[Letters To The Editor]

'Ring' master class

OK, you have probably already been carpet-bombed with e-mail about the otherwise well-done encapsulation of the "Lord of the Rings" (Dec. 17), but here goes:

1. Gandalf is not a man. He is a member of the Istari, an ancient spirit, come to Middle-earth in the guise of an old man. This distinction is important in the second book, where he is resurrected. If he were a man, Tolkien would not have written in this particular plot twist, as he was a devout Catholic, and believed only one Man was ever resurrected.

2. Christopher Lee does not play a character called Sauron. He plays Saruman, a separate character, the leader of the Istari. He is a once admirable and powerful wizard in his own right, corrupted by the lust for the Ring in the same way that Boromir was. In fact, he is the counterpart to Gandalf, the way Boromir was the counterpart to Aragorn. In the movie Saruman creates his own army to fight for possession of the ring; in his greed he is under the delusion he can defeat Sauron, possess the Ring and not be corrupted by it. Of course, the irony is that the Ring has already corrupted him, from a distance.

3. Sauron walked the earth in bodily form until he was defeated in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men (seen in the prologue of the movie). Once Isildur (Aragorn's ancestor) cut the Ring from his hand he lost his corporeal form and retired to Mordor to amass power again and to send his spies to seek the ring.

4. A good link for facts about the book and movie are theonering. net.

Cheers!

Sharon Mahoney
Via Internet

On the unlikely chance that no one's pointed this out yet, Burl Burlingame made an extremely serious mistake in his "Ring Master" article.

Sauron and Saruman are two different beings. Sauron is the Lord of Mordor who created the Ring of Power. Saruman is a Wizard of the same order as Gandalf (and is, in fact, Gandalf's superior in the order) who has studied the Ring and become corrupted by desire for it (and, as we find later, was further corrupted by contact with Sauron).

Saruman is "The Lord of the Rings'" embodiment of the saying "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In the clips of the film I've seen, Sauron appears in his human guise in full armor during the prologue, and Saruman appears in his confrontation with Gandalf in his tower (Orthanc, in the fortified vale of Isengard).

If Peter Jackson's film doesn't make this distinction clear, that's a problem.

James H.G. Redekop
Via Internet

Burl Burlingame responds: Advance information from the production company indicated the Sauron and Saruman characters were combined in the film script, a common practice in streamlining films. Not having seen the movie before the character descriptions were written, I accepted that the information provided was accurate. The story concerned the characters in the movie, NOT the book.

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