"Then Gandalf laughed. The fantasy vanished like a puff of smoke.""Humorous" is certainly not the adjective anyone would use to describe LoTR (especially when compared to The Hobbit), but it is reassuring to see that Tolkien has not forgotten the subversive power of a good laugh.
Because that's what breaks the spell, isn't it--a good strong belly laugh, one that shakes everyone awake, utterly deflates Saruman's pretensions, puts him in his place and sets Gandalf the White as the new head of the Counsel. I've heard it argued before that humor can actually be inherently cruel, even tyrannical, for by its very nature it must exclude and ostracize those who don't get the joke, and functions primarily by cutting others down to size. And indeed, if one is a bully who punches down, then yes, humor can be a vicious (not to mention petty) tool of the oppressor indeed.
But against the vicious, the cruel, the bullying and the tyrannical themselves, humor can be an effective weapon of liberation, and Gandalf seems to intuit this. In contrast to the two previous meandering chapters, Tolkien here does a masterful job of describing succinctly, through both show and tell, just how smooth a talker Saruman can be, how honeyed sweet his words are, how easy he is to like, how simple, natural, rationale it must feel to believe him. It's clear now that Grimace Wormtongue was but the apprentice to the master--in another life, Saruman could have been the world's greatest salesman.
I know the type well; real-life salesmen use the exact same tactics. I'd wondered aloud in previous chapters if Sauron had once been able to sell the major races of Middle Earth on his Rings of Power precisely because he did not then appear as the living embodiment of evil, but because he was such a smooth-talking salesman, a handsome young gent appearing as an angel of light, with a sharp suit and a winning smile who threw his arm around your shoulders and assured you he was your best friend, and boy did he have a deal for you! But I guess I don't need to see ages-old Sauron in action anymore, because I have now seen the exact same tactics on display with Saruman, who has learned from the Dark Lord well.
And Saruman even here follows the exact same trajectory as Sauron--for once the sales-pitch either finishes or fails, then the whole smiley facade drops, and the real malice that undergirded the sales-pitch comes swiftly simmering to the surface. If the sale succeeded, then they have you lashed under an impossible contract filled with hidden fees that they will exact to their fullest; and if the sale failed, then they lash out petulantly and hypocritically, as though you were the one who tried to rob them.
The first scenario Sauron has fulfilled to a T, and the latter Saruman has followed to the letter. Sauron is still too dangerous to laugh at just yet, but Saruman has elicited from Gandalf the White the only response he deserves--he has laughed at him. For what poor, fallen Saruman has sought above all else is power, authority, control, to be respected and taken seriously--and nothing signifies that no one takes you seriously anymore than to be laughed at. I suspect that with that guffaw, Gandalf cut an even deeper wound into Saruman than all the destructive fury of Ents--and that Gandalf emasculated him even more fully than when he commanded his staff to snap in two. It is one of the most satisfying laughs in literature.
Eric's right, this chapter is wonderful! It's right up there with "A Knife in the Dark" and "The Bridge of Khazad-dûm" as one of the highlights of the entire series--and the wonder of it is there is scarcely any action at all (aside from the apparent off-screen murder of Grima by Saruman), just a war of words with greater tension and sense of stakes than the entire Battle of Helm's Deep. I've noticed that as we've progressed, we have all begrudgingly sided more and more with Peter Jackson's artistic choices over Tolkien's, but this scene is not one of them--whereas in the film Saruman is just a generic baddie and the final confrontation is a forgettable cut-scene, here on the pages it is a masterful battle between two former friends for whom the tables have turned totally. Gandalf the White doesn't even use magic to defeat Saruman this time--he doesn't have to anymore.
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