Which character (not too minor) would you say has the MOST freedom of action/true agency in the following stories? (respond for ones you've read/watched obviously) Lord of the Rings Harry Potter Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Game of Thrones
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Hmm.. Saruman at least appears to be making choices. I didn't pick Sauron because he's more like a situation than a character. Also because he's the most enslaved to the ring. Saruman seemed... Allied, but not whammied. He tried to sell Gandalf on alliance now, betray later.
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Gandalf literally told Saruman: "the ring knows only one master and it isn't you, buddy" Saruman was attempting to usurp Sauron and thought he could get away with it. A delusion Sauron allowed him to cultivate because it made him short-term useful.
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Well, Saruman made some strategic errors, for sure. I just don't think <his will was enslaved by Sauron> is correct. It's hard to say how much control Sauron had over Saruman, because it's all off-screen. I tend to think it's low, with <I can always destroy him> as a backup.
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in the historical analogy to WW2 it's roughly approximating the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, where Sauron is Hitler and Saruman is Stalin. Tolkien doesn't portray Saruman as literally enslaved, but he's totally being played and his actions are highly constrained.
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I don't buy the LOTR=WW2 analogy theory. If you just mean it's a comparable non-agression pact, sure. I'm not sure where Saruman is constrained though? He raises his own armies, generically engineers his own orcs, and masterminds his own war campaign.
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I mean, "the author is dead -Barthes" but it was definitely Tolkien's intent and design. The books are a long form allegory about WW2. he is constrained in that once he became corrupted and militarized he had no way out and no way forward. his loss was an inevitable conclusion.
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his best case scenario was acting as a vanguard invasion force and then getting betrayed by Sauron and overrun by the superior forces of Mordor attacking from the rear. his worst case scenario is just losing to hobbits and shit lol.
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I feel like, if not for an Ent uprising, Saruman would have taken Rohan and held a reasonable and strategically valuable kingdom. If he did, Sauron would have won at Minas Tirith, and Saruman would have been a semiindependent vassal state. A decent bet.
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