[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

Oh dear! I'm afraid I find Moffat occasionally tolerable but RTD (and Tennant) not at all. And Moffat's Sherlock is in the same boat for me as the films of The Lord of the Rings and New Who - a modern interpretation which, to me, seems to miss the point of the source material in an effort to glam up for modern audiences. But I digress.

Sometimes I think the Downs needs a little "Geeks' Corner" for such topics

Anyway...I think in essence we agree on the end result of all these efforts to capture, corrupt or break Light in Middle-earth, it's clearly not possible to ultimately take control and 'beat' Eru at his own game. Eru is after all omnipotent and more than willing to do some smiting, and if plans collapse before it gets to that stage then he is still capable of showing his displeasure (as we see with Saruman's fea being turned away at the end of The Return of the King).

What's interesting is why characters like Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman think they can beat Eru. We might differ a bit here?

This comes across as reading into things a tad in my opinion. Gandalf's words, "he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom" evokes to me the idea that Saruman was not breaking it down to understand it, but simply to make change for change's sake:

I think Saruman genuinely thought that he could do things differently. It is backed up by his character and him being one of Aule's people. He is proud and he also possesses incredible skill - and he has that urge that a lot of people have, to see how things work and try and improve them (like a bloke taking apart his bike). But it's more serious than someone taking apart their bike, as Gandalf points out to him.

"It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken." To me this disassembly of his whiteness is largely an effort to make himself seem progressive, more advanced, better, but to transform he can only destroy something complete and whole. All he could do was desecrate his own position and inspect the broken fragments, and so he lost what he had.

Yes, you're right. He can break the Light, and he can make a Ring. But all he achieves by doing so is ultimately failure. The same as Morgoth and Sauron.

I agree that it is, perhaps, different in its means, but I feel the intentions are the same. I daresay Morgoth and Sauron did not consider themselves to be "evil" either. This to me is Saruman's delusion: he was "the White", the highest of the Order and the Council, but he came to convince himself that White was only a base from which to build rather than a summit which he was breaking underneath himself. It turns out he was wrong: being "the White" was promotion; he was effectively demoting himself on a spiritual level.

It sheds some light on what Galadriel may have been had she taken the One. It's easier for us to see Saruman as 'evil' as we never seem him in fairer times unlike Galadriel (in contrast, we see her in her fairer days, not so much when she was a Noldorian rebel). And what both Gandalf and Radagast might have been, too. It does pose some very interesting questions - it's easy to see that Morgoth and Sauron did evil in the quest for power, but Saruman sets out with what we may see as good intentions.

To me this is the same self-deception as Morgoth and Sauron, convincing themselves that there was some property of existence about which they had insights beyond that of Eru, that Eru was wrong and they were right. To me it suggests not a genuine effort to understand light, but a fatuous act of arrogance. Saruman cannot improve on "White", so he shatters it and claims (to himself as well as others) that the broken wreckage is better than the original, unspoiled thing. I suppose what I feel like Gandalf is trying to say is that Saruman could have understood the White light had he tried, but he refuses to do so, because that would involve admitting it as being out of his control, and control is what he desires. The only control he can exert upon it is to break it down, just like Morgoth sought the ruin of Arda because he couldn't stand the notion that it was not solely his and that he could never have absolute power over it, or like how Sauron, fool that he was, convinced himself that Eru had "given up" on Arda and would let him do what he liked with it.

(An aside - Sauron may have had more motives we haven't considered as he saw what Eru could do in Numenor...that might be another topic...)

I think it's fair enough that Saruman might think the white Light can be used, after all there are examples of crafts of Light like the Silmarils. But Saruman does try to improve on Light - I don't think he does seek to control it in any way, more to use it. If I can use an analogy, where Morgoth/Sauron were more like dabblers in medieval dark arts, Saruman is more like a scientist dabbling in some very morally grey areas. Not sure if that works but never mind....

To me this deconstruction of the light is representative of villainous folly in general in Arda: the idea that finite, incarnate beings exerting their limited power over individual constituents of something to which they were themselves internal and a part were somehow capable of turning the ultimate control away from the external, infinite authority - it's completely delusional. They were part of the system; the system can't change itself. Only the person on the outside, Eru, has that power. Breaking things down gives the illusion, however, that they do have that power; the Shadow confounded itself just as readily as its enemies. This is how I read the breaking of the White light.

Yes. You cannot get away from the fact that in Tolkien's creation, Eru is omnipotent and it is ultimately going to fail if you try to harness, control or break Light. It doesn't mean that what Saruman achieved was without power, as we can see that what Morgoth and Sauron achieve is also wrong but it is effective. For a time.

Originally Posted by Rumil

I wonder... exactly when Saruman forged his ring (or rings?) is not told. Nor is his reason for risking the use of the Palantir at that time. Putting two and two together, perhaps Saruman's ring gave him the over-confidence to believe that he could withstand Sauron in a Palantir encouter, or maybe I've made two and two equal five!

Not at all, it's a fair assumption. One of the many good, meaty things about Saruman's tale is that we just do not know how much influence Sauron had over him.