Mount Doom

Mount Doom, called Orodruin (the Mountain of Blazing Fire) and Amon Amarth (the Mount of Doom) in the Elvish tongue, is the great volcano in the land of Mordor where Sauron forged the One Ring, and the only place in Middle-earth where it could be unmade. It rises from the plain of Gorgoroth in the northwest of Mordor, not far from the Dark Tower of Barad-dûr, and its fire and smoke are bound up with the rising and waning of Sauron's power.

The quest of The Lord of the Rings is, at its heart, the journey to cast the One Ring into the Cracks of Doom within this mountain, the only fire hot enough to destroy it.

Geography

Mount Doom stands alone upon the ashen plain of Gorgoroth, a great cone of slag, ash, and fire. A road winds up its side to a dark door in its flank, leading to the Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire, where a fissure called the Cracks of Doom opens into the molten heart of the mountain. The volcano smokes and rumbles, and in times of Sauron's strength it blazes and casts a red light over the land. The mountain's eruptions and tremors answer the moods of the war.

History

In the Second Age, Sauron came to Mordor and used the fire of Orodruin to forge the One Ring in secret, pouring much of his own power and malice into it. The mountain's fire was uniquely tied to the Ring, for it was made there and could be destroyed nowhere else. When Sauron was overthrown at the end of the Second Age and the Ring was taken but not destroyed, the chance to unmake it in the mountain was lost for an age.

In the story

Frodo and Sam make their way across the waste of Gorgoroth to Mount Doom, climbing its road in their last extremity. At the Cracks of Doom, Frodo, overcome at last by the Ring's power, claims it for his own rather than casting it in. Gollum, who has followed them, seizes the Ring by biting it from Frodo's hand and, in his triumph, falls into the fire, destroying the Ring at last. With its unmaking, Sauron's power is broken, Barad-dûr falls, and Mount Doom erupts in a final convulsion as the Dark Lord's realm is undone.