I’d also add that the maiar who wished to involve themselves in the affairs of Middle Earth were pretty much obligated to take on physical forms. Their true discorporate angelic forms might be free of the limitations of their physical forms but those discorporate forms were disconnected from Middle Earth.
When Mr. Sharkey gets killed in the scouring of the Shire, he returns to his incorporeal “true” form…but a wind from the west disperses it. I don’t think Saruman was completely destroyed by this, just that he was like Sauron reduced to an impotent spirit of malice.
And as you say, Saruman hadn’t been working as a crafter and loremaster just during his assignment to Middle Earth, but from the beginning of the world. There’s no way he’d give all that up to start over as a first level Balrog.
El, the movie’s full of shit on this issue. Sauron wanted to subjagate Men and hear the lamentations of their Women; genocide wasn’t on the agenda.
'Cept Hobbits. He’d have stamped every one of those poncy little gits out of existence, save for Rosie Cotton & the Hot Brunet Hobbit Chick Who Was So Cute When She Saw the Fireworks Dragon Explode.
(and you think that girl hobbit is cute? Ugh. Do you need glasses? All I could think when I saw that scene is “wig”).
QtM–reminds me of the archangel (Michael?)–the one who would rather rule in Hell than serve in heaven.
Others here: I seem to have conflated Saruman’s army (which the quote was about) and Sauron, which, since they both wanted to Do Bad Things To Men et al, is no big deal to me*. I see that I have caused further discussion into finer bits of Tolkien lore. I now feel like a kid at the grown up table when said kid asks about politics and the discussion gets heated and over her head. Carry on–but I’m bowing out.
*they’re both bad guys. They both serve as plot devices. They were both defeated in the end.
Ok, Satan–but I thought there was a legend (god knows if there’s a Bible verse) that he was once an angel of the Lord, but chose to rule in Hell than serve in heaven. And I thought he had another name (not just Satan. No, not Beelzabub, either).
Tolkien types can be so touchy, It’s just a resemblance to another well known tale.
ETA:
Ha! I meant Lucifer. So there.
As far as the movies’ take on Sauron’s motives, I recall the line from the opening. When Sauron created the One Ring and poured into it “his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life”. Not destroy.
Sauron was surprised as hell when Numenor was thrown down; he expected that the Valar would just wipe out the invading army of Ar-Pharazon, leaving him to reign over his former foes for long ages, inflicting great misery on them.
Instead he had to trot back to Mordor disembodied, and probably soggy as hell, too.
Also, by the time that Saruman has gone rogue, he has made his own Ring of Power in imitation of Sauron’s. One would presume that Saruman had to pour much of his own power into it, that being the way such things were done, apparently.
This probably limited him somehow, although who knows in what way – the ring is noticed by Gandalf in one scene, and then never mentioned again as far as I know. Since Saruman withers away to an impotent spirit like Sauron, in the end, I’d assume that Saruman’s ring went kaput the same way the other rings did when the One Ring was destroyed (else, Saruman would have only dwindled to “Necromancer” levels, presumably).
I don’t think Saruman’s Ring was completed or anything. We don’t really know what it was or where it ended up. His ring had no power to help him and was not tied into the power of the One Ring as far as I can tell.
Saruman was also tied much closer to the Powers of the West. When Wormtongue killed him, he was rejected and would have become a very minor spirit of malice at best.
This. I would go so far as to say viewpoint doesn’t even factor into it. In Tolkien’s Western framework, evil is fundamentally illogical and irrational. Melkor/Sauron/Saruman/Grima/Bill the Pony don’t really need a reason for their evilness.
THIS is where you have the whole thing wrong. Someone else upthread makes the same, fundamental mistake.
LotR isn’t a story in the classic sense of a self-contained work of fiction. LotR is a part of a larger mythology. The books are a very detailed part, and they morphed from a cute sequel into an exposition of that mythology, into a very detailed story about one particular set of events in that mythology. Note, please, that Professor Tolkien never again wrote anything remotely like LotR. He wasn’t an author in that classic sense, and his writings reflect that.
Sauron, and before “him” Melkor/Morgoth are not plot devices. They are parts of a mythology. They are fulfilling certain roles in that mythology. But the role of Sauron in that mythology, as seen by the participants in the destruction of the One Ring and the War of the Ring, is very remote, almost completely out of sight. So we don’t get to talk to Sauron, we don’t get to listen to Sauron’s thoughts, and we don’t get to see him in action. Everything we end up knowing about him is the result of a limited set of information available from the participants, such as Frodo’s visions in the well of Galadriel, Frodo’s experience upon Amon Hen, and Pippen’s recollection from looking into the palantír. That’s why it’s hard to get a real understanding of him from LotR (and PLEASE do not take ANYTHING from the movies as representative of what is going on in the books; any resemblance to the books is purely coincidental in most cases :rolleyes: ).
Well, Sauron IS a plot device in that he/it is used to represent evil and serves that purpose well. It’s part of a mythology, sure, but it’s a mythology made up in one man’s head aka a helluva story. Given that it’s all a story, Sauron is a plot device. He’s a good one. I think PJ had a hard time coming up with an image for Sauron. The Eye That No Visine Can Help was perhaps a bit too concrete.
It’d be like us trying to physically show what love is. You can show manifestations of it, but you can’t show the thing itself. Same with evil. Same with Sauron. But that doesn’t change the fact that Sauron is a construction of the author’s, no more, no less. I don’t mean the term to be derogatory at all–every character and setting in the books is a plot device!
Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for the British Isles. He created a fantastic world. But they’re stories, first and last. He’d be the first one to say that, having a distaste for allegory etc. Unfortunately, the mythologies and creation stories of the Beaker* people and other prehistoric peoples living in Britain are lost to us. No doubt they had forces for good and for evil, but it is doubtful that such spirits had much in common with the inhabitants of Middle Earth.
*and this term always make me think of Beaker from The Muppets. I’m hopeless as an academic.
All of the rings of power were tied to the One Ring – even the three Celebrimbor made in secret, without Annatar’s assistance. That is because Sauron was the ultimate source of the lore to create rings of power, and so all rings of power were ultimately susceptible to the One Ring.
There is no reason that Saruman’s ring (if it got finished) would be exempt. Especially since Saruman apparently created it using the lore he had from studying rings of power, and after he had fallen under the sway of Sauron through the palantír. So, whether or not his ring actually did anything ringy, it was certainly done for with the passing of the One Ring.
I don’t know about this. The Nine, the Seven, and the Three were all created before the One, and were bound to the One at the moment of its creation. Saruman’s ring, if it even had any power at all, was created after the One. Sauron may have had some influence on it, through the use of his expertise and “notes” to create it, but I doubt it was tied to the One at all, given that Sauron did not have access to the One during or after the creation of Saruman’s ring.
Sorry, but I’m going to disagree, but not because what you are saying is incorrect. The trouble is with the term “plot device.” A plot device is something inserted into a story solely to advance the story. The “letters of transit” in Casablanca are a plot device. In LotR, the introduction of a palantír at Orthanc for Pippen to get is a plot device (it allows Aragorn to reveal himself to the Dark Lord). Usually, as is the case upthread where Sauron is called a plot device, the usage is derogatory. That is, the critic thinks that the device has such an obvious function, or such a shallow exposition, that it bespeaks poor writing skills.
To the extent that ALL elements of a story are introduced to move the story along, everything in a story can be labled a plot device. Gandalf in The Hobbit is a plot device. Rather more famously, the Ring is a plot device in the same story; it allows Bilbo to escape the goblin tunnels, etc. But few people would use the term in its usual derogatory fashion about Sauron, unless they don’t understand that Sauron is larger than the story. He’s part of an immense history. In The Hobbit, we barely see him at all. In LotR, he’s much more a part of things, but he isn’t just “Evil Incarnate” as some would have. It’s just that, by the time of the end of the Third Age, anything redeeming about him has long since disappeared. He plots revenge and domination, pretty much exclusively. Think about where you would be if you spent 3000 years plotting those two things.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the end of his ambition. However, I also wouldn’t be surprised if he somehow saw himself using his powers and the adoration of all his slaves to ascend to his old power and from there make war on Heaven.
RE ME After Sauron
I’m shocked, shocked I say, nobody has mentioned this! As you Tolkien experts must know, he did begin a tale of the Fifth Age. In it, society is troubled by a dark cult led by Herumor. Who Herumor really was, it’s just a title meaning the Dark Lord, or what powers, if any, he had are unknown.
Non canonically, but undeniably half elves continue to turn up in our age in the forms of Bjork and David Bowie. Hobbits occasionally leave the shire as evidenced by Dom DeLouise and most of the extras on The Nanny.
It’s just a resemblance to another well known tale. 
