# LotR: what was the point of the whole Saruman subplot? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 26, 2013, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721 "2013-09-26T14:21:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/41 "2013-09-27T20:38:53Z")
I’ll just add to the many excellent comments that Saruman’s treachery highlights also how very real and how very evil the temptation imbued by the ring was, even from afar. ---
**Author:** ![Apocalypso](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Apocalypso](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apocalypso)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/42 "2013-09-27T21:11:42Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > Can you expand on this? I don’t necessarily disagree, but I am having a hard time understanding how the Fellowship can survive Sauron when survival would mean enslavement or death. And to me, they did fight him, if not directly in the field of battle, but through the destruction of his power or the battles against his army. > > In fact, someone made a point in a previous LOTR thread that Tolkien didn’t do enough to show Sauron as a threat. By the end of Helm’s Deep, the Men had won the battle, and Men again won the Battle of Pellennor Fields. There wasn’t many instances when Sauron had the world of Men on the ropes. There were specific instances of individuals in danger, but Gondor and Rohan seemed to have fared pretty well against Sauron’s armies. They won pretty much every major battle. And someone (I forget who) tell them that the army they have defeated was but the smallest finger on one of Sauron’s hands, or something similar. In the books it was (to me anyway) pretty clear that the battle for Gondor would have been a rout if not for Aragorn returning with the dead and wiping out the corsairs. The defenders suffered heavy losses in that battle, as did the Rohirrim in the ones before that. I’ve never thought of that as “fared pretty well”. The King of Rohan and his son (and heir) were dead, the Steward of Gondor and both of his sons were dead, and many, many others. So Aragorn leads the charge to the Black Gate and it becomes clear that Sauron’s remaining troops were like 5 times the number of the ones killed at Gondor. It was hopeless. If not for Frodo’s (and Sams) heroics, Middle Earth would have been toast, everyone dead or enslaved. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/43 "2013-09-27T21:28:15Z")
> [@Apocalypso](#): > > the Steward of Gondor and both of his sons were dead Just a little nitpick…Faramir survived. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/44 "2013-09-27T21:50:18Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Tolkien himself had suffered from severe post-traumatic stress after World War 1. For a long time, he felt he could NEVER live an ordinary, happy life again. Eventually, he DID marry, he ahd a successful career in academiz, and had a fairly happy life. But Tolkien understood all too well why many veterans could never be happy again, just as Frodo couldn’t. > [@Chronos](#): > > Nitpick: Sam didn’t find that his old girlfriend had married someone else. Rosie waited for him. > JRR in the hizzous! Further “nitpickery” (and I’ve no idea what a hizzous is – can you enlighten?) – from what I’ve read about Tolkien, his World War 1 service was decidedly “patchy”. He was rather late to join up – having wanted to finish his university course first, bearing it in mind that if he survived the conflict, he’d want to be qualified to earn a decent living. When in the army, his health was – genuinely – bad, and he spent a lot of time at home on sick leave – his surviving the war physically undamaged, likely had a good deal to do with that. He in fact married his sweetheart, during the war – his ill-health meant that they had a lot of time together in Britain, in the course of the war. I recall reading that Tolkien, and his friend and brother in Christ C.S. Lewis, compared notes about their World War 1 service as junior officers in the British Army, and ruefully concluded that they had both been pretty useless in that role – if an Allied victory had been dependent on them, it would have been a walkover for the Germans. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/45 "2013-09-27T21:51:41Z")
> [@Apocalypso](#): > > [after the battle for Minas Tirith] the Steward of Gondor and both of his sons were dead Well, one of his sons was only mostly dead. He got better. > [@astorian](#): > > The Scouring of the Shire was probably inspired in PART by real conditions in England in the aftermath of the two World Wars, but it also has parallels in many ancient epics. I think it’s even more central to the entire plot. There’s the bit when Gandalf leaves the hobbits right before arriving at the Shire, and says something along the lines of "Oh, no, I’m not coming with you the rest of the way. You have to Scour the-- I mean, go home and face whatever challenges come next – all by yourselves; that’s the whole point of all your adventures isn’t it? You’re ready for things now. “Look, we’re all in a novel, right? And one of the distinguishing characteristics of a novel that your middle school teachers should have taught you (or your tutors since you’re all clearly gentlemen from the class-bound Shire) is that the main character or characters undergo emotional growth and change. And look, we’re at nearly at the end of the novel – don’t interrupt, Merry, all those other pages are just appendices – with you all having Adventures, Encounters and Minor Feats, but really no maturity or wisdom that you didn’t start with. By Eru, I didn’t grow these bushy eyebrows and demonstrate my temper all this time just to be in some meo-epic or roman-a-clef or series of pointless linear events. We’re going to have some honest to goodness demonstrated growth – No, Sam, I don’t just mean getting taller because of Ent juice, I mean internal growth-- by the end of this thing. So get along, go, before I start setting of fireworks in the _other_ hairy hobbit parts!” OK, maybe he doesn’t say that last paragraph. But it’s kind of implied. So I believe Tolkien when he says the Scouring is not really about the aftermath of WWII (after all the next year in the Shire is bountiful; hardly the aftermath of WWII in Britain), but rather central to the story. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/46 "2013-09-27T22:57:59Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > In fact, someone made a point in a previous LOTR thread that Tolkien didn’t do enough to show Sauron as a threat. By the end of Helm’s Deep, the Men had won the battle, and Men again won the Battle of Pellennor Fields. There wasn’t many instances when Sauron had the world of Men on the ropes. There were specific instances of individuals in danger, but Gondor and Rohan seemed to have fared pretty well against Sauron’s armies. They won pretty much every major battle. Helm’s Deep was against Saruman’s army, of course, not Sauron’s, and I think it was always clear that from Sauron’s point of view, the Pellenor Fields was not the crucial battle of the war at all, but just a preliminary skirmish, fought not by Sauron’s main army out of Mordor, but by the Lord of the Nazgul’s army out of Minas Morgul. Yes, the good guys prevailed, just, at the Pellenor Fields, but they were exhausted by it, and had to call in all their reserve, backup forces, the Rohirim and the Dead, just to survive. It was a decidedly Phyrric victory. Meanwhile Sauron was still mustering huge fresh armies in Mordor itself (as Frodo and Sam witnessed), ready for the real main offensive campaign to begin. I do not think even the force that fought at the Black Gate was meant to be more than a fraction of what Sauron had in reserve, but it was made quite clear they would have been plenty enough to utterly crush the exhausted remnants of the forces of Gandalf and Gondor if the ring had not been destroyed in time. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/47 "2013-09-27T23:20:59Z")
Remember, too, that EVERYTHING after the Pellenor Fields was a completely hopeless crapshoot designed solely to distract Sauron from the hobbits that everyone HOPED were still trudging their way to Mount Doom. They ALL KNEW that they had no hope of actually winning any battle against Sauron’s forces in Mordor. That’s why Aragorn allowed them the option of peeling off and going back to Minas Tirith without shame before they got to the Morannon. The battle of the Black Gate was gone into with full knowledge that if the hobbits had been captured or killed, the army (and the whole of Middle-Earth) was doomed. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/48 "2013-09-27T23:23:17Z")
> [@vontsira](#): > > his friend and brother in Christ C.S. Lewis Not really a brother in Christ. Prior to his conversion, Lewis was at best agnostic, and the devoutly Catholic Tolkien was upset that his conversion was to a Protestant denomination. It actually had a negative impact on their friendship. It’s certainly the case that his discussions about religion with Tolkien were a catalyst for his conversion, though. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2013, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/49 "2013-09-27T23:27:02Z")
> [@vontsira](#): > > (and I’ve no idea what a hizzous is – can you enlighten?) It’s hip-hop for “house.” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/50 "2013-09-28T00:26:58Z")
> [@vontsira](#): > > I recall reading that Tolkien, and his friend and brother in Christ C.S. Lewis, compared notes about their World War 1 service as junior officers in the British Army, and ruefully concluded that they had both been pretty useless in that role – if an Allied victory had been dependent on them, it would have been a walkover for the Germans. Veterans frequently feel that way. That is the point of having whole armies: the fates of nations aren’t decided by a few officers at an outpost that sees only a fraction of the action if any. As for Lewis’ agnosticism, he wasn’t an agnostic prior to his conversion. He was a full on atheist and engaged in formal debates on the side of atheism. Had he been prominent prior to his conversion, it would be the equivalent of Richard Dawkins suddenly getting religion. If you read his “Surprised By Joy” he doesn’t go into describing his role as an advocate of atheism, but he clearly states he was a non-believer. For his conversion, he describes it as coming to the realization that he realized he simply did not actually believe the atheism he was espousing. He mentions Tolkien (IIRC) but probably does not adequately document the importance of their personal discussions. I presume the reason he does not fully credit Tolkien is that Englishmen would consider too much disclosure of such personal and private discussions to be very bad form. I don’t think denomination mattered much to Lewis, and his leading role as a popular non-demoninationalist theologian owes much of his success to that. I think Roman Catholicism mattered immensely to Tolkien. LOTR and Middle Earth, while mostly non-religious on the surface as far as characters and rituals, seems to this Protestant to have a very RCC feel. Legitimacy and proper authority arise again and again as themes. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/51 "2013-09-28T00:32:35Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > It’s hip-hop for “house.” Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![vontsira](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/51bf81/32.png) [@vontsira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vontsira)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/52 "2013-09-28T00:37:36Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Veterans frequently feel that way. That is the point of having whole armies: the fates of nations aren’t decided by a few officers at an outpost that sees only a fraction of the action if any. > > As for Lewis’ agnosticism, he wasn’t an agnostic prior to his conversion. He was a full on atheist and engaged in formal debates on the side of atheism. Had he been prominent prior to his conversion, it would be the equivalent of Richard Dawkins suddenly getting religion. If you read his “Surprised By Joy” he doesn’t go into describing his role as an advocate of atheism, but he clearly states he was a non-believer. For his conversion, he describes it as coming to the realization that he realized he simply did not actually believe the atheism he was espousing. He mentions Tolkien (IIRC) but probably does not adequately document the importance of their personal discussions. I presume the reason he does not fully credit Tolkien is that Englishmen would consider too much disclosure of such personal and private discussions to be very bad form. > > I don’t think denomination mattered much to Lewis, and his leading role as a popular non-demoninationalist theologian owes much of his success to that. > > I think Roman Catholicism mattered immensely to Tolkien. LOTR and Middle Earth, while mostly non-religious on the surface as far as characters and rituals, seems to this Protestant to have a very RCC feel. Legitimacy and proper authority arise again and again as themes. Re JRRT and CSL, presumably each at least hoped that the other, though (maybe) wrong in the details, was right in the greater scheme of things; and that they’d ultimately meet, and continue their friendship, in Heaven. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/53 "2013-09-28T02:39:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Miller** : > > It’s hip-hop for “house.” And prompted by the typo “academiz”. > [@](#): > > Quoth **The Second Stone** : > > I think Roman Catholicism mattered immensely to Tolkien. LOTR and Middle Earth, while mostly non-religious on the surface as far as characters and rituals, seems to this Protestant to have a very RCC feel. Legitimacy and proper authority arise again and again as themes. The “RCC feel”, as you call it, is if anything even more obvious to Catholics. You also see, for instance, the Catholic devotion to Mary translated into the Elves’ devotion to Elbereth. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/54 "2013-09-28T03:59:45Z")
Reading the Unfinished Tales and the notes on the development of the character of Galadriel, one finds more than a hint of Marianism there, too. I’m afraid Tolkien may have committed the risible sin of the author, and had fallen a bit in love with Galadriel. (Someone mentioned Dorothy Sayers having fallen a bit in love with Peter Wimsey. It is not uncommon.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/55 "2013-09-28T04:25:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And prompted by the typo “academiz”. > The “RCC feel”, as you call it, is if anything even more obvious to Catholics. You also see, for instance, the Catholic devotion to Mary translated into the Elves’ devotion to Elbereth. The Marianism is pretty much invisible to me in LOTR. Protestants (of my stripe) respect Mary and Joseph pretty much equally, but without any special veneration. What strikes me is the respect for legitimate authority. This is all over LOTR. The various Lords and Kings and their ability to heal or lead people based on a noble birthright, being powerful physically or magically because of lineage seems vaguely familiar as a kind of church hierarchy and oath to obey authority, and such oaths have more than mere word power. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/56 "2013-09-28T12:36:55Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Reading the Unfinished Tales and the notes on the development of the character of Galadriel, one finds more than a hint of Marianism there, too. I’m afraid Tolkien may have committed the risible sin of the author, and had fallen a bit in love with Galadriel. He may have been fond of Galadriel, but he loved Luthien. (That’s what is written on his and his wife’s gravestone - he is Beren) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/57 "2013-09-28T15:07:56Z")
And I don’t dispute that, either, **The Second Stone** , though that’s not something that was particularly noticeable from my perspective. It would probably take a scholar of comparative religions to notice all of the ways in which Tolkien’s writing is distinctively Catholic. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/58 "2013-09-28T16:16:11Z")
I agree. As a protester, the deference to authority approaches the servile and is a bit annoying. Everytime someone tells me that Elbereth or Galadriel is a Mary figure, I just don’t see it. ---
**Author:** ![Bob\_Blaylock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_blaylock/32/3235_2.png) [@Bob\_Blaylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_Blaylock)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/59 "2013-09-29T06:00:35Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Basic plot- The dark tide is rising, and the good guys decide on a desperate gamble to defeat it. Frodo and Sam brave Mordor to destroy the Ring while the others fight to keep the west from being overrun before they can. But then there’s a whole subplot, a diversion really, about dealing with the machinations of a would-be rival dark power. It seems so dispensable to the story that the Peter Jackson movie omitted the entire Scouring of the Shire. From a literary standpoint, what was Tolkien’s objective in including this in the story? > [@Malthus](#): > > It was, in my opinion, to show how corruption worked on a scale that was readily comprehensible to the reader. > > The reader may not be as moved by the fall of empires, as by the ruin of the Shire. I was disappointed that “the scouring of the Shire”didn’t make it into the movies. What I got out of it, from the books, is this: Hobbits are simple, good, naïve people, who had always lived in their part of the world, isolated from all the evils outside. While four of them were out in the world, fighting against evils that most Hobbits could never imagine, some of that evil came into the shire, and was able to take over with little resistance from a populace that knew nothing of such evil or how to resist it. So, when the four returned to the shire, and found it overrun with crime and corruption, it was their experiences from outside that made it possible for them to fight this evil and save their homeland. Hobbits were able to “scour” the shire, without much help from other beings, only because four of them had had contact with the sort of evils involved,and from that experience, had gained vital knowledge about how to fight these evils. Had the entire story not played out in a manner that involved a small group of Hobbits leaving the safety of the Shire for a time; or if those Hobbits had not returned to the Shire, then the evil that had taken hold there would never have been overthrown, unless by intervention from non-Hobbit forces from outside. There something else Ive been thinking. At some point, Sauron’s forces captured Gollum, and tortured him to learn what they could about the whereabouts of the Ring. What if, instead, they had captured and tortured Bilbo? You think Bilbo would’ve given anything up? I don’t think he would, no matter how much he was tortured. After all, you know what they say, _“Old Hobbits are hard to break.”_ ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2013, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721/60 "2013-09-29T06:27:54Z")
> [@Bob\_Blaylock](#): > > After all, you know what they say, _“Old Hobbits are hard to break.”_ And lo, in the latter days of the Age of Men, the evils of Morgoth and Sauron still lay their dark hand over the minds of the people… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-what-was-the-point-of-the-whole-saruman-subplot/669721.md?page=4)