Why Did Saruman Turn Evil In The Lord Of The Rings?

Saruman is a key character in "The Lord of the Rings." He's the primary antagonist in "The Two Towers" and hangs around the edges of the story both before and after that point, threatening peace and stability across Middle-earth in the process. From the get-go, there's no doubt who Saruman is: He's a Wizard gone bad. And when I say "Wizard," I don't mean your average magic-wielder. This is one of Tolkien's five famous Istari — angelic beings sent to protect the Free Peoples of the world from the threat of Sauron.

Saruman infamously fails in his mission, breaking bad and going after power for himself. In the "Return of the King" book, he dies differently than in Peter Jackson's extended edition of the same story. In the printed version, he is still stabbed to death by Wormtongue, but not on the tower of Orthanc. The violent event takes place on the doorstep of Bag End in the Shire. Right before he dies, Frodo actually counsels his fellow Hobbits (including the intensely protective Samwise Gamgee) not to kill the Istar, saying:

"No, Sam! (...) Do not kill him even now. For he has not hurt me. And in any case I do not wish him to be slain in this evil mood. He was great once, of a noble kind that we should not dare to raise our hands against. He is fallen, and his cure is beyond us; but I would still spare him, in the hope that he may find it."

This recognition of Saruman's original grandeur and eventual fall from grace raises a question: With the millennia-long longevity of Wizards, when does Saruman actually go from protagonist to antagonist? When does he turn evil? I've done some deep digging into the source material to figure out when, exactly, that switch happens — and it turns out that while the answer is there, it's about as complex and convoluted as every other answer Tolkien gives us.

The first thing to remember is that Saruman is old. He arrives in Middle-earth pre-packaged in his old-man form roughly 1,000 years into the Third Age (and thus 2,000 years before "The Lord of the Rings"). The appendices of "The Return of the King" add, "It was afterwards said that [the Wizards] came out of the Far West." As for Saruman specifically, he had already been alive for countless millennia as a Maia (an angelic spirit) named Curumo.

This immortal element makes it difficult to gauge a specific moment or event in Saruman's life when he may have switched from good to bad, but it's not a dead end. A person can consider going bad for a long time before they actually back up those feelings with actions, and Tolkien does give us a few hints about when Saruman may have crossed that line from internal struggle to a truly evil mindset.

In the first 1,500 years after he arrives in Middle-earth, Saruman travels into the far eastern regions of Rhûn and returns. He also becomes a lore master and is respected as the leading Wizard in the West. It's at this point that he's made the leader of the White Council, which forms 2,463 years into the age. When that happens, "The Silmarillion" says his "pride and desire of mastery was grown great" before straight-up declaring:

Curunír had turned to dark thoughts and was already a traitor in heart.

It elaborates that he already desires the Great Ring at this point, "so that he might wield it himself and order all the world to his will." Strong stuff. So, clearly, by the time we get to within about 500 years of the "Lord of the Rings" story, Saruman is already evil in his intentions, mind, and heart.

While Saruman may not officially be a "traitor in heart" until relatively close to "The Lord of the Rings," in reality, Tolkien tells us that he is ripe for a slide into evil long before that point. Those roots of evil are also connected to a soft power struggle with a peer. The book "Unfinished Tales" gives us a few tidbits about this. One comes in a section called "Concerning Gandalf, Saruman and the Shire," where it outlines Saruman's secret antipathy for Gandalf over the years and how he comes to view the Grey Wizard as a threat. The fansite TheOneRing.net refers to this as an "early soft-power struggle" for dominance and influence.

A bit later in the book, in the section called "The Istari," it confirms that this is the case from the jump. The chapter explains how the Wizards are chosen by the Valar (the chief spirits of Middle-earth) and sent to Middle-earth. Saruman (then called "Curumo") is chosen first, then one of the Blue Wizards, named Alatar, and then Gandalf — who doesn't even want to go at first, saying that he's too weak and fears Sauron. The Valar point out that his humbleness is why he's fit for the task, and when they command him to go as the third of the group, one of them adds, "not as the third," prophetically hinting at Gandalf's leading role in the future fight against Sauron.

For our purposes here, that line ends with the chilling words, "and Curumo remembered it." The implication, of course, is that even before they arrived in Middle-earth, Saruman's jealousy of Gandalf's role in Middle-earth history was already bubbling under the surface.

We've established that Saruman's evil is tied up with his pride and goes all the way back thousands of years before "The Lord of the Rings." If you want to get nit-picky, though, he hasn't started embracing the evil within until several hundred years later, when his pride and knowledge have grown, he's the head of the White Council, and he secretly wants the One Ring for his own. Even then, all of the evil is still just inside of him — he isn't really acting out on it yet.

If you're looking for a moment where he fully "turns" evil, there's one more option worth considering. In the 500 years after becoming the head of the White Council and becoming a "traitor in heart," Saruman continues his meteoric rise. Eventually, his status is so profound that Gondor gifts him the keys to Isengard as a home. He gets access to the tower of Orthanc within its walls, and inside that ancient structure, he finds a palantír. The Seeing Stone gives him even more power, as he can now gaze far across Middle-earth and learn things instantly from a distance.

However, his use of the palantír ultimately becomes his final push into open evil deeds. "The Return of the King" appendices say around the year 3000 of the Third Age:

Saruman dares to use the palantír of Orthanc, but becomes ensnared by Sauron, who has the Ithil-stone. He becomes a traitor to the Council.

This happens a year before Bilbo's 111th birthday and less than 20 years before Frodo's quest. So we have three key points in Saruman's slide into evil:

• Before he even arrives in Middle-earth, Saruman is already filled with pride and harboring evil thoughts about Gandalf.

• 1,500 years after his arrival, Saruman is selected leader of the White Council and has become a traitor in his heart.

• Less than 20 years before Frodo's quest, Saruman uses the palantír and is ensnared by Sauron, becoming his traitorous vassal.

Finding the exact moment Saruman turns evil is one thing, but it doesn't fully answer the question of why he breaks bad when others like Gandalf and Radagast don't. Again, Tolkien isn't direct about this, but if you add everything up, the author repeatedly touches on a few main themes with Saruman's character arc.

It starts with a naked lust for power. Despite being contained in an old-man body (as a way to avoid creating two Dark Lords), Saruman falls into the same trap as Sauron. The Wizard is gnawed by the desire to wield control over others. He mentions this in "The Fellowship of the Ring" book, when he tries to seduce Gandalf to his side by telling him:

"Our time is at hand: the world of Men, which we must rule. But we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see."

While this is a bit more on the speculative side, Saruman also seems to have a degree of impatience with his physical restrictions when it comes to fighting Sauron. The Wizard spends a lot of time studying things like ancient lore and the Rings of Power. He accepts positions of power and leadership as well as the gift of Orthanc. Everywhere you look, even when he isn't officially evil, he is looking for ways to amass power via knowledge, control, and physical brute strength. The sheer mountain of information he obtains also seems to be a temptation in itself as he learns about things like the ring-making and evil empire forging of the past.

Then, of course, there's his jealousy of Gandalf. That seems to always be there, and Tolkien returns to it as a factor over and over again. Whether it's frustration, desire, knowledge, or jealousy, though, one thing is certain: Saruman's slide into evil is a long time coming, and when he finally makes his move during "The Lord of the Rings," it has a cataclysmic impact on the War of the Ring and Frodo's quest.