The Scouring of the Shire

[Boromir88]

Well Fordim, I have to say I think you're on to something here. I think the best illustration of the 'complimentary balance' with Tolkien's evil characters is shown in Saruman and Grima.

Saruman is 'one of the great' and he surely has his 'great plans' which we can see from his words to Gandalf:

As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grows; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all the things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends.~The Council of Elrond

He is a wannabe Sauron, a wannabe Dark Lord. We also see he sets himself and Gandalf in a different class. Saruman considers himself much 'higher' than his 'weak and idle friends' that have only 'hindered' him so far. So, you could say that Saruman is striving for a 'higher evil' than Tolkien's 'low and pathetic' evil characters...like Grima.

What does Grima betray for? Surely Grima doesn't realistically see himself as being a 'Dark Lord.' He betrays for what...money? A woman? And I think we only see how pathetic he truly is when he becomes the whip dog of Saruman.

Yet, what is a Dark Lord without his pathetic and controlled slaves? Without one the other is meaningless. Do we see this in the fact that after Grima kills Saruman, Grima is also killed?

If that's the case than I think Sauron and his Orcs are a better comparison than Sauron and Gollum. Tolkien talks about Sauron's Orcs as being in 'complete thraldom' and very much like an 'ant-like slavery to Sauron.' Sauron is the Dark Lord, and his Orcs are his controlled slaves:

"They were indeed so corrupted that they were pitiless, and there was no cruelty or wickedness that they would not commit; but this was the corruption of independent wills, and they took pleasure in their deeds. They were capable of acting on their own, doing evil deeds unbidden for their own sport..."~Home X: Morgoth's Ring; Myth's Transformed

So, the Orcs simply committed evil because they took pleasure from it and they got a kick out of it; rather pathetic wouldn't you say? And where is the controlled slave without their Dark Lord to order them around?

As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless than feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope.~The Field of Cormallen

Hmm...interesting.