Why 🧙Saruman Wanted Shire

[Aldarion]

On another board, we had a discussion on why Saruman tried to conquer Shire - which, clear as a day, was not going to last forever. So this is what I wrote:

Nihilistic destruction. Saruman had, in the end, fallen even lower than Sauron. If you look at Tolkien's writings, Sauron had not fallen as low as Morgoth. Morgoth had a positive purpose in the beginning, even though it was evil - moulding Arda - but eventually abandoned it for sheer nihilistic destruction; he wanted to destroy Arda and render it into primordial chaos. Thus, he squandered his life force, turning Arda itself into his own Ring of Power. Sauron, being maia of Aule, never fully abandoned his nature: where Morgoth wanted to fully destroy Eru's work, Sauron wanted to order and organization. Where Morgoth wanted destruction of the Music, Sauron wanted homophony. As such, Ring of Power was a tool - of corruption, yes, but primarily of control. Saruman was, at first, much more similar to Sauron - to the point that everything he did was but a child's imitation of Sauron's own works. But once he lost that, once Gandalf broke his pride, he was rendered incapable of any higher purpose - all he wanted was revenge, to destroy everything his enemies possessed and valued. His pride caused him to lose his purpose and turn into Morgoth.

What do you think of that explanation?

 

[Aukwrist]

On another board, we had a discussion on why Saruman tried to conquer Shire - which, clear as a day, was not going to last forever. So this is what I wrote:


What do you think of that explanation?

I don't think, even at the end, that Saruman/Sharkey was entirely beyond redemption. His mistake was to humiliate Grima just once too often - and it did for him. The description of what happened after Saruman's death is genuinely horrifying, a smaller version of what happened to Sauron. (The wind can be very important in Tolkien.)

His behaviour is frequently destructive, and, like Morgoth's, petty & spiteful; but it is destruction for a purpose - it is not purely nihilistic, like that of Morgoth. But Saruman does sink very low - the Scouring of the Shire builds on the clear indications already given of that.

As for the Ring, my impression is that it is basically Sauron in Ring form. As Sauron is the controller, I think that its power to corrupt is inseparable from that control - that it controls by corrupting; by causing a gradual dis-enhancement & dissolution of those it controls, until the Ring is all that holds them together. Take the Ring away, and they and their works fade or disperse, as Sauron does. I think the Ring is to Sauron something comparable to what Morgoth's fixed final form was to him: his embodiment, and his prison. There is the question of what, exactly, existed of Sauron, apart from the Ring. But clearly there was something, or his actions in the Third Age would have been impossible.

This article, the first of 3, seems relevant: https://jonathansmcintosh.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/saruman-the-gollum/

Part 2: https://jonathansmcintosh.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/mimetic-desire-in-tolkiens-saruman/

Part 3: https://jonathansmcintosh.wordpress...odness-is-miltons-satan-and-tolkiens-saruman/

 

[Sir Eowyn]

Just though of this... had he succeeded in taking (and keeping) the Shire, might the Grey Havens have been inaccessible?

I mean, if it really came down to it, King Elessar could send an army to clear the way, but if Saruman had built up his power beyond what some hobbits can tackle, well, he could have hindered the sailing, possibly injured one of the Wise.

But this is all crazy, because Saruman by then was just a petty wandering sneak thief... as soon as I wrote the idea of him at that point, backed by Men or not, being any threat to Galadriel, I realized how that's ludicrous.

 

[Shadow]

1. To feel power over others after having that taken away
2. To destroy beauty, as he did with tree felling to feed the fires of Orthanc

 

[Alcuin]

Before the outbreak of the War of the Ring, Saruman infiltrated the Shire in the beginning to discover what Gandalf found so interesting there. In Unfinished Tales, in the section “Hunt for the Ring”, is an essay labeled “(iii) Concerning Gandalf, Saruman and the Shire”, which opens,

Saruman soon became jealous of Gandalf, and this rivalry turned at last to a hatred, the deeper for being concealed, and the more bitter in that Saruman knew in his heart that the Grey Wanderer had the greater strength, and the greater influence upon the dwellers in Middle-earth, even though he hid his power and desired neither fear nor reverence. Saruman did not revere him, but he grew to fear him, being ever uncertain how much Gandalf perceived of his inner mind, troubled more by his silences than by his words. So it was that openly he treated Gandalf with less respect than did others of the Wise, and was ever ready to gainsay him or to make little of his counsels; while secretly he noted and pondered all that he said, setting a watch, so far as he was able, upon all his movements.
​

The essay then goes on to describe how Saruman became engrossed with Gandalf’s interest in the Hobbits, and in disguise visited it himself, on which occasions he was sometimes mistaken for Gandalf. Though he disparaged Gandalf for it, he also took up smoking pipeweed: hence the barrels of high-quality Longbottom leaf found by Merry and Pippin in the flotsam and jetsam of Isengard. The Sackville-Baggins were his primary agents in the Shire: thus Lotho’s rise to extraordinary wealth and power.

During this period, Saruman’s primary interest was in using the Shire to provide food and sustenance for his growing military ambitions. Farmer Cotton recalled in “Scouring of the Shire” (RotK) that

at the end o[f Shire Reckoning 1418, Lotho] began sending away loads of stuff… Things began to get short [with] winter coming on… Folk[s] got angry, but he had his answer. A lot of Men … came with great wagons, some to carry off the goods south[], and others to stay. … [B]efore we knew [it] they were planted here and there all over the Shire, and were felling trees and digging and building themselves sheds and houses just as they liked. At first goods and damage w[ere] paid for by [Lotho]; but soon they began lording it around and taking what they wanted.
​

The fall of Isengard did not take place until 3 March SR 1419, and this was now 2 November. It is a safe bet that Lotho stopped paying for any destruction by Saruman’s Men no later than the fall of Isengard, when the source of his funding ceased. At that point, the Men, who were no doubt aware of the outcome of Saruman’s war with Rohan, probably decided that their best course of action (since they were already scoundrels) was to seize control of the Shire for themselves.

Even so, they had no particular reason to be wantonly destructive of the territory just for the sake of ruin: after all, they planned to live there. But I think we should take Saruman at his word: having discovered that Frodo and his three companions planned to accompany Gandalf to Rivendell, he hastened to the Shire to wreck as much ruin as possible before their return. He arrived on 22 September, Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday, and immediately began ordering his men to do as much damage as possible. It isn’t clear when he ordered Wormtongue to murder Lotho, but that must have happened as soon as Lotho began to protest what appeared to be random destruction of the countryside: after all, Lotho might defect. We should understand that Saruman’s destruction was not haphazard: he knew how the Shire economy operated, he knew what the Hobbits needed to survive the oncoming winter, and he was determined to kill as many as possible through privation and starvation.

But there is one more point of which we need to be aware. The Shire was originally the demesne of the Kings of Arnor: it was the king’s personal property (just as Cornwall today is the personal property of the Prince of Wales). This in part explains the interest of the Rangers of the North in keeping the Shire in particular free of invaders and “monsters”. (Bree was likewise a point of their interest as the center of what remained of old Arnor’s transportation hub and a surviving piece of its economy.) In extracting provisions from the Shire, though paying for them, Saruman was acting against the interests of the King of Arnor (I suppose he knew very little of Aragorn, and had apparently never met him: it is likely that unlike Sauron, Saruman knew Aragorn existed, since he was not recognized as an enemy until he imprisoned Gandalf) and of the Dúnedain in general, since he was using those provisions to make war upon Rohan, Gondor’s principal ally, in coöperation with Mordor, which planned to attack Gondor and Rohan from the east.

 

[Hisoka Morrow]

Here, I hope this to help you.
Military and politic were both important account. Since elves started their massive immigration to Valinor and the Arnor Remain Auxiliary Forces were assigned to the main battlefield at the War of the Ring, Shire was the best choice for Saruman.
Let's take a further analysis of Saruman's Plan B as well by considering other possible option to let him rebuild his forces, the Easterlings or Harrad might own much better military forces than those Gangsters of Shire, yet much harder to control either, proven it's possible that the 2 Lost Wizards might have arouse successful rebel as well as all kinds of these "Evil Men" possible disobedience against the Dark Lord. And the same reason would fit the Corsairs, as the Dark Numenoreans seemed hardly work out with the ME natives, no matter by their absence in the 1944 War, the 1st Wainrider War, and so on.