Saruman and his Technicolor Dreamcoat

 

Those of you who read The Lord of the Rings will remember Gandalf and Saruman’s confrontation on the steps of Orthanc before Gandalf fully realizes that Saruman has abandoned his wisdom. Here is the passage:

“’I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-maker, Saruman of Many Colors!’”

‘I looked then and saw that his robes, which had seemed white, were not so, but were woven of all colours, and if he moved, they shimmered and changed hue so that the eye was bewildered.’

‘I liked white better,’ I said.

‘White!’ he sneered. ‘It serves as a beginning. White cloth may be dyed. The white page can be overwritten; and the white light can be broken.’

‘In which case it is no longer white,’ Said I. ‘and he that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.’ (FOTR, Book II: The Council of Elrond)

            Gandalf’s last retort seems very wise and readers will likely agree with him, but is it really? It took me a couple of readings and a tour through some of his other works to question this. Why is exploring something to find out more about it foolish? How is writing on a white page a waste and breaking white light evil? These are the questions we’re going to address in this post.

 

Examples from the Sub-Creator

            The main concern I had with this piece of advice was Tolkien didn’t seem to follow it himself. As a sub-creator, he valued exploration and initiative; as time went on his works and creations only became more and more complex, his histories, geographies, and etymologies more and more complete. The white page had evidently been overwritten time and time again. Then, in Tolkien’s essay “On Fairy Stories” he writes:

“Man, the Sub-creator, the refracted Light, from whom is splintered from a single White to many hues.”

Tolkien is saying that man can and does break the white light time and time again. And not only does it apply to man: Tolkien uses the same imagery of capturing the light and changing it into many hues when Feanor crafts the Silmarils.

 

Saruman, the Flatterer

It would seem from reading these examples, that we must interpret the text wholly differently in order for these words to hold up to scrutiny. Right before we hear about Saruman’s ‘dreamcoat’ (as I will here on refer to it), we learn that a ring was on his finger.

“‘For I am Saruman the Wise, Saruman Ring-Maker, Saruman of Many Colours!’”

I like to think that crafting a ring and changing his colors were not independent events. By seeking to copy the enemy he has turned white, which represents the pure and good inside him, into a corrupt flattery of the darkness. That is what Gandalf means when he says writing on the white page is evil. He is not referring to creation in itself, but to the loss of purity.

 

And The Corrupter

Because of this I tend to think of Saruman’s dreamcoat not of dazzling rainbow hues, but as like the prismatic oily sheen on pollution and sludge. It is colorful, true, but no longer beautiful. It is corrupt and unclean. Tolkien in Letter 154 refers to Saruman as a ‘reformer’, one who does not sub-create, but only distorts what is already created whole and good. Saruman is not creating a technicolor dreamcoat, he is ruining beautiful white lace. He is not writing a story on the white page; he is destroying one already tastefully left blank.