Saruman

Saruman belongs to the order of the Istari, the Wizards of Middle-earth, and for most of the Third Age he stands at its head; his whiteness of raiment marks that rank, and from it derives his customary title, Saruman the White. The name by which he is generally known is that used among Men of the North, and like the other names connected with Rohan it is presented in an Old English shape, its first element recalling the old word for craft or cunning device — a fitting label for a wizard renowned above all for skill of hand and subtlety of mind. The Elves call him Curunír, and the two names answer one another in sense, both pointing to the same mastery of craft. The name is stressed on the first syllable, with the vowel of 'father'.

Of his deeper origin the works published in Tolkien's lifetime say little, but the posthumously edited essay on the Istari is explicit: the Wizards are Maiar, spirits of the same order as Sauron, clothed in the bodies of aged Men. There Saruman's oldest name is given as Curumo, a Quenya form built on curu, 'skill', of which Sindarin Curunír ('man of craft') is the counterpart; the essay also links him to Aulë, the Vala of smithcraft, which accords with his lifelong bent toward devices, machinery, and the lore of making. The Northern name Saruman is thus a translation in spirit as well as in form, carrying the same meaning through a Mannish tongue.

Two further names attach to him in The Lord of the Rings itself. When his ambitions turn away from the counsels of the Wise, he sets aside his old title and styles himself Saruman of Many Colours, a change Gandalf reports to the Council of Elrond as the outward sign of an inward shift. Much later he is known to his followers as Sharkey, which a note in the text derives from an Orkish word, sharkû, meaning 'old man' — a rough nickname that has drifted far indeed from the honorifics of Elves and Wizards.

Saruman entered Middle-earth around the year 1000 of the Third Age, when the Wizards first appeared in the West as emissaries against the growing shadow. Unlike Gandalf, who never settled anywhere, he travelled often into the East of the world, and for many centuries no fixed dwelling is recorded for him. In 2759 he took up residence at Isengard in the southern Misty Mountains: in the days of King Fréaláf of Rohan he appeared there with gifts and professions of friendship, and Beren, Steward of Gondor, granted him the keys of Orthanc, the impregnable Númenórean tower that Gondor could no longer garrison. The arrangement seemed a boon to both Rohan and Gondor, for a powerful ally now watched the Gap of Rohan — and for a long while Saruman was, by every outward sign, exactly that.

When the White Council of the Wise was formed in 2463 to concert resistance to the power stirring in Dol Guldur, Saruman was chosen as its chief on the strength of his unrivalled knowledge of Sauron's old devices; Galadriel would rather have seen Gandalf at its head, and Saruman did not forget it. His special study was the lore of the Rings of Power, above all the history of the One, and this learning slowly curdled into desire. At the Council of 2851 he overruled Gandalf's plea for an assault on Dol Guldur — hoping, as later became clear, that the Ring would stir and reveal itself if its master were left in peace, and that he himself might find it first. He had begun searching near the Gladden Fields, where Isildur had perished; in 2939 he discovered that Sauron's servants were combing the same waters, and concealed the alarming news from his colleagues. In 2941 he at last consented to the attack on Dol Guldur, chiefly to interrupt his rival's search, and at the Council's final meeting in 2953 he lied outright, declaring that the One had long since been carried down the Anduin to the Sea. He then withdrew to Isengard, took it for his own, fortified it, and set spies upon Gandalf — noting with interest the Wizard's fondness for the Shire.

The posthumously published essay on the Istari pushes the roots of his fall further back. There it is told that he was among the first of the order to arrive, that he journeyed into the East in the company of the two Blue Wizards and returned alone, and that his grudge against Gandalf began at the very havens: Saruman learned that Círdan had given the Elven-ring of fire to Gandalf rather than to himself, the acknowledged head of the order, and nursed the slight in secret. The accounts gathered under the title of the hunt for the Ring add that his corruption was practical as well as spiritual — he kept agents on the roads between Isengard and the Shire and quietly imported the halflings' pipe-weed, mocking Gandalf's taste for it in public even as he adopted it in private.

About the year 3000 Saruman presumed to use the palantír of Orthanc, and through it was caught by the far stronger will of Sauron, who held the Ithil-stone. Thereafter he played a double game, posing as Mordor's ally while still intending to seize the One Ring for himself. The mask came off in July 3018, when Gandalf came to Orthanc seeking counsel: Saruman revealed his new allegiance, displayed robes that shimmered in many hues in place of his old white, urged Gandalf to join him in bargaining for a share of the rising power, and, when refused, imprisoned him on the tower's pinnacle. Gandalf escaped in September, borne away by the eagle Gwaihir, and carried word of the treason to Rivendell.

Saruman now made open war. He filled Isengard with Orcs, wolves, and Men, bred a hardier soldiery that endured the sun, and worked through his agent Gríma Wormtongue to paralyse King Théoden of Rohan. Early in 3019 his forces struck at the Fords of Isen, where Théodred, the king's heir, fell on 25 February; but the campaign broke against the Hornburg on the night of 3–4 March, and while his army perished there the Ents, roused by his long despoiling of Fangorn's trees, overwhelmed Isengard itself and drowned its pits. On 5 March Gandalf, now the White, came with Théoden to parley beneath Orthanc. Saruman's famous voice nearly swayed the company, but when he refused every offer of amendment Gandalf cast him from the order and the Council and broke his staff, leaving him a prisoner in his own tower under Treebeard's watch.

Within the design of the story Saruman occupies the place of the corrupted counsellor: the foremost of the five Wizards, set at the head of the White Council, whose task was to study and oppose the Enemy and who instead came to imitate him. His particular strength lay in knowledge rather than in open force. He had made the devices of Sauron his special province, above all the lore of the Rings of Power, and Gandalf reports at Rivendell that Saruman had come to wear a ring of his own and to style himself a maker of rings — an ambition to rival, on a smaller scale, the craft he had studied so long. To this belongs his mastery of machinery and destructive invention: the fires and engines of Isengard, including the blasting device that breached the wall of Helm's Deep, were products of his workshops, not of any spell.

His most dangerous gift, however, was his voice. Those who heard him speak found it difficult to remember afterwards what he had actually said, only that it had seemed wise and reasonable, and that dissent had felt churlish; even hardened men at the foot of Orthanc wavered under it. Yet the narrative is careful to show this power's edges. The enchantment worked best on the unwary and weakened with distance and repetition; Théoden, Éomer, and Gimli shook it off, and against Gandalf it failed entirely. Nor was Saruman's other strength truly his own: Orthanc, which he could not so much as scratch, was Númenórean work, and the palantír he kept there mastered him rather than served him, binding his will to the stronger will that held its counterpart. When Gandalf expelled him from the order and broke his staff, little remained to him beyond the voice itself — enough, in the end, only for petty mischief.

The posthumous essay on the Istari sets these limits in a wider frame. The Wizards were sent expressly to advise and unite the free peoples against Sauron, and were forbidden to match his power with power or to dominate Elves and Men by fear and force; their incarnate forms subjected them to hunger, weariness, and the possibility of failure. Saruman's career is there presented as the clearest breach of that charge: gathering armies, coveting the Ring, and seeking mastery for himself, he abandoned the mission that alone justified his power, and so forfeited it.

The relationship that defines Saruman is his rivalry with Gandalf, and it is strikingly one-sided. Gandalf long treats him with deference, deferring to his judgement in Council and coming to Orthanc in good faith even after warnings; Saruman, by contrast, measures himself against his colleague constantly, resents every honour paid him, and reads Gandalf's humility as a rival's cunning. Each of their confrontations turns on the same misjudgement: Saruman offers partnership as a mask for mastery, and cannot conceive that anyone would refuse power sincerely. His mockery — 'Grey Fool' is his habitual sneer — betrays how much space Gandalf occupies in his thoughts.

The lesser figures around him show the same pattern of use without regard. Radagast, whom he dismisses as a simpleton, is deceived into carrying the message that lures Gandalf to Orthanc — and, in an irony Saruman does not foresee, thereby honestly summons the Eagle that frees his prisoner. Treebeard, having every cause for vengeance, releases him out of unwillingness to cage a living creature; Frodo spares him at the end in plain pity. Mercy is the one currency Saruman cannot handle: each act of it stings him worse than punishment, for it proves the measure of what he has become.

Saruman is a comparatively late arrival in the composition of The Lord of the Rings. In the earliest phases of drafting, Gandalf's ominous failure to appear at Bag End required an explanation, and Tolkien's working notes tried other devices before the treacherous wizard existed: in one projection Gandalf was held captive by 'Giant Treebeard', who at that stage was conceived as a hostile being rather than the venerable Ent of the finished book. Only when the Council of Elrond chapter was being developed did Saruman enter the story, absorbing the role of Gandalf's captor; with the treachery relocated to a corrupted colleague and the tower of Orthanc, Treebeard was freed to become an ally, and the shape of Book III could emerge.

Two pillars of Saruman's finished story likewise arose unplanned in the act of writing. The drafts show that when the heavy globe was hurled from a window of Orthanc after the parley, Tolkien did not yet know what it was; the recognition that it was a palantír came in the course of composition, and only then did the stone retrospectively supply the mechanism of Saruman's entanglement with Sauron, which no earlier text had explained. The Shire episode developed in a similar way: in the first drafting of the chapter that became 'The Scouring of the Shire', the ruffians' chief 'Sharkey' was not Saruman at all but merely a leader of the invading Men, and the identification of the fallen wizard with the petty tyrant of Bag End — completing his degradation — was reached only as the writing proceeded.

Earlier adaptations treated the character unevenly. In Ralph Bakshi's animated film of 1978, Saruman was voiced by Fraser Kerr; concerned that audiences might confuse the names Saruman and Sauron, the production rendered his name inconsistently, with characters at times calling him 'Aruman'. The BBC's 1981 radio dramatization of The Lord of the Rings, by contrast, kept the character close to the text, with Peter Howell in the role, and retained the Shire episode that the later films discarded.