[Child of the 7th Age]

Davem

How nicely said! I also have felt this to be a sad chapter. With Sauron, you know that he is an out and out baddie. There was never a realistic chance that he would ever turn back and find another path.

But with both Saruman and Gollum, Tolkien was careful to leave open the door to the possibility of forgiveness and a change in behavior. That has to be telling us something about how Tolkien viewed mankind and the possibility of individuals pulling back from evil. It's also interesting that in this chapter Gandalf is putting into action the very lesson he spelled out earlier to Frodo: that of showing mercy.

In reference to Esty's earlier question about how Saruman could have "helped", my feeling is that Gandalf was actually taking an enormous risk. What if Saruman had said yes? Could Gandalf and Argorn ever really have trusted Saruman to play a role in the fight against Sauron? It's hard for me to imagine that. Yet Gandalf is willing to stick his neck out and possibly imperil the entire cause in order to give Saruman one more chance to reach out, accept mercy, and begin a new path in life. It's almost like a statement on the worth of the individual: that sometimes we must set aside the grandest of causes and focus on the right or wrong in terms of the single person standing in front of us.

In another sense Gandalf gives us a foreshadowing of the role that Frodo will attempt to play with Gollum later in the book. He's reminding the reader not to forget the theme of mercy because it's going to come up again and again. And eventually it will be Frodo who will "assume" Gandalf's role, the same role that the istar plays in this very chapter, and again offer mercy to Saruman himself. No wonder that Saruman can say Frodo has "grown"! Perhaps, Saruman was actually remembering the time when Gandalf had tried to do the same thing at Isengard and was feeling particular bitterness at those memories, since the istar has now fallen so far that he must accept "mercy" at the hands of a hobbit.

Aragorn's absence from this chapter is striking. Except for one brief reference that he will stand beside Gandalf, the future King of Gondor is simply missing. By leaving out Aragorn's character, Tolkien focuses more clearly on the duo of Gandalf and Saruman, giving us a stark picture of the contrast between the two istari . Putting Aragorn into this mix would essentially have muddied the waters.