Fools in the Hotzone: Saruman as the Bold but Incompetent Firefighter
Every year the Man sends me to Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response class. These HAZWOPER classes are almost always taught by firefighters because they routinely deal with emergency responses to hazardous materials.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a trend in the way they teach the course — that most of the examples of what not to do when knee-deep in an emergency dealing with hazardous materials comes from the hard lessons of other firefighters. More specifically, they come from the gung-ho firefighters who charge into a dangerous situation, make said situation worse, and other firefighters have to spend time and energy rescuing them instead of dealing with the main problem.
Because I’m a nerd, and I’ve taken this class a lot over the years and my mind wanders, I immediately saw a parallel to the wizards of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.
Background? Surely:
So at the end of the Second Age, Sauron has completely corrupted the men of Númenor, causing their destruction and his own. Because you can’t keep a good Miaiar down, and especially an extremely bad one like Sauron, he’ll be back. Which is why the Valar of the Utermost West decided to select three of their number to go to middle earth and “deal” with the problem of Sauron’s inevitable return.
From The Return of the King:
They came therefore in the shape of Men, though they were never young and aged only slowly, and they had many powers of mind and hand. The two highest of this order (of whom it is said there were five) were called by the Eldar (elves) Curunir ‘the Man of Skill’, and Mithrandir, ‘the Grey Pilgrim’, but by Men in the North Saruman and Gandalf.
Notice how the original number of three swelled to five? That’s what happens when divine beings make decisions by committee. However, the details of those proceedings are important — nay crucial — in understanding Saruman’s supreme arrogance and the depth of his magnificent solution to the Sauron problem.