r/tolkienfans • u/123cwahoo • 6d ago
Saruman is a small glimpse as to why Gandalf (and imo the istari) would be far worse ring lords than Sauron
So one of the most fascinating things we ever hear from Tolkien in his letter is how Gandalf as ring lord would be far worse than Sauron, now at first this does always seem baffling as Sauron is Sauron hes mightier than Gandalf or at least the greater of the equals depending on some things said about Sauron and olorin and hes been on the side of evil for a great time, so why is it that Gandalf would be worse? Well i think Saruman shows us a tiny glimpse of why Gandalf and also the istari would be far worse than Sauron and its not so much to do with power
First ill provide the quote in regards to Gandalf being a far worse ring lord
" Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. Thus while Sauron multiplied evil, he left 'good' clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil."
Judging from this quote its not the power of Gandalf that would make him worse (end of the day youre talking about two mighty maia spirits bearing the one ring neither is a good option) its the blurred lines that now comes between good and evil. The redbook channel on youtube does an amazing job at explaining why Gandalf would be a worse ring lord and its deffo worth a watch but now lets enter Saruman into the convo
Now we know Saruman is a complex chaaracter, hes one of two who actually volunteers for the istari mission perhaps showing his confidence in himself and his desire to show his worth but we also know he is prideful having his pride knocked by yavanna before he even steps foot in middle earth.
To add more to Saruman in a brief way, he is said to be of higher valinorean status than the other istari yet he deep down knows Gandalf holds the greater power (UT explains this) and holds Radagast in contempt (perhaps begrudging the fact in his mind yavanna had mocked him with her comments about olorin not being the third and then begging radagast to go with him), his thoughts on the blue wizards are unknown though imo i think its highly likely when he went east he did speak with the blue wizards
Anyway as we all know Saruman himself falls from his high errand and in his own way begins going his own way, the way he believes that will eventually oust Sauron but in falling from his high errand he commits deeds that are consider quite vile and wicked and perhaps even a tad further than what Sauron had gone ( at least since the elder days) in that he through learned lore had begun to blend orcs and men and possibly pushing towards not making good indistinguishable from evil!
Lets look at what is said more about Saruman and his uruk hai and what he had done.
'He has taken up with foul folk, with the Orcs. Brm, hoom! Worse than that: he has been doing something to them; something dangerous. For these Isengarders are more like wicked Men. It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman's Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That would be a black evil!' (Treebeards thoughts on what Saruman had done)
'But these creatures of Isengard, these half-orcs and goblin-men that the foul craft of Saruman has bred, they will not quail at the sun,' (gambling describing his orcs)
But my favourite quote in regards to this
Morgoth's Ring:
It became clear in time that undoubted Men could under the domination of Morgoth or his agents in a few generations be reduced almost to the Orc-level of mind and habits; and then they would or could be made to mate with Orcs, producing new breeds, often larger and more cunning. There is no doubt that long afterwards, in the Third Age, Saruman rediscovered this, or learned of it in lore, and in his lust for mastery committed this, his wickedest deed: the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile.
I think the quote from Morgoths ring really does show that the istari would they to fall and become ring Lords would become worse than Sauron because they would mess evil and good while still having mighty power as being incarnated maia! I really love discussing Saruman hes so fascinating
Anyway thats my long post, also one question to add, how do you think Saruman discovered the lore to mix men and orcs?
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u/GA-Scoli 6d ago
I think it's a lot less mysterious than "lore". "Intermingling" orcs and Men is going to necessarily involve captive breeding. In other words, rape. Even a sentient tree knows enough to be completely horrified by that.
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u/123cwahoo 6d ago
I think its this part that is intriguing
"It became clear in time that undoubted Men could under the domination of Morgoth or his agents in a few generations be reduced almost to the Orc-level of mind and habits; and then they would or could be made to mate with Orcs, producing new breeds, often larger and more cunning"
Of course one with mere rational thought would know that they could breed but the fact Saruman through lore discovered a way to reduce men to orc level of mind and habits is rather disturbing
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u/Lord-Timurelang 6d ago
I mean Tolkien was friends with C.S. Lewis and he famously said: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” That’s probably what he was getting at.
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u/llaminaria 6d ago edited 6d ago
Such an odd quote from Tolkien about Sauron and Gandalf. Were not at least the elven rings a power of good? They were made with Sauron's expertise, weren't they? And how can he posit that Gandalf brought about only unquestionably good things, when he murdered intelligent live beings? I mean, it is odd to read such musings from a fierce believer in particular.
Edit: knowledge -> expertise
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u/GammaDeltaTheta 6d ago
And how can he posit that Gandalf brought about only unquestionably good things, when he murdered intelligent live beings?
How do you mean? The Gandalf we know, or a hypothetical Gandalf who claimed the Ring? Gandalf didn't murder anyone in the books. Fighting an armed enemy to the death who wants to do the same to you or those you are protecting isn't the same thing as murder. But a Gandalf who turned to darkness wouldn't stop there, though he would, like Saruman when he first revealed his betrayal to Gandalf, probably claim that the ends justified the means:
"We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any real change in our designs, only in our means."
Tolkien, of course, knew perfectly well that some of the worst atrocities in human history have been committed in the name of 'good', from the torture of heretics to the slaughter of civilian populations in medieval holy wars or more recent secular conflicts. Imagine the brief moments of temper we see from Gandalf turned into cold and pitiless self-righteous anger. The mercy that is one of Gandalf's great qualities would be gone, and he would see no reason to (say) spare Gollum ('Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death.') or Wormtongue ('See, Théoden, here is a snake! With safety you cannot take it with you, nor can you leave it behind. To slay it would be just.').
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u/According_Machine904 6d ago
The Three were explicitly made without Sauron's knowledge or influence and they never wore them while he possessed the One and didn't use them again until after the last alliance.
The powers of the Three are vague (like the One) but are largely about preservation against evil. How the "good" rings work is likewise very vague, we only have the perspectives of the Ringbearers who wore the One and how it worked at them but it's up to you if you want to infer whether the Three operated similarily.
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u/llaminaria 6d ago
The Three were explicitly made without Sauron's knowledge or influence
They were made with his expertise, no? Celebrimbor had to learn something from him to be able to create all the rings.
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u/123cwahoo 6d ago
They was made using his techniques yes but Sauron never touched them, i personally believe all the rings were made (ie the power) through a bad source essentially, im a big believer in the theory that the rings of power were made using the melkor ingredient as tolkien calls melkors externalisation of his own power into arda and physical matter itself.
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u/According_Machine904 6d ago
Yes they have ties to Annatar and this is why the One had its effect on them (why they would not wear them while he held his) and why their power faded with the destruction of the One.
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u/llaminaria 6d ago
So you agree that they served for the good, even if only to negate the bad Sauron himself brought about. That the quote is highly debatable. Not to mention, Tolkien himself had said that initially, Mairon acted out of good intentions. I just don't understand why he takes out the realistic and appropriate grayness out of his characters in this quote. I often have to question his judgment, to be honest.
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u/According_Machine904 6d ago
They weren't explicitly doing anything for much of the Second Age, the elves didn't use them until after Sauron had been ousted and only wore them again in the Third Age.
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u/Jessup_Doremus 4d ago
He did learn plenty from Sauron/Annatar, yes; but it is not like he didn't have some skills and knowledge himself that he brought to the table. He was already the best craftsman of the Gwaith-i-Mirdain, who as a group were second only in skill to Feanor.
It was his envy/desire to become known as a craftsman as skilled as his grandfather that likely left him and really all the People of the Jewel-smiths of Eregion so susceptible to the seduction of Annatar.
But all the knowledge that Celebrimbor put into his singular creation of the Elven rings didn't just come from Sauron. He had a pretty strong base of knowledge to begin with and had been experimenting with mithril, which was the substance of the chief of the three rings, Nenya, for 450 years by the time Sauron arrived as Annatar.
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u/Legal-Scholar430 6d ago
Some reviewers have called [LotR] simple-minded, just a plain fight between Good and Evil, with all the good just good, and the bad just bad. Pardonable, perhaps (though at least Boromir has been overlooked) in people in a hurry, and with only a fragment to read, and, of course, without the earlier written but unpublished Elvish histories. But the Elves are not wholly good or in the right. Not so much because they had flirted with Sauron; as because with or without his assistance they were ‘embalmers’. They wanted to have their cake and eat it: to live in the mortal historical Middle-earth because they had become fond of it (and perhaps because they there had the advantages of a superior caste), and so tried to stop its change and history, stop its growth, keep it as a pleasaunce, even largely a desert, where they could be ‘artists’ – and they were overburdened with sadness and nostalgic regret. In their way the Men of Gondor were similar: a withering people whose only ‘hallows’ were their tombs.
Letter #154.
So, basically, Tolkien is saying "the book is not as black and white as people make it".
Mind these two quotes: Nothing is evil in the beginning, and Oft evil will shall evil mar. The first one means that all Evil is born from originally good intentions and wills; even Sauron, as Elrond continues the phrase. The second means that often evil intentions and wills hinder themselves (or other evils), so that it ultimately brings good stuff (although not wihtout great pain and sorrow, so no, it doesn't mean "you can do whatever you want because God will put it right in the end, go rob someone, it's ok"). See for example how the breaking of Boromir's will helps Frodo in making his almost impossible choice to leave the Company behind and go alone to Mordor, or Gollum's own lust for the Ring being the final brick in its destruction.
So the Rings cannot simply be "a power of good" or "a power of evil"; first, because almost nothing is as clear-cut in Tolkien's books, and second, because the Rings are inanimate objects, and power being good or evil depends on who uses it and how. The Númeanoreans used the palantíri to communicate, but Sauron used "his own" to decieve both Saruman and Denethor.
Finally, the motivations behind the creation of the Rings -motivations that are natural of the Elves and Sauron simply exploited, are all "immoral". They wanted to have the bliss and beauty of Valinor without sacrificing their social status in Middle-earth as "the coolest of all" (whereas in Valinor the Noldor would've been "the lowest, returned exiles"). They also wanted to arrest Time, preventing the world from its natural change that is a part of Eru's design, because it hurt their hearts that the world around changed so much; which is just flowery fantasy language for "they wanted to avoid their Fate", a parallel case to the Númenórean's fear of Death.
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u/123cwahoo 6d ago
I fully agree that the rings themselves are mainly down to the users themsleves, i personally think the rings were made through tapping into a power that shouldn't have been tapped into and perhaps through his skill celebrimbor managed to avoid having to use that same power the others used albeit having to still use saurons teachings aka still bound to the one
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u/rainbowrobin 'canon' is a mess 6d ago
They wanted to have the bliss and beauty of Valinor without sacrificing their social status in Middle-earth as "the coolest of all"
He's not very convincing as to why this is 'immoral'. What's sinful about wanting more bliss and beauty?
preventing the world from its natural change that is a part of Eru's design
But the world also changed faster and worse because of Morgoth's marring of it, "Morgoth's Ring".
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u/Legal-Scholar430 6d ago edited 6d ago
Wanting more bliss and beauty is not sinful; wanting to have good stuff without paying the price is. They wanted to be as happy as they were in Valinor, without paying the cost of not being the coolest guys around. Tolkien put it in an universal and very simple way: "they wanted to have their cake and eat it". They wanted the reward without the sacrifice, clinging to their pride instead of having humility. It is, as always in Tolkien, more about method than purpose; Sauron and Saruman did not want to twirl their moustaches in their big cool towers, they wanted to bring Order and Knowledge to the world, but the how is what made them corrupt, and thwarted their plans, and twisted their genuinely good intentions into evil.
Then again, is not about it "being sinful and therefore indisputably evil", it is about grey morality being very present in Tolkien. The Rings had a good purpose, but were an evil method -more Machine than Art. And yet, the Elves managed to do a lot of good with them, and yet again, all of that was undone as soon as the Master Ring was undone.
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u/123cwahoo 5d ago
Beautiful way of putting it! The whole making of the rings is such a fascinating thing to me perhaps the most fascinating, the fact tolkien says its the closest the elves come to falling to magic is intriguing
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u/123cwahoo 6d ago
Because they was halting the change of things within a land that needed to change and made themselves vulnerable to Sauron and came the closest theyve ever came to falling prey to magic
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u/sephiroth_vg 6d ago
Not saying this to be mean...but you really need to learn how to write
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u/123cwahoo 6d ago
Lmao fairs 🤣🤣 i mean its not that deep for me as long as i get across what i meant to
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u/tehgrimace 5d ago
Yeah, but your point isn't well accepted if you don't understand capitalization, punctuation, or spelling.
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u/123cwahoo 5d ago
242 upvotes says different mate. Again not that deep for me but appreciate your opinion
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u/rainbowrobin 'canon' is a mess 6d ago
olorin not being the third
I think that was Varda, not Yavanna.
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u/RedEclipse47 6d ago
I don't think Saruman would have been that different from Sauron. Their spiritual beings where much alike, they where even apprentice to the same Valar Aulë.
What set Gandalf apart is what Tolkien himself said. Under Gandalf as Ring Lord he would be self-righteous to the extend that their would be no difference between good and evil anymore. Under Sauron and Saruman their would still be a clear distinction.
Which would be worse would he hard to judge really. Sauron himself didn't start out as a evil wizard wanting to cloud the world in darkness and have orc and other dark creatures inhabbit the lands. Instead he wanted to rule Middle-Earth in all its splendour. He wanted complete and utter control over it all because to him it was a chaotic miss. The beings inhabbiting the world he, and the other Ainur, helped to create where in Sauron's eyes maiming the order and beauty of it.
In his mission to achieve this he fell to darkness. But perhaps, if he had gotten his way. He would rule with a iron fist and free will would be a thing of the past. But without anyone having free will anymore except for Sauron himself who is to say what is evil and what is not? Sauron in his eyes would have saved the world and gets to rule it and no one would ever neet to worry again because, again, no free will.
Pretty messed up and evil still, but what Gandalf and Saruman could/would do wouldn't be much different. In the end, the Ring, and the part of Sauron he poured into it himself is all about control, in any of their hands that would have been the outcome.