I’ve recently been reading Lord of the Rings and one thing that really struck me is how overrated Saruman’s power over words is. Talking to Gandalf, Theoden and crew his great speech can be summarised “Oh well, you boys put up a good show. All’s well that ends well”. Pathetic really considering he had days locked up in his tower to ponder over what to say.
Now if he’d spun a few truths into his lies maybe it’d have been a different story. Something like: “Sorry chaps but there’s this powerful weapon - don’t know if Gandalf mentioned that by the way - and it’s imperative I keep it from the enemy at all costs. After you killed my servants I thought you’d got it Theoden, and it would’ve consumed you. If Gandalf hadn’t kicked out my pal Gríma(Wormtongue) he might’ve retrieved it. See all this trouble is Mr Gray’s fault. You knew he was no good after all.” and so forth. Now that would’ve gone down like a lead balloon with Gandalf but Theodon might have been convinced and Saruman would’ve had a powerful ally.
Are you kidding? Saruman didn’t want anyone to know about the RIng if he could help it. They might, y’know, get ahold of it. But in any case, his words were less important than his sheer charisma.
His magic wasn’t his choice of words, so much as getting people to go along with them in spite of how superficial they might seem to those who weren’t involved.
Yes ideally he’d have kept the ring secret, but at that point he needed a really good excuse for waging war on Rohan. With his army destroyed this was pretty much his last roll of the dice far as getting the ring for himself was concerned. Maybe he’d gotten to used to relying on his charisma and thought any old tosh would’ve swayed the audience.
Thinking back on the passage in question for memory. Sauraman’s powers were no longer as effective on Theoden who had been cured by Gandalf.
All the riders with Theoden were swayed by Sauraman’s words. They thought how much nicer and more respectful Sauraman’s words were than Gandalf’s.
Theoden did not speak at first but Gimli & Eomer spoke loudly against Sauraman and Sauraman spoke more but to no avail as Theoden resisted his lies and his charm and broke the growing spell over the Riders.
After Gandalf broke Sauraman’s staff, they walk away from Orthanc and Gandalf explains to I think Merry, that Sauraman’s powers were shown to have weakened.
So we have the facts that Gimli, Eomer, Gandalf and Sauraman were resistant to Sauraman’s voice and that his voice was weaker in ability to beguile than it had been in the past. Even in the weaker state, his powers were still sufficient to win over a crowd of warriors.
I agree, given all that came before it as Gandalf and Theoden realized the depth of Saruman’s betrayal, his words to them from Orthanc were, um, less than persuasive. But so much of Saruman’s power lay in his voice and not just in the words he used. There’s really no way to convey that in a printed text, no matter how well Tolkien wrote.
To give him credit, he didn’t even try: I’m remembering The Voice from the movie of Dune. “Mind… strong… body… weak… can’t… fight… crappy… synthesiser…”
Agreed, what he said didn’t matter, his words cast their own spell. I wonder if Tolkien didn’t have in mind some of the great orators of his day – Hitler, for instance – who could keep a huge crowd absolutely enthralled, even though what he said was (content-wise) hateful and absurd.
Tolkien would at least have claimed that he did not. He repeatedly claimed he did not allow WWII to influence his work. Claims of the Ring being a metaphor for the atomic bomb are easy to dismiss, just from knowing the time period in which he wrote most of the Lord of the Rings, but your observation may have much merit that he himself would not have admitted to. It seems unlikely he was unaware of the persuasive messages of hate that the Fascist leaders of the thirties and forties were capable of using to beguile their nations.
From reading various biographies on Professor Tolkien, Sauruman largely represented Tolkien’s dislike of mechanical automations changing the way things were and scarring the earth. Much as Ted Sandyman did to a lesser extant and Ents represent his reverence for trees and the natural world and the Hobbits lived what he perceived to be an ideal British life of small villages and farms and no great poverty and minimal mechanical industry.
I agree that Tolkien said he didn’t want readers to see his book as a metaphor, but he could still have taken one or two points from the conflict.
Tolkien stated he was upset by much of the countryside where he spent his childhood being turned into an industrial area.
He also fought in WW1, which was a ghastly experience (as his biographer notes ‘by the end of the war, all but one of his close friends was dead’). There was plenty of pressure to fight in that war (white feathers thrust at men not in uniform etc).
Perhaps Saruman and his Uruk-Hai represent the carnage of WW1, with troops slaughtered at the behest of their leaders.
No great poverty? :dubious: Try paying for the right to gather up enough twigs to keep a small fire going through the winter. Someone ought to write a fantasy novel depicting just how wretched pre-industrial life was for all but a favored few.
As JRRT perceived it. And no doubt there were prosperous communities that did well and looked our for their own, and were generally happier than some of our current blighted communities.
Anyway, Saruman never needed to be a great orator. He could read the phone book and sway people to his will, in his glory days!
Lumpy, I meant how Tolkien portrayed the Shire. The Hobbits were all fairly well fed and ranging from working poor (like the Gamgees) to rich (Tooks & Baggins) but no one was uber rich and there were no royals and no one seemed to be starving. It was a smallish community in an ideal farm climate. It was a pastoral paradise.
There have been some fantasy novels that depicted the wretched conditions of the average serf, but usually only briefly as no one reads Fantasy for thirteen chapters on sustenance farming growing turnips and making thin gruel day after day.
Thanks for the responses, I understand this bit of the book a bit better now. Still think a climatic battle of words with Gandalf would’ve been fun to read though. If I can derail this thread for a moment; Treebeard already knew Saruman had betrayed him and was cutting up his wood. From what I recall he also knew about Sauron and that his kind were likely doomed anyway. So why did it take Merry and Pippin coming along to spur him into action?
Simple, Ents are the opposite of Hasty. It takes a lot for an Ent to get angry or ready for action. It takes far more for a large groups of Ents to make a decision and act as a group. It takes an unbelievable amount of time for the Ents to collectively reach the point where they could discuss as a group, making a decision to MARCH TO WAR. Barooom.
Sorry about that, I get excited by this subject.
Think of the Hobbits as the catalyst of a chemical reaction already near the boiling point of a very slow boil. The Ents were ready for action and just needed that little it of a push. Merry and Pippin were the key chemical added to the solution at the right time. In a nutshell, that is roughly what occurred.
Treebeard’s attitude was undoubtedly that Saruman was just a fleeting irritation, who would be gone in a few thousand years. No need to act precipitously.
:eek: