Saruman in the context of "Wizards in Middle-earth"

The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is in the northwest of the continent, in the region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor.

The Shire is the scene of action at the beginning and end of Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Five of the protagonists in these stories have their homeland in the Shire: Bilbo Baggins (the title character of The Hobbit), and four members of the Fellowship of the Ring: Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck, and Pippin Took. At the end of The Hobbit, Bilbo returns to the Shire, only to find out that he has been declared "missing and presumed dead" and that his hobbit-hole and all its contents are up for auction. (He reclaims them, much to the spite of his cousins Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.) The main action in The Lord of the Rings returns to the Shire near the end of the book, in "The Scouring of the Shire", when the homebound hobbits find the area under the control of Saruman's ruffians, and set things to rights.

Meriadoc Brandybuck (Westron: Kalimac Brandagamba; usually called Merry) is a Hobbit, a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, featured throughout his most famous work, The Lord of the Rings.Merry is described as one of the closest friends of Frodo Baggins, the main protagonist. Merry and his friend and cousin, Pippin, are members of the Company of the Ring. They become separated from the rest of the group and spend much of The Two Towers making their own decisions. By the time of The Return of the King, Merry has enlisted in the army of Rohan as an esquire to King Théoden, in whose service he fights during the War of the Ring. After the war, he returns home, where he and Pippin lead the Scouring of the Shire, ridding it of Saruman's influence.

Commentators have noted that his and Pippin's actions serve to throw light on the characters of the good and bad lords Théoden and Denethor, Steward of Gondor, while their simple humour acts as a foil for the higher romance involving kings and the heroic Aragorn.

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings, Isengard (/ˈaɪzənɡɑːrd/) is a large fortress in Nan Curunír, the Wizard's Vale, in the western part of Middle-earth. In the fantasy world, the name of the fortress is described as a translation of Angrenost, a word in Tolkien's elvish language, Sindarin, a compound of two Old English words: īsen and ġeard, meaning "enclosure of iron".

In The Lord of the Rings, Orthanc, the tower at the centre of Isengard, is the home of the Wizard Saruman. He had been ensnared by the Dark Lord Sauron through the tower's palantír, a far-seeing crystal ball able to communicate with others like it. Saruman had bred Orcs in Isengard, in imitation of Sauron's forces, to be ready for war with Rohan. The Orcs cut down many trees in the forest of the Ents, who retaliate by destroying Isengard while the army of Orcs is away attacking Rohan at Helm's Deep. However, the Ents are unable to harm the tower of Orthanc. Saruman, isolated in the tower, is visited by members of the Fellowship of the Ring; his staff is broken by the Wizard Gandalf.

Evil is ever-present in J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional realm of Middle-earth. Tolkien is ambiguous on the philosophical question of whether evil is the absence of good, the Boethian position, or whether it is a force seemingly as powerful as good, and forever opposed to it, the Manichaean view. The major evil characters have varied origins. The first is Melkor, the most powerful of the immortal and angelic Valar; he chooses discord over harmony, and becomes the first dark lord Morgoth. His lieutenant, Sauron, is an immortal Maia; he becomes Middle-earth's dark lord after Morgoth is banished from the world. Melkor has been compared to Satan in the Book of Genesis, and to John Milton's fallen angel in Paradise Lost. Others, such as Gollum, Denethor, and Saruman – respectively, a Hobbit, a Man, and a Wizard – are corrupted or deceived into evil, and die fiery deaths like those of evil beings in Norse sagas.

J. R. R. Tolkien repeatedly dealt with the theme of death and immortality in Middle-earth. He stated directly that the "real theme" of The Lord of the Rings was "Death and Immortality." In Middle-earth, Men are mortal, while Elves are immortal. One of his stories, The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, explores the willing choice of death through the love of an immortal Elf for a mortal Man. He several times revisited the Old Norse theme of the mountain tomb, containing treasure along with the dead and visited by fighting. He brought multiple leading evil characters in The Lord of the Rings to a fiery end, including Gollum, the Nazgûl, the Dark Lord Sauron, and the evil Wizard Saruman, while in The Hobbit, the dragon Smaug is killed. Their destruction contrasts with the heroic deaths of two leaders of the free peoples, Théoden of Rohan and Boromir of Gondor, reflecting the early medieval ideal of Northern courage. Despite these pagan themes, the work contains hints of Christianity, such as of the resurrection of Christ, as when the Lord of the Nazgûl, thinking himself victorious, calls himself Death, only to be answered by the crowing of a cockerel. There are, too, hints that the Elvish land of Lothlórien represents an Earthly Paradise. Scholars have commented that Tolkien clearly moved during his career from being oriented towards pagan themes to a more Christian theology.
Cite error: There are <ref group=T> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=T}} template (see the help page).

"The Scouring of the Shire" is the penultimate chapter of J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy The Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, return home to the Shire to find that it is under the brutal control of ruffians and their leader "Sharkey", who turns out to be the Wizard Saruman. The ruffians have despoiled the Shire, cutting down trees and destroying old houses, as well as replacing the old mill with a larger one full of machinery which pollutes the air and the water. The hobbits rouse the Shire to rebellion, lead their fellow hobbits to victory in the Battle of Bywater, and end Saruman's rule.

Critics have considered "The Scouring of the Shire" one of the most important chapters in The Lord of the Rings. Although Tolkien denied that the chapter was an allegory for Britain in the aftermath of World War II, commentators have argued that it can be applied to that period, with clear contemporary political references that include a satire of socialism, echoes of Nazism, allusions to the shortages in postwar Britain, and a strand of environmentalism.