Product Code Database
Saruman, also called Saruman the White, later Saruman of Many Colours, is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He is the leader of the Istari, wizards sent to Middle-earth in human form by the godlike Valar to challenge Sauron, the main antagonist of the novel. He comes to desire Sauron's power for himself, so he betrays the Istari and tries to take over Middle-earth by force from his base at Isengard. His schemes feature prominently in the second volume, The Two Towers; he appears briefly at the end of the third volume, The Return of the King. His earlier history is summarised in the posthumously published The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
Saruman is one of several characters in the book who illustrate the corruption of power. His desire for knowledge and order leads to his fall, and he rejects the chance of redemption when it is offered. The name Saruman () means "man of skill or cunning" in the Mercian dialect of Anglo-Saxon; he serves as an example of technology and modernity being overthrown by forces more in tune with nature.
Saruman was portrayed by Christopher Lee in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies.
Frodo and Gandalf are reunited at Rivendell midway through The Fellowship of the Ring. The wizard explains why he failed to join Frodo: he had been summoned to consult with Saruman but had been held captive. Saruman initially had proposed that the wizards ally themselves with the rising power of Sauron in order to eventually control him for their own ends, revealing himself as a traitor. Saruman went on to suggest that they could take the Ring for themselves and challenge Sauron. When Gandalf refused both options, the traitorous Saruman imprisoned him in the tower of Orthanc at Isengard, hoping to learn from him the location of the Ring. Whilst on the summit of Orthanc, Gandalf observed that Saruman had industrialized the formerly green valley of Isengard and was creating his own army of Half-Orc/Half-Man fighters and Wargs to rival Sauron. Book 2 Chapter 2 "The Council of Elrond" Gandalf's escape from the top of the tower on the back of a Great Eagle left Saruman in a desperate position, as he knew he would now be known as traitor to his former allies, but was unable to procure the Ring directly for himself and therefore could not hope to truly rival Sauron. Shortly after arriving in Rivendell, Gandalf informs the Council of Elrond about Saruman's betrayal.
In The Two Towers, the second volume of the story, Orcs from Saruman's army attack Frodo and his companions, and carry off two of Frodo's closest friends, Merry and Peregrin Took. The two escape into Fangorn Forest, where they meet the , protectors of the trees, who are outraged at the widespread felling of trees by Saruman's Orcs. Book 3 Chapter 4 "Treebeard" Meanwhile, Saruman prepares to invade the kingdom of Rohan, which has lain exposed ever since he had his servant Gríma Wormtongue render Théoden, Rohan's king, weak and defenceless with "subtle poisons". Gandalf frees Théoden from Wormtongue's control just as Saruman's army is about to invade.
Saruman is ruined when the Riders of Rohan defeat his army and Merry and Pippin prompt the Ents to destroy Isengard. Saruman himself is not directly involved, and only appears again in chapter 10, "The Voice of Saruman", by which time he is trapped in Orthanc. He fails in his attempt to negotiate with the Rohirrim and with Gandalf, and rejects Gandalf's conditional offer to let him go free. Gandalf casts him out of the White Council and the order of the wizards, and breaks Saruman's staff. Book 3 Chapter 10 "The Voice of Saruman"
Saruman makes his final appearance at the end of the last volume, The Return of the King (1955), after Sauron's defeat. After persuading the Ents to release him from Orthanc, he travels north on foot, apparently reduced to begging. He is accompanied by Wormtongue, whom he beats and curses. Book 6, Chapter 6 "Many Partings" When they reach the Shire, Saruman's agents—both Hobbits and Men—have already taken it over and started a destructive process of industrialization. Saruman governs the Shire in secret under the name of Sharkey until the events of "The Scouring of the Shire". In that penultimate chapter, Frodo and his companions return and lead a rebellion, defeating the intruders and exposing Saruman's role. Even after Saruman attempts to stab Frodo, Frodo lets him go; but Wormtongue, whom Saruman continues to taunt and physically abuse, finally snaps and murders him. Book 6 Chapter 7 "Homeward Bound" Book 6 Chapter 8 "The Scouring of the Shire"
Unfinished Tales contains drafts, not included in The Lord of the Rings, that describe Saruman's attempts to frustrate Sauron's chief servants, the Nazgûl, in their search for the Ring during the early part of The Fellowship of the Ring; in one version he considers throwing himself on Gandalf's mercy. There is also a description of how Saruman becomes involved with the Shire and of how he gradually becomes jealous of Gandalf. Part 3 Chapter 4 "The Hunt for the Ring" Another brief account describes how the five Istari were chosen by the Valar for their mission. Part 4 Chapter 2 "The Istari"
Several of Saruman's other appearances in the book emerged in the process of writing. Christopher Tolkien believes that the old man seen by Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli at the edge of Fangorn forest near the beginning of The Two Towers is in the original drafts intended to be Gandalf. In the finished version he is Saruman. Gandalf says of the incident, "You certainly didn't see me, so you must have seen Saruman." Similarly, in the first drafts of the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire", Sharkey is successively a ruffian met by the hobbits, and then that man's unseen boss. It is only in the second draft of the chapter that, as Christopher Tolkien puts it, his father "perceived" that Sharkey was in fact Saruman. Saruman did not appear in the first draft of the chapter; Christopher Tolkien writes: "It is striking that here, virtually at the end of the Lord of the Rings and in an element that my father had long meditated that he did not perceive that it was Saruman who was the real Boss, Sharkey, at Bag End". The name used by Saruman's henchmen for their diminished leader is said in a footnote to the final text to be derived from an Orkish term meaning "old man".
The power of Saruman's voice is noted throughout the book. Jonathan Evans calls the characterisation of Saruman in the chapter The Voice of Saruman a "tour de force". J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia 'Saruman' by Jonathan Evans pp. 589–590. The early critic Roger Sale wrote of the same chapter in 1968 that "Tolkien valiantly tried to do something worth doing which he simply cannot bring off."
Tom Shippey writes that "Saruman talks like a politician ... No other character in Middle-earth has Saruman's trick of balancing phrases against each other so that incompatibles are resolved, and none comes out with words as empty as 'deploring', 'ultimate', worst of all, 'real'. What is 'real change'?" pp. 135–138 Shippey refers to "Tolkien's Northern 'theory of courage'", which appears in Tolkien's 1936 British Academy lecture. Shippey contrasts this modern speech pattern with the archaic stoicism and directness, the Northern courage, that Tolkien employs for other characters such as the Dwarven King Dáin, which Shippey believes represent Tolkien's view of heroism in the mould of Beowulf.
Tolkien writes that The Lord of the Rings was often criticized for portraying all characters as either good or bad, with no shades of grey, a point to which he responds by proposing Saruman, along with Denethor and Boromir, as examples of characters with more nuanced loyalties. Letters #154 to Naomi Mitchison, September 1954. Marjorie Burns writes that while Saruman is an "imitative and lesser" double of Sauron, reinforcing the Dark Lord's character type, he is also a contrasting double of Gandalf, who becomes Saruman as he "should have been", after Saruman fails in his original purpose.
Saruman "was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare raise our hands against" but decays as the book goes on. Chapter 4 p. 79, Kocher quoting Frodo's speech of The Return of the King Book 6 Chapter 8 Patricia Meyer Spacks calls him "one of the main case histories in of the gradual destructive effect of willing submission to evil wills".
Paul Kocher identifies Saruman's use of a palantír, a seeing-stone, as the immediate cause of his downfall, but also suggests that through his study of "the arts of the enemy", Saruman was drawn into imitation of Sauron. Chapter 3 "Cosmic Order", p. 51, and Chapter 4 "Sauron and the nature of evil", p. 68. According to Jonathan Evans and Spacks, Saruman succumbs to the lust for power, while Shippey identifies Saruman's devotion to goals of knowledge, organization and control as his weakness. Tolkien writes that the Istari's chief temptation (and that to which Saruman fell) is impatience, leading to a desire to force others to do good, and then to a simple desire for power. Letters #181 to M. Straight, January 1956.
John R. Holmes writes that there is a philological link between "a perverted will to power with the love of machines we see in Isengard". The etymologies of English "magic", Latinized Greek magia, "the power of causing physical change in the real world", and English "machine", Greek mekhane or makhana "device", are both from Old Persian maghush "sorcerer", from Proto-Indo-European *magh, "to have power". Thus, Holmes writes, Tolkien was following an ancient cultural connection in making Saruman think in this way, using magic.
Shippey notes that Saruman's name repeats this view of technology: in the Mercian dialect of Old English used by Tolkien to represent the Rohirric in the book, the word saru means "clever", "skilful" or "ingenious". This has associations with both technology and treachery that are fitting for Tolkien's portrayal of Saruman, the "cunning man". Chapter 4 "The horses of the Mark" pp. 139–140. He also writes of Saruman's distinctively modern association with Communism in the way the Shire is run under his control in "The Scouring of the Shire": goods are taken "for fair distribution" which, since they are mainly never seen again, Shippey terms an unusually modern piece of hypocrisy in the way evil presents itself in Middle-earth. Chapter 5 "Interlacements and the Ring" p. 195.
After the defeat of his armies, having been caught in the betrayal of Sauron, Saruman is offered refuge by Gandalf, in return for his aid, but having chosen his path, is unable to turn from it. Evans has compared the character of Saruman to that of Satan in John Milton's Paradise Lost in his use of rhetoric and in this final refusal of redemption, "conquered by pride and hatred".
In the end, the diminished Saruman is murdered, his throat cut, and Shippey notes that when he dies his spirit "dissolved into nothing". He identifies Saruman as the best example in the book of "wraithing", a distinctive 20th-century view of evil that he attributes to Tolkien in which individuals are "'eaten up inside' by devotion to some abstraction". Chapter 4 "Saruman and Denethor: technologist and reactionary" pp. 121–128. Referring to Saruman's demise, Kocher says that he is one example of the consistent theme of nothingness as the fate of evil throughout The Lord of the Rings. Chapter 4 "Sauron and the nature of evil", p. 79.
In Peter Jackson's film trilogy (2001–2003), Saruman is significantly more active in the first two films than in the corresponding books, and he appears in several scenes that are not depicted in Tolkien's work. He was portrayed by Christopher Lee. In the films, Saruman presents himself outright as a servant of Sauron and a traitor to the White Council. Smith and Matthews suggest that Saruman's role is built up as a substitute for Sauron—the story's main antagonist—who never appears directly in the book, a theory which Jackson confirms in the commentary to the DVD. They suggest that having secured the veteran British horror actor Christopher Lee to play Saruman, it made sense to make greater use of his star status. 'The Return of the King' (2003) p. 177. Despite this increased role in the first two films, the scenes involving Saruman that were shot for use in the third film, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, were not used in the cinematic release, a decision which "shocked" Lee. Jackson reasoned that it would be anticlimactic to show Saruman's fate in the second movie (after the Battle of Helm's Deep) and too retrospective for the third one. The cut scenes end with Saruman falling to his death from the top of Orthanc after being stabbed by Wormtongue who had reached his breaking point after being slapped by Saruman, and include material transposed from the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire". They are included at the start of the Extended Edition DVD release of the film. In Jackson's film adaptations of The Hobbit (2012–2014), Lee reprises his role as Saruman the White, even though Saruman does not appear in the book. In the first film, Saruman, Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond gather at a meeting of the White Council in Rivendell, loosely based on material from the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings. Lee posthumously reprises his role as Saruman in the 2024 anime film through archived voice recording.
|
|
