The Voice of Saruman: Wizards and Rhetoric in The Two Towers
2010; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 28; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0146-9339
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
ResumoTOLKIEN CONSIDERED HIMSELF FIRST AND FOREMOST a philologist in the primary sense of the term, a lover of words or a linguist. He often said that his chief impetus for creating was to provide a context for his invented Elvish languages, Quenya and Sindarin. Thus language was his deepest interest, and in this study I want to focus on Tolkien's use of language in Two Towers, specifically in the discourse of the two Wizards, Gandalf and Tolkien very careful to differentiate the rhetorical choices of the characters in Lord of the Rings [LotR], so that, particularly in the case of Gandalf and Saruman, rhetoric character. (1) Tom Shippey the only scholar I have come across who has commented on the language of either of these characters, (2) noting that Saruman's use of rhetoric as Gandalf reports his speech in The Council of Elrond similar to that of a modern politician. As Shippey asserts, uses the modern-sounding language, and constantly equivocates, shifting from one view to another as he tries to persuade Gandalf to join him, ultimately resorting to abstractions that make it difficult to pin down what he His message, Shippey argues, is in any case one of compromise and calculation (J.R.R. Tolkien 75), and Shippey quotes the following example of the voice of Saruman: We can bide our time, we can keep out thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order; all things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends. There need not be, there would not be, any change in our design, only in our means. (LotR II.2.253) word real may well be the key word in this passage, implying as it does a very subjective and equivocal notion of reality that seems far removed from its apparent synonym, truth. Shippey sees in this speech many of the things the modern world has learnt to dread most: the ditching of allies, the subordination of means to ends, the 'conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder' (The Road 119). This Machiavellian in the worst sense of the word, in which the end justifies the means, and it sophistry in the way only a skilled modern politician can perform it, disguising a wrong cause in fair words. No wonder Shippey calls the most contemporary figure in Middle-earth (see Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien 68-77). It clear that Tolkien wanted readers to focus on Saruman's use of language, since he entitles the chapter in which finally appears The Voice of Saruman. Here, when the victorious forces of the West finally confront the beaten in his tower of Orthanc, Gandalf warns his companions that Saruman has powers you do not guess. Beware of his voice! (LotR III.10.563). While some readers have interpreted Gandalf's warning as an indication that capable of casting a verbal spell that might hypnotize his listeners and so move them through supernatural powers, Tolkien very clearly rejected that view. In a 1958 letter to Forrest J. Ackerman concerning a proposed film treatment of Lord of the Rings, Tolkien asserted: Saruman's voice was not hypnotic but persuasive. Those who listened to him were not in danger of falling into a trance, but of agreeing with his arguments, while fully awake. It was always open to one to reject, by free will and reason, both his voice while speaking and its after-impressions. corrupted the reasoning powers. (Letters 276-277, italics in original) It seems, then, that it Saruman's rhetoric, rather than any magical powers, that makes him so dangerous. This not to say that the Wizards of are not powerful in other ways. Gandalf, of course, the only one of the Fellowship of the Ring who can challenge the Balrog in Moria, and he stands alone against the Witch-king of Angbar, Lord of the Nazgul, when all other defenders run in fear at the gates of Minas Tirith. …
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