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Originally Posted by Boromir88
I would say Gimli, because "they (Dwarves) are not evil by nature, and few ever served the Enemy." The dwarves were a resiliant race and basically told Sauron to bug off, despite being offered riches, land, and an "I'll leave you alone" pass
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I noticed that Gimli was one who resisted Saruman's words, but then I'm in danger of skipping to the next chapter here, so I'll try to resist going too far into that. But if we think about the Rings of power, then it was the Nine which were most effective, corrupting the minds of Men, and the Three may have proven to be the downfall of the Elves if they had not been so quick in perceiving Sauron's intentions for the One. Yet the Seven did not have such terrible effects as might have been expected. If the Rings were made to have some kind of use in osanwe, thought transference, then perhaps the Dwarves do not possess this ability, either lacking it to some extent or even entirely. If so, then it might explain why Saruman's voice had no effect on Gimli.
The interesting thing about how Saruman eventually tricks Treebeard into releasing him is that this is preceeded by Treebeard relating many long tales to the captive Saruman; was Treebeard trying his own form of thought control here? It's certainly amusing to think of the 'hasty' Saruman being driven mad by long, rambling Entish tales.
But the Ents
do resist Saruman when they arrive at Isengard, in fact they chase him:
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"When the Ents had reduced a large part of the southern walls to rubbish, and what was left of his people had bolted and deserted him, Saruman fled in a panic. He seems to have been at the gates when we arrived: I expect he came to watch his splendid army march out. When the Ents broke their way in, he left in a hurry. They did not spot him at first. But the night had opened out, and there was a great light of stars, quite enough for Ents to see by, and suddenly Quickbeam gave a cry: "The tree-killer, the tree-killer!" Quickbeam is a gentle creature, but he hates Saruman all the more fiercely for that: his people suffered cruelly from orc-axes. He leapt down the path from the inner gate, and he can move like a wind when he is roused. There was a pale figure hurrying away in and out of the shadows of the pillars, and it had nearly reached the stairs to the tower-door. But it was a near thing. Quickbeam was so hot after him, that he was within a step or two of being caught and strangled when he slipped in through the door.
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Aside from being a scene I would love to see, I like this passage as it shows that even Saruman with his powers cannot do much more than run when faced with a furious tree giant. I wonder did he know he would not have time to try and charm the Ent after him? Did he know that Ents may take some considerable time to charm? Treebeard must have been difficult to charm, as he cannot have let Saruman leave for quite a long time. Perhaps the clue is in the fact that Saruman had never accounted for the latent strength of the Ents and did not know what to do when they attacked his stronghold, and maybe he 'learned' something of how to talk to an Ent through Treebeard spending so long telling him stories. Thinking about how the Elves were the ones to teach the Ents language, they must have had a different way of thinking to most other creatures, and maybe Ents (and Dwarves), because of their different origins to Elves and Men were more resistant to osanwe.