Talk:Saruman

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[edit] Image

Why has the picture of Saruman been deleted? Could someone find another pic of Saruman? It would make the article more complete.

I would imagine because it was a copyrighted image without the correct permissions to legally use on Wikipedia? Besides, one cannot get a picture of Saruman, because one cannot find him to photograph. —Morven 12:00, 9 October 2005 (UTC)
How about these? Palm_Dogg 22:02, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

(images removed)

[edit] NPOV

I deleted the following phrase: "His magical contest of wills with Gandalf at Orthanc was depicted with a disco-style light show." It is obviously not NPOV. (Ibaranoff24 23:05, 23 January 2006 (UTC))

OK, fair enough — but you've got to admit that that scene is pretty weird. Can anyone think of a more neutral way to describe it? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
It's not only non-NPOV, it's also untrue. I wouldn't bother trying to think of a more neutral way of describing it. ▫ Urbane Legend talk 10:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Uruk-Hai are not Hybirds?

I dispute the accuracy of this article. It's states that the Human-Orc Hybirds created by Saruman were called Uruk-Hai. The only place I've seen this was in the movies. Anywhere else I checked seem to imply the Uruk-Hai and Half-Orcs as seperate beings. uruks seem to be prue bred Orcs, only bredd to be more refined and resistant to sunlight. Half-Orcs were the cross breds ones. --Eldarone 05:47, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

It is established that Saruman bred Orcs and Men together. It is established that his Uruk-hai were tall and resistant to sunlight. It is commonly considered implied that these two facts were related. If not from Men then where did Saruman's Uruk-hai acquire their man-like special traits? Also consider;

"There is no doubt that long afterwards, in the Third Age, Saruman rediscovered this, or learned of it in lore, and in his lust for mastery committed this, his wickedest deed: the interbreeding of Orcs and Men, producing both Men-orcs large and cunning, and Orc-men treacherous and vile." - MR, Myths Transformed - Text X

So who are these 'Men-orcs' if not Saruman's Uruk-hai, and who the 'Orc-men' if not Bill Ferny and his ilk? The human ancestry of Saruman's Uruk-hai is not stated with absolute and unquestionable explicitness, but there is extremely strong basis for it. If the article states it as an absolute there might be cause for that to be modified, but not removed. To put it another way... how plausible is it that Saruman's Uruk-hai were excluded from his Orc-Man breeding program, but nonetheless acquired 'human' traits through some other unknown mechanism? --CBD ☎ ✉ 10:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
The notion that Uruk-Hai' are Sarumans Orcs is movie-only (in the book Uruks originate in Mordor to attack Ithilien years before the WotR), the notion that they're unholy hybrids between Orcs and Men is probably right on the money. Although nothing is stated with fact, there are very clear suspicions that the Dark Powers created a mixed breed out of Orcs and Men. -- Jordi·✆ 16:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

I disagree! Uruks are the creation of Mordor and are merely 5 feet tall, where as Uruk-Hai are much taller and more of a threat. That was Saruman's creation. Lauredhel

But only in the film. We need to be clear which version we're talking about, otherwise such discussions make no sense. In fact we even need to be specific about which book we're talking about. There is, for example, no definitive answer to questions such as the origins of the Orcs, since Tolkien developed his thinking over ~60 years and wrote different things at different times. In The Lord of the Rings, Uruk-hai (meaning orc-folk) originated in Mordor and were a bigger, more sunlight-tolerant version of orcs, but nothing like the size of those in the Jackson films. 4u1e (talk) 09:45, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

The first one to breed Uruks was indeed Sauron the Deceiver in the lands of Mordor. And there are still some left of them (in Cirith Ungol and Minas Morgul, for exemple). However, Sauron stopped breeding Uruks long before the War of the Ring and Saruman resumed this dark practice to create his own army,but he also used his own "godly" knowledge to improve them. Isengard's higher quality smithing also made the Uruk-Hai much more effective. So, Uruk-Hai are not Hybrids. Orc-Men, hiding throughout Eriador (the "suspicious-looking" people in Bree) and not easily recognised also serve Saruman as his spies. I think... Bill Ferny was a Man. Michael IX the White 18:51, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Restore Polotics

It appears a lot of convoluted "Tolkienish" text has accumulated since I last edited this article. I've gone through most of it and cleaned up for clarity, trying to restore the meaning of the original paragraphs, and incorporating new information where there's actually been added something.

I'm also going to restore the "politics" section later on, if someone wants that off the page, please discuss it here on the talk page first. 80.203.21.142 18:00, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

If you are going to resore it, it should be less detailed. The article was becoming too stretched for a non-central character --Ted87 19:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think Saruman is a non-central character in "Tolkien's legendarium"! If you have read indeed all the books, and more precisely, the chapter "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age" of the Silmarillion, there is more referance to Saruman than, say, Frodo! Anyway, the Gods (Ainur) are important. The film does not really show why and how Saruman created his own faction, or why and how he did many actions, and a detailed article here would provide people with the information missing. --Michael IX the White 20:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Template image.

I removed it again for several reasons:

  1. It is not a good illustration of this character. We only see the back of his head, and Grima is in the center and closer to the camera. Surely there are better scenes from the movie where we can actually see him! Image:SarumanLOTR.jpg which appears further down the page, for instance.
  2. The image is almost certainly not fair use in this article. Fair use is context-specific. Given that this is a poor illustration for the character, we are left with an image of the scene in question: Saruman looking out over his troops with Grima by his side. This article doesn't even mention that scene in the movie (which doesn't appear in the book). The image therefore cannot be said to be present for "identification and critical commentary on the film and its contents" as required.
  3. You always need a rationale on the image description, if nothing else to explain how the image meets the stated criteria. The image description does that wrt Triumph of the Will, but not for this article. TCC (talk) (contribs) 06:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In-universe style

I do not understand why the article is labelled as "needs to be rewritten into out-of-universe style". For example the article Frodo_Baggins has a similar style (perhaps even slightly fewer mentions that it is a fictional character than the article Saruman) and it has not that label. I do not understand in what aspect the article Saruman is different in style than all others about Middle-earth.

And after reading the guidelines Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(writing_about_fiction), it is not clear to me. The example with Ludgar Wolventongue says that it is wrong to mention the fictiveness only at the beginning of the paragraph. Does it mean that we should mention even more often than once per paragraph? It is hard to imagine such style of writing.

Pavel Jelinek 08:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Articles written about fictional characters don't need to constantly say "remember, he's fictional" in an awkward way, but they should discuss a character's importance to the story rather than read like a biography of a real person. See WP:WAF for more information. Croctotheface 20:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Should Orthanc have a the before it?

Should Orthanc have a the before it?--Curtis95112 12:54, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Servant Of Sauron

The opening paragraph states that Saurman is a servant of Sauron, I don't think it's that clear in the book to make a strong statement like this, he's more of a Rival / in leauge with Sauron I think, should it be changed? Carl Sixsmith 17:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, sounds like a Jacksonism to me. TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ever do anything good?

It's stated that he became corrupt. Is there anywhere in the legendarium where he began to have good intentions or do something useful? Or was he basically a baddie from the start? BillMasen 23:05, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

He was good in the beginning, it was his jealousy of Gandalf, whom he learned had been given a ring of power by Cirdan that set him down the path of evil.
When he entered Orthanc it was as a Lieutenant of the Steward of Gondor, which enabled Rohan to have some protection from the Dunlendings.
It was due to his arts and ability's that the White Council where able to drive Sauron out of Dol Guldur Carl Sixsmith 07:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Have you ever read the Silmarillion or/and the Unfinished Tales?

Saruman/Curunir, of Aule the Smith's folk, was one of the Ainur, the god-spirits who created the world. For many long ages during the Creation, the Spring and later the Time of the Trees, plus the Three ages of the Sun, Saruman had been in Aule's side, and was good indeed. It is also implied in the Silmarillion, especially in the Valaquenta, 2nd Chapter "of the Maiar", that the Maiar, as Olorin and Curunir, could walk in Middle-Earth before the War of Wrath, when almost all Ainur departed from Middle-Earth to go to Valinor. Of course, not tied in a human body. So Saruman must have played a role in the creation of the Dwarves. In the Unfinished Tales, in the chapter "of the Istari", Gandalf declares that Saruman was one of the mightiest Maiar in Valinor, much more powerful than himself, and that he has helped in many situations the Valar, earning their respect, trust, and so, Saruman was later appointed as the Head of the Istari. In the Unfinished Tales, in the same chapter, Tolkien says that it was the Valar's great mistake to embody and tie the Istari to a human body, and that is why Saruman became slowly corrupted. Another reason is that the Vision of Valinor overtime became a fading dream and the Istari lost loyalty to it. It is also stated that Saruman, when first starting to breed his army, only thought of defeating Sauron, using his Enemy's own ways and lore. It is not until later in the War of the Ring that he became totally corrupted and eventually turned to Evil. In the Unfinished Tales,(of the Istari) and in other published texts, Christopher Tolkien talks about the new book that the Professor had started writing, called "The New Shadow". It is revealed that Curunir/Saruman was put to trial before Mandos (Vala) and was forgiven for his deeds in Middle-Earth. He was put again in the service of Aule and became good again. This has already happened to Osse, who turned evil and then good again (Valaquenta, of the Maiar), so it is possible for Saruman. Christopher states that, in "the New Shadow" JRR Tolkien was planning to send a more powerful and resistant-to-Evil-and-corruption Saruman, head of a new Istari mission. So, Saruman doesn't seem to be really evil after all, only for the months the War of the Ring took place, in opposition to tens of thousands of years.

Michael IX the White 19:16, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The New Shadow appears in volume 12 of The History of Middle-earth, titled The Peoples of Middle-earth and not in Unfinished Tales. It's a mere fragment (8 pages) of the start of a story set in Gondor 100 years after the death of Aragorn; in it two men sit in a garden and discuss the nature of evil. It does not mention Saruman/Curunir. I don't recall any mention anywhere of Saruman's trial - it would be great if you could give a reference by book and page number. Cheers. 4u1e (talk) 09:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Characteristics

I've just been rather brutal and replaced the whole of the 'Literary appearances' section with a much shorter version, in a rather more out-of-universe perspective. The previous version seemed to be trying to provide a complete 'biography' of the character Saruman. While that's a very interesting thing to do, it seems to rather go against guidance like WP:FICTION, and also duplicate what is already available on the net at sites like The Thain's book, or The Tolkien Gateway (which is also a wiki). There was also a certain amount of fan speculation going on.

As a general interest encylopedia what I believe we should be doing is providing an article on Saruman the literary (and film) character - how was he created, what role did he play in the book/film, what did the author think of him, what has been said about him by critics or various flavours of literary analyst. That would provide something different to what other sites do, and fit better with what the Wiki guidelines say. Although I realise that in practice much of Wikipedia's content doesnt' follow those guidelines. Cheers. 4u1e (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] References

The references in this article are singularly unhelpful. "Tolkien, C. (1989, 2002) pp.403 & 428" is not much help if you don't know the original publication dates of HoME (which I presume is meant). Also, page references to Hobbit and LotR are probably less helpful than chapter titles, since the pagination varies so widely across the editions. I can't find Gandalf's sidebar quote at all, despite the reference. Elphion (talk) 22:25, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Chapter titles can be added, although they'll not get you any closer to the text being discussed than the page numbers if you have a different edition to the one I'm using. Identifying the source is used shouldn't be that difficult, since the full details, including publication dates are given just below. However, I'm happy to be flexible on this. For example, it's not a standard approach, but another way of doing this would be to use the book title as the shorthand (as is already the case for Letters). What do you think? 4u1e (talk) 19:11, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
The Gandalf quote is in The Council of Elrond, going from memory. 4u1e (talk) 20:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Found the quote, thanks; I was misled by thinking it was Gandalf's judgment on the situation, rather than Gandalf reporting Saruman's words. (I think this could be made clearer in the sidebar.) But in my edition, it's on p. 253, not p. 338 as cited.
Which brings me to: page numbers can be off by hundreds of pages. In addition, some editions of LotR are numbered consecutively with one sequence through all three volumes, instead of restarting at the beginning of each. Chapter titles at least get you into the right ball-park, with a definite start and end for the search. I would argue that chapter titles are essential for the Hobbit and LotR. For the others (Sil, UT, HoME), the page numbering is much more consistent -- though who knows if will stay that way.
For all these books, a book title is much more helpful than author/date, and it's not hard to include it. For HoME, the whole shebang isn't necessary; e.g., Lost Tales, Book II suffices. I've been using Title + Chapter, or Title + Page for these primary works -- a more complete citation usually isn't necessary.
An alternative would be ME-cite, but I can't get it to work.
Elphion (talk) 21:22, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
It does say it's Gandalf's report in the box! I agree it could be clearer though, I don't find that template works terribly well, but no doubt I'll find a way to finesse it.
I'm amazed that the numbers are off by that amount! I'll add the chapter titles (but I'm leaving the page numbers as well) and I'm happy to go with ref'ing by book title not author. The latter is fairly standard on Wikipedia (look at most recent FAs), but your suggestion is perfectly logical, and does have advantages in this case. I'd done it for Letters anyway, where almost all content is written by Tolkien, but the norm would be to use Carpenter's name as the editor.
Cheers. 4u1e (talk) 22:10, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
OK, done with Chapter numbers. I've left page numbers in on the basis that many of the print versions will share the same layout as the versions I'm using and even if they don't in many cases they will be close (and some chapters are quite long!).4u1e (talk) 12:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bloat

This article seems really bloated to me. There is far more detail than an encyclopedia entry ordinarily would require. "Characteristics" is far too long, and the first paragraph of "Names and titles" goes right over the top. Elphion (talk) 22:26, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

OK. Obviously I disagree, but let's try and establish more exactly what the problem is. Do you feel the article is too long overall, or do you feel that the balance of emphasis on different topics within the article is wrong? 4u1e (talk) 20:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Short answer (all I have time for right now): the article is too long overall; the detail is too dense. Too many setup statements that don't really contribute to understanding Saruman. (E.g., Tolkien's growing up in Mercia is not very relevant to the etymology of the name.) I think the balance between topics is reasonable, and the writing is good. (A pleasant change!) More later. Elphion (talk) 21:33, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Similarly short of time. The thing with the names is, unless you have something else to say, there's little point in mentioning them at all in a general use encyclopedia. The origin of the name does give a broader view on how Tolkien approached these things. You're probably right, but in that case I'd be inclined to hack the section down to a short single para only, in which case it probably doesn't deserve a section of its own. 4u1e (talk) 22:14, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

On consideration of overall size, a couple of points for consideration: firstly, the comparison with other encyclopedias doesn't get us very far. It's unlikely any other general use encyclopedia would even include Saruman. Secondly, the size of the text (excluding refs and pics etc) is about 20kb, less than half Wikipedia' current 50kb guideline for maximum size, and well below even the old 32kb limit imposed by browser technology. And Wikipedia is not paper :). I do agree that the article shouldn't go on for ever, though! (And I would agree that the 'Characteristics' section gets a bit woolly in the middle in its current version!)

A more useful way of assessing whether the article is the right size might be to consider what it should achieve. I think it should explain how the character came about, what function he fulfills in the books (both structurally and thematically), what has been written about him outside Tolkien's works and how the character has been adapted to other media. We can fill out the details a bit more, but is that about right from your point of view? 4u1e (talk) 12:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edits of 1 June 2008

The first edit provides the following description:

It's normal in writing about fiction to put it in past tense. It's 'after' not when - it's not at their first meeting at Rivendell. Consistent use of  . Etc. Can provide details if needed.

But in fact the edit reverted past tense to present tense. I had used past tense since that's what the rules for the Middle-earth project specify. As for consistent use of non-breaking space, etc., maybe you should provide details. There's a point of diminishing returns, however; if it becomes too complicated to edit text, people won't, and that's not what we're after. Part of the wiki model is that if such consistency matters to you, then feel free to supply it -- but not by reverting whole swaths of text. (And I can tell you right up front, providing non-breaking spaces before and after every dash is not something I will do. Not even most professional publishers do that.)

The description for the second edit reads:

You really do need this information to follow what is going on. A fair amount of thought did go into this. Happy to discuss on talk page.

The information in question is that the three volumes are divided into six books (plus appendices). It is important to have that information in the article on The Lord of the Rings, but completely unnecessary to repeat it on every article whose subject spans more than one volume. People do not ordinarily refer to 'Book I', 'Book II', etc.; most refer to the names of the three volumes, since that is still how these books are usually published. (And even single-volume editions still include the usual volume names.) Providing both the volume title and the book number covers both bases, but I disagree that "you really do need this information [an in-depth discussion of the structure of the books] to follow what is going on." A glance at the table of contents of the volume at hand suffices.

I don't doubt that "a fair amount of thought did go into this" -- but I could say the same about my edits, thank you.

Elphion (talk) 20:42, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

You're right - that was an unnecessary dig. Well, it wasn't intended as a dig (just an injured reaction!), but it came across as one. So, sorry! I know you've been putting a lot of effort into improving WP:ME articles. There was a point in there somewhere to the effect that, given that this article in its current form is largely the work of one editor (me!) it might be a good idea to raise changes like that on the talk page before making them, but you're not obliged to and I don't own the article.
Re past and present tense. It was a typo in the edit summary (and if I had a pound for every time I'd done that...). I meant to write that it is normal to use present tense in summarising the plot of a book. Hope my comment makes more sense in that context! WP:ME has indeed decided otherwise, but I cannot for the life of me see why: it actually makes it very difficult in some cases to write the summary.
Use of nbsp. What I found odd was that you seemed to have added an nbsp ahead of the dash, but not behind it. Thinking about it a bit further, I guess your point is that with one nbsp you can keep the dash with the leading text, making the second one redundant? Fair enough, although I think we're probably both in the wrong as regards the WP:MoS, which has for a long time stated that unspaced mdashes (strongly preferred) or spaced ndashes should be used. I see that this is currently being challenged, though (see Wikipedia:MoS#Dashes.
Reverting whole swathes of text. I didn't. It may feel like I did, but really I didn't. I cut and pasted the leading and trailing sentences from the previous version - because I genuinely feel that they are better than your versions (sorry - more on that later) - the rest I just re-wrote to go back to present tense and 'after' not 'when'. That may amount to a straight revert in practice (I haven't checked), but the process of getting there wasn't that straightforward. That may or may not make you feel better about it.
Regarding book numbers. Maybe it's just my overly analytical mind, but Saruman plays a role in books II, III and VI of the Lord of the Rings, and none (or virtually none) in IV and V. Since, to my mind, we're trying to describe where his character has an impact in the novel as a whole, the use of the (arbitrary, don't forget!) volume titles seems annoyingly imprecise. Your point about readers' normal points of reference is a fair one, of course. If we need to know what books are concerned, we need to know the structure, and articles do really need to be stand alone for things like this. You certainly can't expect readers to have the table of contents to hand. I didn't really feel your re-write completed the job of making the book titles unnecessary - I'll have a go and see if I can come up with a version I'm happy with. Feel free to tweak, or revert wholesale. ;-)
(OK, done. Kind of. The only bit I'm still uncomfortable with is describing where in TT, The Voice of Saruman falls. It's in the middle of the volume, but structurally it comes at the end of Book III. It's part of a climax, not a mid-section. Anyway, does it work for you? 4u1e (talk) 11:03, 2 June 2008 (UTC))
The other bit of reversion I did was to go back to the previous version of the ending of para three of 'Appearances - The Lord of the Rings'. That was simply because I felt your version was very little shorter and lost one piece of important information: Saruman plays no direct role in the action of book III until right at the very end, which makes him a very different character to someone like Gandalf. It was also less precise in one detail. Saruman was trapped in Orthanc, he had no option but to stay there. Barracaded could also apply to a situation in which he chose to stay there as his best option. 'Cast' is what Gandalf said, rather than 'stripped of membership', but I wonder whether a novice reader, or one for whom English is not a first language, will understand as clearly what is meant. It seemed easier just to revert the whole sentence, but I did consider each element within it before doing so.
Hope that at least convinces you that it's not just petty revert-mongering on my part. I look forward to your comments. Cheers. 4u1e (talk) 10:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Addressing your fixes (your edit summary in italics):

  • per MOS : First, my edit did not introduce the nonbreaking spaces; I was merely preserving those already present. I don't think putting them before or after dashes is a good idea unless necessary to avoid some really horrible formatting debacle. (An occasional linebreak does not usually qualify!) Second, MOS does not currently mandate a spaced/nonspaced or M/N-dash style. Insofar as there is a recommendation, it is for the currently prevalent publishing practice of spaced N-dashes. Third, although the HTML entities have their advantages, in general I prefer to see the Unicode dash characters from the editing cheat sheet rather than the HTML entities, since it makes reading the edit box a lot easier. Fourth, whatever you adopt is guaranteed not to remain consistent, as future editors who don't care, are oblivious, or have strong feelings about dashes have their way with the article.
  • Sorry - again, I really feel this is more informative. Re-written slightly to avoid any claim of OR : The change is from "his men had already been spreading willful industrial destruction" to "his men had already started to force its rural economy through a wilfully destructive process of industrialization". Your wording is better than what I replaced. I don't think it's more informative than my version, but it's OK. I'm still bothered by the modern economic language ("rural economy", "industrialization"), which seems out of step with Tolkien's writing. (Is wilfull/willful a British/American spelling difference?)
  • Rewrite last sentence to avoid implication that G murdered S /because/ he tried to kill F : Yes, a distinct improvement.
  • Don't need to mention the Shire here - better explained later on : I don't disagree, but the important point that is still missing (that my edit tried but failed to convey) is that Frodo had expected Gandalf to accompany him on his journey, but Gandalf inexplicably and uncharacteristically did not show up. I think the attempt to tell this from Gandalf's point of view is making it too difficult to be concise here.
  • Move comment on rural destruction to section on Characteristics ... : Yes, good move.
  • Restore (brief) explanation of what Orthanc is, for the uninitiated : If you had asked Saruman what his stronghold was, he would have said "Isengard", meaning the fortified ring. Also "his stronghold of Orthanc" sounds horribly stilted to my ear. The problem is that an accurate description won't be brief, and trying to insert one clutters the prose and makes it harder to read. This is exactly what wikilinks are for: the uninitiated can follow the link. The link does lead to Isengard -- but to the section of it that describes Orthanc: exactly what is required here.
  • tweaking again, trying to get the link between Orthanc and Isengard, without going overboard : I would suggest "summoned to Isengard" above and "imprisoned at Isengard in the tower of Orthanc" below.

Trapped/barracaded, etc. : He was not trapped; he chose to stay there rather than to submit to Gandalf. I detest "stripped of membership" -- it sounds like a country club. "Cast" is exactly right, and is what Tolkien used. If this project is to be written in Basic English, I will quit now. I strive for language that is easy to read and understand; but a word that is not flabby and not archaic is fair game.

Book numbers :I agree that there's a problem, and that we need a better solution. I'm not suggesting avoiding the book numbers when they are the quick way to say what you mean. But it should be clear which Book goes with which Volume -- without having a disquisition on the structure of LotR inserted wherever Book numbers get used. I agree, for example, that "Book III" is preferable to "the first half of The Two Towers". I even think "Book III (in The Two Towers)" is preferable in this case.

Would it help if we edited The Lord of the Rings#Synopsis (which already talks about the six books) to indicate the structure of Books vs Volumes more explicitly -- or perhaps even insert a separate section on #Structure there -- and then link to that section from "Book [your number here]"? (It would probably also help to provide clearer indication in Appearances when we switch volumes.)

Tense : Left to my own devices, I would have described the action in present tense, for (as you note) that seems more natural in plot descriptions. But the Project decided on past tense. The Project now contains an awful lot of prose in past tense. Do you propose to revisit all those articles? To reopen the discussion? Or to ignore the Project guidelines?

War-mongering? no. No blood on the floor yet :-)

Elphion (talk) 18:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Right, let's see:
  • Dashes. Not a topic I want to get excited about, so my apologies for accusing you of the nbsps and I'll leave it as is (unspace mdash, as it happens). If you want a different standard, feel free to change it! I agree with your assessment of the likelihood of the guidelines changing, btw.
  • 'Rural economy, industrialization': Certainly not language Tolkien would use in the book. Does it need to be though? I've just re-read the chapter and Tolkien doesn't really give any convenient hooks to use as a summary. Destruction doesn't adequately summarise what was done to the Shire; there was a lot of re-building in a style described as 'mean' and 'shabby' which given Tolkien's preferences I think can reasonably be interpreted as 'modern'. How about "his agents have already started forcing it through a wilfully destructive process of modernisation."? Modernisation covers a lot of sins, including industrialisation and the almost communist (or fascist, I suppose) process of gathering and distribution.
  • wilful vs willful. 'Willful' is often marked as 'usually American', so we should probably have 'wilful' as in the current version.
  • Gandalf not meeting up with Frodo. This is covered, but in the previous section 'Concept and creation' ("An important early plot point is the failure of the wizard Gandalf to arrive as agreed to accompany the hobbit Frodo Baggins, who bears the Ring lost by Sauron thousands of years before."). It needs to be there because Saruman the character emerged as an explanation for Gandalf's absence. Do we need to mention it again in the next para but one?
  • Orthanc/Isengard etc. I think the current version is OK, similar to your final suggestion, but lacking the detail that Gandalf was summoned to Isengard. Do we really need to specify that as well as that Gandalf was imprisoned there? I'm afraid I don't see any benefit to linking to the section on Orthanc in the rather short Isengard article. The approach would be useful if we were linking to one of those lists of minor characters, where the one you want is buried among scores of others. However, if you want to amend to your version of either of these points, I won't revert. Promise.
  • Trapped/Barracaded: Not convinced, I'm afraid. Very definitely trapped - how on earth, sorry, how in Middle-earth, would he get out once Isengard was flooded? (edit: Remember that the point in time we're talking about here is before Gandalf arrives!) The Istari are incarnated in the bodies of men, and Saruman doesn't have Gandalf's knack with eagles (or moths, for that matter). Trapped is also suggested in the book a couple of times:
-(On Wormtongue's arrival) "Put all the rats in one trap, said Gandalf; and I will. I am the master of Isengard now, but Saruman is locked in his tower..." (Treebeard, Flotsam and Jetsam)
-(At Saruman's plea to Theoden) "So would the trapped wolf speak to the hounds, if he could..." (Eomer, The Voice of Saruman)
A barricade also implies an improvised barrier, but all Saruman seems to have done is lock the door. Orthanc's formidable construction did the rest. If you're still not keen on trapped, could I suggested 'locked in Orthanc' as an alternative which is used in the book?
  • Stripped of membership. I'm pretty sure threatening to quit the project is on the big list of arguments not to use, but I can't remember the link for it right now. ;-) Leaving that to one side, the tone of 'stripped of membership' is certainly not Tolkienian (sp?), so I'm happy to go back to cast. (Although as a general rule, I suggest that an article on Tolkien really does not have to be - indeed almost certainly shouldn't be - written in the language of The Lord of the Rings).
  • Book numbers. I don't think it's at all clear to the novice which book numbers fall where. I agree that 'Book 3 in The Two Towers' is more precise (and sounds better), but without an explanation it also sounds like the third book of The Two Towers, rather than the first half of it. That's why I think you either have to explain somewhere in the article that TTT consists of books 3 & 4 of LoTR, or leave the book numbers out altogether.
  • Synopsis. I think the synopsis at LoTR could certainly be improved, but I think you have to be able to understand this article on its own. Surely we must be able to come up with something that will achieve that! (Also, is it a good idea to start off the article on the Lord of the Rings with six paragraphs (mostly) summarising the Silmarillion?)
  • Tense. Well, to be honest I was going to ignore it.:) But that's not a very community-minded thing to do, so the next option would be to challenge it at WP:ME. That may have to wait a bit though, I'm generally rather busy at present, and you need to be able to keep an eye on a suggestion like that if people are going to react negatively to it. 4u1e (talk) 13:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)