Saruman

"Once he was as great as his fame made him. His knowledge was deep, his thought was subtle, and his hands marvellously skilled; and he had a power over the minds of others. The wise he could persuade, and the smaller folk he could daunt. That power he certainly still keeps. There are not many in Middle-Earth that I should say were safe, if they were left alone to talk with him, even now when he has suffered a defeat. Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, perhaps, now his wickedness has been laid bare, but very few others."

- Aragorn

Saruman the White was an Istar or wizard who lived in Middle-earth. He was the head of the White Council in his time and lived in Orthanc. He is also known as Curunir or Curumo. He studied the arts of the enemy in depth and found there great promise of wealth and power. So drawn was he to the Enemy that he studied that he was corrupted, and sought to become a great Power himself.

Biography
Saruman was a Maia, a servant of the Valar, the Powers of the world, and of Ilúvatar. In Valinor, the land of the Valar, a council was called by Manwë, leader of the Valar, shortly after Sauron's defeat by the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Though Sauron was overthrown, it would later turn out that he had not been effectively vanquished and his shadow began to fall upon Middle-earth a second time. It was decided to send five emissaries to Middle-earth. These should be "mighty, peers of Sauron, yet forgo might, and clothe themselves in flesh", as they were intended to help men and elves unite against Sauron, but the wizards were forbidden from matching the Dark Lord in power and fear.

One of those who went was Curumo (Saruman), a poowerful Maia of Aulë, just as Sauron once was. Maiar were angelic beings "of the same order as the Valar but of less degree", as stated by The Silmarillion. Both the Maiar and the Valar were Ainur, the fart created beings, and they existed before Arda (the world) was made. The other four who were chosen were Aiwendil (Radagast), Alatar and Pallando (the Blue Wizards), and Olórin (Gandalf)

Arrival in Middle-Earth
The five wizards arrived at the Grey Havens in the west of Eriador around the year 1000 of the Third Age. Only the keeper of the havens, Círdan the Shipwright, knew Saruman's identity and origin. Saruman would later discover that Círdan had given Narya the Red Ring to Gandalf upon their first landing in Middle-earth. Even though Saruman was immediately considered the head of the order while Gandalf was not, Círdan had divined Gandalf as the wisest and greatest of the wizards. Saruman's jealousy of Gandalf grew from these events, perhaps because he feared that he would eventually supplant him.

Saruman and the two Blue Wizards went into the east of Middle-earth. After one and a half millennia, he returned to the west, just as Sauron's power was growing again in Dol Guldur.

The White Council
When the White Council was formed at approximately year 2463 of the Third Age in order to counter Sauron, Saruman was appointed its leader, though Galadriel wanted Gandalf in this position. Saruman refused to step down due to his pride, while Gandalf had declined. At this point Saruman had begun to sense the resurgence of Sauron and to envy and desire his power, and especially the One Ring. This was also the same year that the One Ring was taken by the halfling Smeágol (later called Gollum), who disappeared with it into the Misty Mountains for hundreds of years.

It was during the meetings of the Council that Saruman first noted Gandalf's interest in Hobbits and The Shire, and believing that all his deeds related to some as yet undisclosed plan of his for self enhancement, Saruman himself began keeping a greater watch on Gandalf and sent spies to The Shire. At first he himself visited it secretly but stopped when he realized that he had been noticed by its inhabitants. Amongst the purposes of his visits was to procure some of the halfling's leaf, since in secret imitation of Gandalf he had begun to smoke.

Isengard
In the year 2759 T.A., Saruman settled in Isengard with the permission of the Steward of Gondor, Beren. The stronghold was by then abandoned by Gondor, although he settled only as Warden of the Tower and representative of the Steward. There he became important in the informal alliance defending the west of Middle-earth. In the tower of Isengard, Orthanc, he also found one of the remaining palantíri.

In 2850 T.A., Gandalf entered Dol Guldur and confirmed that the evil presence was indeed Sauron. By Saruman's advice, the White Council decided against attacking Dol Guldur. Gandalf would later remark that it was at this council-meeting that he first began to suspect that Saruman desired to possess the One Ring. Saruman's real intention was to permit Sauron to build up his strength, so that the One Ring would reveal itself. He later found that Sauron had more knowledge of the possible location of the One Ring than he expected, and in 2941 T.A., he finally agreed to attack Dol Guldur.

Ten years after Sauron abandoned Dol Guldur, he returned to Mordor and declared himself openly. He established contact with Saruman through the palantír captured from Minas Ithil, now Minas Morgul. In this year also Saruman took Isengard for his own and began to fortify it.

When Gandalf presented Saruman with the discovery and the location of the One Ring, Saruman revealed his desire for it and his secret alliance with Sauron. When Gandalf refused to join with him, Saruman held him captive in Isengard. Gandalf later escaped with help from Gwaihir the Windlord, one of Middle-Earth's large eagles, and made Saruman's treachery known to the rest of the White Council.

The Beginning of the End
"He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment. And now it is clear that he is a black traitor."

- Treebeard



Saruman also betrayed Sauron by lying to the Nazgûl, who were searching for Baggins, who had found the One Ring years before. He pretended to know nothing, but the Nazgûl later captured Gríma Wormtongue as he was hastening from Edoras to warn Saruman that Gandalf had been there and had warned the King about his treacherous plans for Rohan. The Nazgûl Lord spared his life after learning from him that Saruman indeed knew where the Shire was, and he even went further to give them general directions to follow the Greenway (the old North-South Road).

Along the Road they met one of his Shire spies from whom they got detailed maps of the Shire made by Saruman. They sent the spy back to the Shire after warning him that he was now in the service of Mordor (the Orc-like man in the Inn of the Prancing Pony). Believing that he would find no pity from either quarter (a false assumption, since he was later offered pardon by Gandalf), Saruman now put all efforts into obtaining the One Ring for himself. Not all of these efforts ever became clear, but they included sending spies to waylay Frodo Baggins on his flight from the Shire (Bill Ferny in Bree), attacking Rohan outright with Uruk-hai and dispatching raiding parties of Uruk-hai accompanied by Moria Orcs on likely routes the Fellowship of the Ring might take to Gondor. One of those parties captured Peregrin Took and Meriadoc Brandybuck after slaying Boromir with arrows as he tried to defend Pippin & Merry, which led Aragorn, Legolas & Gimli on a search which eventually led them to the breaking of Isengard by the Ents under Treebeard (Fangorn).

Power Destroyed
"You have become a fool, Saruman, and yet pitiable. You might still have turned away from folly and evil, and have been of service. But you choose to stay and gnaw the ends of your old plots. Stay then! But I warn you, you will not easily come out again. Not unless the dark hands of the east stretch out to take you!"

- Gandalf the White

His plans failed, and Saruman suffered a series of setbacks. Saruman's Shire network did not capture Frodo Baggins; and Éomer destroyed his only partially successful raiding party. His invasion of Rohan ended in disaster, with the utter defeat of his army at the Battle of the Hornburg. Leaving Isengard undefended resulted in its destruction at the hands of the Ents (Saruman had underestimated the Ents' anger and strength).

Confined to the Orthanc and with his servants scattered or killed, Saruman made one final unsuccessful attempt to turn Théoden and Gandalf. The latter then offered Saruman a chance for redemption, which involved surrendering his staff and the keys to the Orthanc as a pledge. Saruman refused out of pride. Gandalf, who had returned from death to supplant Saruman as the White and the head of the Istari, expelled Saruman from the order and broke his staff. Saruman also lost the palantír of Orthanc when Gríma Wormtongue threw it off a balcony of Orthanc, undecided about which he hated more, Saruman or Gandalf, and hitting neither.

Final Fall
Left out of the final stages of the War of the Ring, he eventually managed to convince the Ents who kept him captive into letting him leave Isengard after he met the conditions of handing over the keys of Orthanc. He then went to the Shire, which his agents lead by Lotho Sackville-Baggins had brought under control. Spending his final days as a small-time thug lord in Hobbiton known as Sharkey, where he enslaved the Hobbits, he was eventually betrayed and killed by his own servant Gríma Wormtongue on November 3, T.A. 3019, after the Battle of Bywater, where the Hobbits had Saruman's thugs surrounded with many Took bowmen, and as the thugs tried to fight their way out, they were shot.

Legacy
After his departure from Orthanc, King Elessar entered the tower with the intent of re-ordering that realm. Inside, Elessar's men found many treasures that Saruman had conned off of King Théoden. There was a secret closet that could only be found with the aid of Gimli the dwarf; it contained the original Elendilmir, which had presumed to be lost forever when Isildur perished in the Gladden Fields, as well as a golden chain which was presumed to have once borne the One Ring.

After Death
Saruman, being a Maia, did not truly die. His spirit separated from his body much like Sauron's after the Downfall of Númenor. As a discorporated spirit, he should have been called to Mandos, but the tale implies that he was barred from returning. Tolkien indicated that his spirit was left naked, powerless and wandering, never to return to Middle-earth:

"Whereas Curunir was cast down, and utterly humbled, and perished at last by the hand of an oppressed slave; and his spirit went whithersoever it was doomed to go, and to Middle-earth, whether naked or embodied, came never back" [1]

Portrayal in adaptations
In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film of The Lord of the Rings, Fraser Kerr provided the voice of Saruman. At one point in that film's development, film executives thought that the names "Saruman" and "Sauron" were too similar, and would confuse the audience, and decided that Saruman should be renamed "Aruman". This decision was eventually reversed, but some references to "Aruman" remained in the finished film. The dialogue of Bakshi's film retained Saruman's adoption of the title "Saruman of Many Colours", and the character was dressed in red.

Peter Howell played Saruman in BBC Radio's 1981 serialisation of The Lord of the Rings.

In Peter Jackson's film trilogy, Saruman was played by Christopher Lee. In the films, Saruman is portrayed as acting as Sauron's servant, downplaying the idea that Saruman was independently seeking the Ring. Jackson's films do not include the title "Saruman of Many Colours", referring to him only as "Saruman the White". The film trilogy also did not include the Scouring of the Shire, but the extended DVD version does depict Saruman being killed by Gríma Wormtongue in Isengard, after his encounter with Gandalf and Théoden. In the film, Gríma stabs Saruman in the back rather than cutting his throat (allegedly to appease the censors) causing him to fall on a spiked wheel below the tower of Orthanc.