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Originally Posted by Telchar
Im not sure, but maybe you guys should try to define what tragic caracter means... is it A: The one who bore the bigger sorrow? or B: He whos life ends more tragicly, compared to he/she might otherwise have achived. I think the latter.
With that in mind I belive, like Mister Underhill on page one, that Caracters who fell from greatness are the most tragic - those who were ensnared by lust for power such as Saruman and Sauron, but also Ted Sandyman and Lotho. By imposed sorrow and dispair like Denethor. Or by fear such as the latter kings of Numenor (fear of death).
Among those I regard the fall of Saruman and his end, his hatred and malice was the saddest.
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It seems to me that Saruman's fall never quite acquires the emotional feel of anguish and regret that the falls of Tolkien's other tragic heroes have, because we are so little shown Saruman in the process of that fall. That final scene in the The Shire, where Grima turns on him, is excrutiatingly well done, but I miss not seeing just how Saruman got there. We tend to be given simply the consequences. This has always, to me, been a missed opportunity for character development, so that Saruman never quite makes it to the pantheon of other tragic heroes.