Fully fed, fully caught up, and fully reeking of pipe-weed, our heroes enter Isengard, where Gandalf demands to speak with Saruman at the foot of Orthanc. The Until-recently-white Wizard refuses to come down or let visitors in, but the White-now-and-check-out-my-new-skills Wizard manages to get his attention, and the parley begins. But although Saruman has lost his armies and devices, he still has some weapons left: his voice, bitter anger, and possibly some kind of Vorlon powers (because it’s been too long since we got in a Babylon 5 reference).
Jay Ruud’s 2009 Mythlore essay “The Voice of Saruman: Wizards and Rhetoric in The Two Towers” can be found online here.
Dennis Wilson Wise’s 2016 Journal of Tolkien Research essay “Harken Not to Wild Beasts: Between Rage and Eloquence in Saruman and Thrasymachus” can be found online here.
Recommended Reading:
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Two Towers: Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, paperback) “The Voice of Saruman”, pp. 562-67
Tolkien, J. R. R. (Christopher Tolkien, ed.) The Silmarillion (Mariner Books, paperback)
Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, paperback)
