So when a pack of wolves found the fellowship as they were crossing that snowy path after leaving rivendell, I assumed that Sauron now knows where they are. My friend said that once the fellowship decides to go through Moria, Sauron loses them because he assumes that nobody would take that route.
But once the orcs in Moria are alerted shouldn’t he now know that the fellowship is passing through Moria? And there are only a few entrances/exits (I think) - I would think that he would send as many minions as possible to each exit waiting for the fellowship, but when they emerge they face no immediate resistance. So the possible explanations I think for this are:
Sauron can communicate remotely with creatures under his control, but there just weren’t enough of Saurons minions in any of the areas surrounding the Moria exits to get there in time. The fellowship is able to get to Lothlorien within the day that they leave Moria, so if Saurons agents are unable to be within some radius of Lothlorien, this would make some sense. But then I would expect for them to be assailed when they leave Lothlorien, which they aren’t for a few days. It seems unlikely to me that if Sauron knew where the fellowship was, that he wouldn’t send as many minions as possible to surround lothlorien and await the fellowships departure.
Sauron cannot communicate remotely with creatures under his control. This means that creatures would have to physically go to him to receive direction, or some sort of captain would receive direction from him and physically disperse it to other creatures. This seems unlikely to me - the way Saurons power has been communicated feels like he has remote control over things. This also really complicates cross-species communication (how would an orc tell a wolf to look out for hobbits carrying a ring?)
Sauron can communicate remotely with creatures, but that communication is limited and slightly ineffective. If the orcs just vaguely know that they are looking for some group of people carrying a powerful ring, but not how important it is (either because that is difficult to convey remotely or because Sauron doesn’t want them to know the true power and keep the ring for themselves), then maybe the orcs wouldn’t bother trying to communicate to Sauron/other minions that they have seen the fellowship. Maybe the remote communication could even be one-sided - Sauron can send information to his minions but they can’t send information back. This would seem odd to me as I think that Sauron has remote access to his minions minds - but maybe he just can’t be in every brain with total control at the same time. But again, I would think that after any sort of alert of seeing the fellowship he would direct all of his energy and power to any minions in the nearby area.
I’m not sure if this is nitpicky or it will be elucidated later or if I missed something - but thing like this are really holding me up in the books so far. I would appreciate any thoughts! (Also - the watcher in the water is not a servant of sauron right?