The legendary Faust strikes a bargain with the Devil by exchanging his immortal soul for the promise of unlimited knowledge and worldly power. Although Saruman does not directly bargain with Sauron, in his desire for the power bestowed by the Ring, he wrestles, by means of the Orthanc-stone (one of the seven Palantírs), with the mind of the Dark Lord and is thereby ensnared and corrupted. Treebeard the Ent describes Saruman as having “a mind of metal and wheels” and a fascination with technology that results in the sacrifice of humane values and life itself. Both Faust and Saruman passionately seek knowledge instead of wisdom.

  Wargs and Wolf-riders

  Thus, the greatest of the Istari, whose mission is to destroy the Dark Lord, unwittingly becomes one of his greatest agents. For, just as Faust was deceived by Mephistopheles, so Saruman becomes the puppet of Sauron the Dark Lord. From the tower of Orthanc in his great ring-walled stronghold of Isengard, Saruman gathers legions of Orcs, Uruk-hai, Half-Orcs and Dunlending Men under the banner of the White Hand to make war upon the Men of Rohan and Gondor.

  Saruman’s influence over others is in good part due to his “low and melodious” voice – “its very sound an enchantment” – which has the power to hold his audience spellbound. His speech is filled with rhetorical tricks, flattery and charm, combined with malice and lies. His speeches have much in common with the enthralling, deceptive speeches given to Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Indeed, Prince Éomer of Rohan declares the Wizard to be “an old liar with honey on his forked tongue”, an image that reminds us of the talking serpent of the Garden of Eden in Genesis – the tempter of Eve and closely associated with Satan in later Christian thought.

  In the War of the Ring, all of Saruman’s subtle powers and powerful alliances come to nothing after the march of the Ents on Isengard and the decisive Battle of Hornburg. The Ents tear down the mighty ring walls of Isengard, and the heroic Rohirrim and the vengeful Huorns together annihilate Saruman’s vast legions of Orcs, Uruks, Half-Orcs and Dunlendings.

  The Ents’ march on Isengard was inspired by Tolkien’s dissatisfaction with Shakespeare’s depiction of the fulfilment of the witches’ prophecy in Macbeth, that the protagonist will fall when “Great Birnam wood [comes] to high Dunsinane hill”. In his play, Shakespeare stuck close to the historical account he found in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1577), fulfilling the prophecy by having Malcolm’s invading army carry a screen of forest branches to disguise their approach – and thus give the illusion of a forest on the move. Tolkien wanted to see the trees actually – in Shakespeare’s words – “unfix their earthbound roots” and march on the traitorous Macbeth. So, in the War of the Ring, Tolkien had his Ents and Huorns march on Saruman’s stronghold, tear down his walls and drown his evil works.

  Dunlending

  Destruction of Isengard

  Battle at the Hornburg Gate

  In the end, after Saruman proudly rejects the offer of redemption, Gandalf breaks his staff and expels him from the order of the Istari. He is stripped of all his sorcerous powers and he goes into exile. Saruman’s villainy is not yet over, however. Looking for vengeance, he enters the Shire and under the Orkish name Sharkey (meaning “old man”) briefly sets himself up as a petty tyrant before finally being overthrown by the heroic brotherhood of Hobbits on their return from the War of the Ring.

  Sharkey’s squalid end, as his body shrivels away, “revealing long years of death”, is comparable to the horrific death and metamorphosis of the sorceress Ayeesha in H. Rider Haggard’s She (1887), which Tolkien would undoubtedly have read as a boy. As a “pale shrouded figure” rises from his corpse, Saruman’s tragic fall from grace into the nothingness of evil is complete.

  HISTORY OF SARUMAN THE ISTARI

  SHELOB, THE GREAT SPIDER OF CIRITH UNGOL

  Shelob, the Great Spider of Cirith Ungol, is the “last child” of the gargantuan Ungoliant, the mother of all spiders of the First Age. In the Second and Third Ages, Shelob the Great and her offspring – “lesser broods, bastards of [her] miserable mates” – lived in the mountains of Mordor and forest of Mirkwood. The portrayal of Ungoliant and Shelob as monsters capable of paralysing and killing their prey, and who, in the act of mating, cannibalize their male partners, does have some valid basis in zoology. The aptly named widow spiders of the genus Latrodectus do use a potent venom to paralyse or kill their prey, and do have the deeply unpleasant habit of occasionally devouring their much smaller, male partners during the act of mating.

  Although Shelob (an Old English construct meaning “She-Spider”) does not reach the majestic proportions of Ungoliant, she is the greatest and largest Spider of the Second and Third Ages. In what could be described in biological terms as a case of successive degeneration, Shelob is about as big as a plough horse, while her offspring, the Spiders of Mirkwood in The Hobbit, are very much smaller and less intelligent.

  Shelob is the guardian of the pass of Cirith Ungol (Elvish for “Spider Pass”) where she occupies a complex of tunnels and feeds off anyone of any race who attempts to enter Mordor by that route through Ephel Dúath, the Mountains of Shadow. In TA 3000, Shelob captures Gollum, but releases him on the understanding that he bring her more victims. Nearly two decades later, in the midst of the War of the Ring, Gollum fulfils his promise by leading Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee to her lair.

  The Hobbits’ descent into Shelob’s Lair has been described as comparable to the descent into the Underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid. Gollum serves as Frodo and Sam’s guide, just as the Sibyl serves as Aeneas’ guide. Sam uses the Phial of Galadriel to overcome Shelob and escape, while in Virgil’s epic, a golden bough and a drugged cake are used to bypass Charon the ferryman and Cerberus, the three-headed hell-hound. Tales of descent into the Underworld most often relate to attempts by heroes to return loved ones to the world of the living. Aeneas cannot bring his father back to life, but Sam succeeds in reviving Frodo after Shelob’s poison places him in a state resembling death.

  Shelob the Great

  Just as Ungoliant is the feminine counterpart of Morgoth in the First Age, so Shelob is the feminine counterpart of Sauron in the Second and Third. These monsters serve in both Dark Lords’ plans up to a point. However, ultimately, neither accepts them as their master. Ungoliant turns on Morgoth, while Shelob proves equally ungovernable and serves “none but herself”.

  Tolkien’s characterization of his monstrous spider-demons has something in common with the depiction of the Hindu goddess Kali, the eight-limbed Black One and “Destroyer of the World” who dances on the slaughtered body of her lover. Tolkien’s seeming arachnophobic myth-making here, however, is out of step with most of the world’s mythologies, where spiders, in their guise as weavers, generally play a much more positive, even benevolent role. In Africa and the West Indies, for example, there are widespread variations on Anansi, the Ashanti spider creator god who plays the role of the trickster in many folk tales. The Hopi and Navaho peoples of North America, too, have creation myths involving a wise Spider Mother or Spider Grandmother who weaves the world into existence.

  THE WITCH-KING AND THE BATTLE OF PELENNOR FIELDS

  King of Angmar long ago, Sorcerer, Ringwraith, Lord of the Nazgûl, a spear of terror in the hand of Sauron, shadow of despair.” This is Gandalf’s description of the Witch-king of Minas Morgul as he lays siege to Gondor’s capital, Minas Tirith.

  Although the modern English usage of “witch” usually has female connotations – with “wizard” or “warlock” as the more commonly used names for male users of magic – in giving the chief Nazgûl the title of Witch-king, Tolkien draws on the Middle English verb wicchen, which means simply “to do magic”, without gender distinction.

  The full horror of the Witch-king is revealed before the shattered gate of Gondor when the Black Rider pulls back his hood. We are told: “He had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visibly was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.” Here, Tolkien’s Witch-king fits solidly into the mythological tradition of the headless horseman found in European folk tales, most notably the Irish Dullahan or “Dark Man”, and whose most famous descendant is found in Washington Irving’s Gothic horror story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820). In the Battle of Pelennor Fields, it becomes clear that the Witch-king has been given much greater demonic powers than the other eight Nazgûl. In battle, his strength is little diminished by daylight, for example.

  In the siege of Gondor and the Battle of Pelennor Fields, the Witch-king leads a vast Morgul army of Uruks, Orcs, Trolls, Southrons and Easterlings. However, Tolkien is careful not to show all of the enemies of Gondor as unremittingly evil. Prominent among the Witch-king’s allies are the Haradrim (inhabitants of Harad) who in their pride and courage – not to mention their dazzling, exotic appearance – are granted a certain nobility. We could argue that Tolkien portrays these foes of Gondor in much the same way that medieval crusading epics (chansons de geste) and, later, 19th-century histories of the Crusades characterized the “Saracens” (the Muslim opponents of the Christian Crusaders) as at once praiseworthy and wrong-headed.

  Mûmakil: war elephants of the Haradrim

  It was the charge of the Rohirrim against just such a Saracen-like Southron cavalry, made up of black-haired “swarthy men” dressed in red and gold with armour made of “overlapping brazen plates”, that transforms the siege of Gondor into the full-pitched Battle of Pelennor Fields. Théoden, King of Rohan, with his green banner marked with a white horse, rides directly to challenge the chieftain of the Haradrim, whose horsemen rally under a red banner emblazoned with a black serpent. “[T]he drawing of the scimitars of the Southrons was like a glitter of stars,” we are told. It is a battle scene full of the oriental romance that we find in Lord Byron’s poem “The Destruction of Sennacherib” (1815), in which: “The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; / And the sheen of the spears was like stars on the sea, / When the blue waves roll nightly on deep Galilee.” Like the Assyrian King Sennacherib, the Haradrim chieftain is slain and his serpent standard is “hewed staff and bearer”.

  The moment of Rohirrim victory turns to disaster, however, when the Witch-king, mounted on his terrifying Winged Beast, strikes down Théoden and swoops down to deal the fallen king a death blow. As the other Rohirrim fall back in fear and despair, the Witch-king is challenged by Dernhelm, a slender young knight of the Mark. Scornful of this mismatched duel, the Witch-king is supremely confident, believing that he is protected by the age-old prophecy that “not by the hand of man will he fall”. In this duel, Tolkien is drawing on that ancient theme in myth and literature known as the “Misinterpreted Oracle”.

  Chieftain of the Haradrim

  Among the most famous of these tales of misunderstood prophecy is one from the Histories of 5th-century-BC Greek Herodotus about Croesus, the rich and powerful king of Lydia who consulted the Delphic Oracle about his planned invasion of the Persian Empire. The Oracle replied: “If Croesus goes to war, he will destroy a great empire.” It was a prophecy that proved ironically and tragically true, for the empire that Croesus destroyed proved to be his own. More pertinent still to the fate of the Witch-king, as Tolkien himself acknowledged, is the witches’ prophecy found in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (and in its source, Holinshed’s Chronicles) that the murderous Scottish king should “laugh to scorn / The power of man, for none of woman born / Shall harm Macbeth.” The Witch-king’s prophecy “not by the hand of man will he fall” is almost the same safeguard that appears to protect Macbeth, who at the end of the play is killed by Macduff who “was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d”.

  Similarly, the prophecy concerning the Witch-king’s fate also proves true in an unexpected way. For indeed, the Witch-king falls “not by the hand of man” but by the hand of Dernhelm, who is suddenly revealed to be the sword-maiden Éowyn of Rohan. And so, with the aid of her Hobbit squire, Meriadoc Brandybuck, Éowyn fulfils the ancient prophecy and with a thrust of her sword brings an end to the once-mighty Witch-king and Lord of the Nazgûl. With his fall, the tide of the Battle of Pelennor Fields turns, and all the Witch-king’s ambitions of lordship and conquest are brought to nought.

  Tolkien implied that his own resolution of this kind of riddling prophecy was an improvement on Shakespeare’s fulfilment of the prophecy about Macbeth. And, certainly, one must acknowledge that the Witch-king’s death by the hand of a Hobbit and a woman disguised as a warrior is rather more satisfying than Shakespeare’s rather quibbling solution that someone born by Caesarian section is not, strictly speaking, “of woman born”.

  Battle of Pelennor Fields

  SAURON AND THE FIRES OF DOOM

  In most of the world’s mythologies, we find epic tales dealing with the cosmic battle between good and evil: the fate of the world is held in balance as the mass forces of evil threaten to overwhelm and obliterate the apparently doomed forces of good. In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the climactic battle between good and evil is played out in the Battle of the Black Gate. This is the last desperate attempt by the Captains of the West to free the peoples of Middle-earth from the tyranny of Sauron the Dark Lord. It is a desperate gamble: the forces of the Captains of the West number just 6,000 men-at-arms standing against “ten times” that number of Orcs, Uruks, Trolls, Olog-hai, Easterlings and Haradrim, who pour forth from the Black Gates while the eight remaining Nazgûl fly above.

  In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien combined the theme of the cosmic battle with another universal mythological motif, the “External Soul”, known, in multiple forms, by “peoples from Hindoostan [sic] to the Hebrides”, as James George Frazer observed in his famous The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religion (1890). A warlock, giant or other supernatural being, Frazer explained, “is invulnerable and immortal because he keeps his soul hidden away in some secret place [or object]; this secret is revealed to the hero, who seeks out the warlock’s soul, heart, life or death (as it is variously called), and by destroying it, simultaneously kills the warlock.”

  In The Lord of the Rings, the mighty Sauron, who commands vastly superior armies and terrible supernatural powers, appears to be an unstoppable force in the final cosmic Battle at the Black Gate. However, at that very moment when total victory seems within his grasp, Sauron discovers that he is supremely vulnerable and mortally threatened as Frodo the Hobbit slips the One Ring onto his finger: “The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, the Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain … the magnitude of his folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and … he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.” The One Ring that effectively contains Sauron’s “external soul” is on the hand of the Hobbit who now threatens its destruction in the volcanic fires of the Cracks of Doom.

  Mount Doom

  Trolls in Battle of the Black Gate

  In the end, the War of the Ring is not ultimately decided by the slaying of dragons, the clash of armies in battle, the siege of cities or the collapse of empires. Instead of the epic duel between larger-than-life heroes like Achilles and Hector in the Trojan War or Arthur and Mordred at the Battle of Camlaan, in the War of the Ring we have a duel between Frodo and Gollum at the Cracks of Doom. In this desperate, climatic struggle between two diminutive figures, the fate of the entire world is held in the balance. The outcome is precarious right until the very last moment: remarkably enough, it is the good Hobbit who ultimately fails as – with the best of intentions – he is on the point of succumbing to the power of the One Ring, just as it is the evil Gollum who ultimately triumphs as – with the worst of intentions – he bites off Frodo’s finger and seizes the One Ring. Joyful in his victory, Gollum immediately topples backward into the Fires of Doom and the One Ring is destroyed.

  This is Tolkien’s moral (and Augustinian Christian) perspective on the fate of all evil. Even at the moment of its triumph, evil leads to self-destruction and a descent into nothingness. In this final betrayal of Frodo, Sméagol–Gollum fulfils his destiny in the War of the Ring as both villain and saviour of Middle-earth.

  In choosing to have the climactic moment of the War of the Ring staged at the “Cracks of Doom”, Tolkien the philologist reveals his wish to give new life and meaning to common expressions and phrases. This is most obvious in awarding his greatest villain with the generic title of the “Dark Lord”, and placing that villain’s stronghold in the “Dark Tower”. Tolkien frequently chooses time-worn names that nonetheless conjure powerful archetypal symbols. Tolkien then supplements those universal symbols with the very specific and unique atmosphere of Middle-earth by means of his own invented languages. Hence, we have Sauron the Dark Lord ruling from the Dark Tower of Barad-dûr in the dark land of Mordor.

  It is perhaps instructive to observe how Stephen King once spoke in an interview about the central idea and inspiration behind his own dark fantasy series The Dark Tower (1998–2004), especially its title. King was undoubtedly familiar with Tolkien’s Dark Tower of Mordor, but he claimed to be most inspired by a favourite poem, Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”. King noted that: