It will come as no shock to regular readers at Hollywood Jesus that my perspective on Tolkien tends to be, shall we say, somewhat unorthodox. That this is so was brought home in a recent communication from a librarian back east, who pointed out that my identification of Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul as the titular Two Towers is, at best, only the fourth or fifth likliest pairing behind Orthanc and Barad-dûr, Orthanc and Cirith Gorgor, Minas Tirith and Barad-dûr, etc. This took me aback, and I had to wander back in my thoughts some twenty years or so and reconstruct how the Tirith-Morgul connection had gotten so squarely planted in my brain.

The answer, I found, lay in the words of Elrond at Rivendell. At the council which opens Book II of The Fellowship of the Ring, the Elven lord recounts the history of Gondor, and the construction of two watch-towers after Sauron's defeat at the hands of the Last Alliance of Men and Elves: Minas Ithil and Minas Anor. Over the centuries, Minas Ithil falls into disuse, and when occupied by fell spirits is renamed Minas Morgul. Minas Anor, meanwhile, is renamed Minas Tirith; and in between the now warring fortresses lies Osgiliath, battleground of the shadows which play between the light of the setting sun and the darkness around the moon.

Contrasts attract me. Long ago, my mind latched onto Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul as symbols for the struggle between good and evil which forms such a large part of Tolkien's story. My mind also latched onto Osgiliath as the story's central metaphor for the struggle within each of us: the struggle between opposing forces of darkness and light. As dialog on HJ about Jackson's The Two Towers has developed, another potent metaphor for this struggle has been coming to the fore: Saruman.

A Power in His Own Right

In the interests of economy and brevity, Jackson of course filmed very little of the Council of Elrond as written by Tolkien—even in the Extended Version of The Fellowship of the Ring. Naturally, none of Tolkien's exposition about Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul appears in Jackson's movies; indeed, Minas Morgul is not even mentioned in the first two installments. How, then, could Jackson's "Two Towers" be Minas Tirith and Minas Morgul? They couldn't. Jackson's visuals are, instead, centered on Barad-dûr and Orthanc. This is well in keeping with Jackson's expanded coverage of the doings at Isengard—from the details of Gandalf's imprisonment, to the slashing of Isengard's forests and the breeding of the Uruk-hai.

Oddly, though, what doesn't come out much in Jackson's movies is exactly who (or what) Saruman is. Sure, he's Saruman "The White," and Gandalf shows him much deference. But the fact is that, in his spiritual nature, Saruman is Sauron's most natural enemy. Like Gandalf and the Balrog, Saruman and Sauron are both Maiar, a lower order of Tolkien's divinity. As the most powerful of the order of the Wizards, Saruman is (by original design and intent) the most potent active agent of good in Middle-earth; and Sauron is the most potent active agent of evil.

But what happens? Saruman falls victim to temptation—or, as Jackson, et al, would have it, despair and perhaps greed—and becomes (on paper) allied to evil, even breeding the Uruk-hai at Sauron's behest: an "army worthy of Mordor."

A Stooge For Sauron?

At least, that's the impression we get from Jackson's films. As the movies' scripts tell the story, Saruman has fallen prey to the influence of Sauron through the use of the Palantír. Funny things can happen when you "don't know who is watching," as Gandalf belatedly warns. The funny thing that happens to Saruman is that he sells out to the dark side pretty cheap. "Darn!" he thinks, "I guess I wasn't doing much good anyway. Guess I might as well team up with the bad guys; if you can't beat 'em, might as well join 'em."

And so Saruman continues his regular conference calls with the Dark Guy, and they develop this really interesting but completely unexplained plan for waylaying the Fellowship. Saruman will send a band of marauding Uruk-hai down to Anduin to bring back the Hobbits alive and... and... Well, they'll cross that bridge when they come to it, so to speak.

But where's Sauron's plan in all this? Why aren't there any of his forces involved in this little soiree? Or are there? There seem to be some in the pack of orcs lugging Merry and Pippin off to Fangorn; but where did they come from? Where are they going? What were Sauron's instructions? Was Saruman just passing along Sauron's instructions when he coached Lurtz?

The Ring of Power

It's possible that some of this missing detail may surface in the Extended Version of The Two Towers, due out next month. But we can pretty much rest assured that what Sauron intends is to get his hands on the Ring. The Hobbits have it, and Sauron knows that they have it. In Tolkien's novel, the attack on the Fellowship is explicitly coordinated as a joint operation between Sauron's orcs of the Red Eye and Saruman's orcs of the White Hand. After Merry and Pippin are captured, the Red Eyes and White Hands even spend some time jawing over the course taken—and the Uruk-hai overrule their smaller and less hardy twisted kin.

And here's the issue lost in the subtext of Jackson's films: Saruman has no intention of acting as Sauron's stooge. He is not interested, as Jackson has him suggest to Gandalf, in joining forces with Sauron. Not at all. What Saruman wants—and for what Tolkien has him recruit Gandalf—is to wield the Ring himself, and depose Sauron. And why not? With Sauron's Ring, Saruman would indeed be a formidable opponent.

The Benevolent Dictator

Saruman is close enough to Middle-earth's deity to know that the Fourth Age will be the Age of Men. And what Saruman wants is to be their protector and benevolent (if stand-offish and rather tarnished) dictator. He isn't really enamored of Orcs and Wargs—but he's pragmatist enough to think that the ends justify the means. He'll use even the foulest of creatures if he gets what he wants. So Gandalf's stay-the-course and fight-the-good-fight line of thinking doesn't pull much weight with Saruman, who merely thinks that Gandalf's been smoking too much of the halflings' pipe weed.

What Saruman really represents, then, is not a Judas so much as a Peter. He's less an out-and-out traitor to the cause than he is the guy who flinches when the chips are down. He is, in reality, a lot like the average person. On the one hand, he knows what the right thing to do is—boy, does he! It's his whole doggone purpose for being in Middle-earth. But on the other hand, he's got this serious hankering for something he can't get. For him, it's power; for us, it may be another helping of ice cream, or perhaps our neighbor's wife. And so we, like Saruman, rationalize and temporize. We play Devil's Advocate with ourselves and get snookered.

The Other Guy

And the upshot is that Saruman loses not only what he sought to gain, but everything he had in the first place. Gandalf the Grey, on the other hand, gets the better of his adversary, the Balrog, giving all of himself in the process. He is then "sent back," "at the turn of the tide," as Gandalf the White, supplanting Saruman as the Chief of the Wizards. Why? Because he knew what was right, and he did it. He stayed the course, he fought the good fight.

Saruman, by contrast, becomes something rather like the Biblical Esau, who sold his birthright for a mess of porridge. It's an interesting parallel; for the Bible tells us that if we, like Gandalf, fight the good fight—if we keep the faith—we also can claim the spiritual birthright of Israel: the one to whom Esau sold out cheap.

That's not a bad deal. I'll take white over grey any day.

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