he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.

Phlebotinum is the versatile substance that may be rubbed on almost anything to cause an effect needed by a plot. Examples include but are not limited to: nanotechnology, magic crystal emanations, pixie dust, and Green Rocks.
In essence, it is plot fuel. Without it, the story would grind to an abrupt halt. It's science, it's magic, it's strange things unknown to science or magic. The reader does not know how Phlebotinum would work and the creators hope nobody cares.
http://tvtropes.org/...n/AppliedPhlebotinum

and delineation of the ideas here! Including the contradictions!

1. Nagzul
a. They get lost and confused in daylight. -- doesn't this seem almost comical?
b. They don't like to cross water. -- as Tolkien noted himself, this was untenable.
c. They can travel unseen and unclothed. -- so why did it matter if they were unhorsed in Elrond's flood of Bruinen?
d. Even though they are Sauron's greatest and most trusted servants, he can threaten them with dire punishment if they displease him. -- What in the world would he threaten them with?!!!?
I for one like both the sunlit issue and the running water issue...it would make for interesting spanners in Sauron's works and mechanical aspects to the tale *if* they could be tenable and consistent. That however, is easier said than done! I have always taken the 'unhorsed' problem as if they have to have dealings with the living in a tangible, 'get-stuff-done' way and thus are clothed and visible - as close to 'life' as they could be, and thus cannot travel via spirit - they needed beasts to carry them as they are slow in the material world. So it doesn't slow them in a spirit form but it means the interactions with the living are now a royal PIA - unless you just want to play a lively round of 'Hobbiton Poltergeist' and simply freak everyone out (while laughing wildly).As far as threats - I guess in the spirit plane there are worse things than wedgies. (?)


2. Sauron
a. He's perceptive enough to sense that Gollum in "indomitable."
b. He's not perceptive enough to know when Gollum is lying.
c. He's cautious and calculated in his moves, and takes great care to hide his moves from the Wise. Clearly he fears them. Yet every thought he has seems to be a strategic one. Did he have any hobbies besides designing the destruction of his foes? Yes, is the lying and the 'indomitable' part one and the same? That Sméagol is still in there, with Hobbit-like good sense, and that's the part Sauron doesn't get and cannot dominate? I think its all about intellect for Sauron: objectify and conquer. So yes, he seems to have that one hobby! Unless we count those toothpick models of Minas Tirith and Orthanc.

Saruman
a. Frightfully insecure and jealous of Gandalf even though he's his superior (has anyone else ever had a boss like this?).
b. Wily at all times
c. In one version, he repents of his evil ways and turns to Gandalf for help, but only too late.
d. He didn't just buy goods from the Shire, he documented its geography and social structures with spies, and in one version, visited it himself. The jealousy and pettiness of Saruman is really focused with the Shire business. The fake disinterest and even mock Gandalf for smoking...was it all to elevate the Shire to more of a crucial yet hidden realm and further explain why (as we discussed in the last chapter) the Hobbits were largely ignored and/or forgotten?

Wormtongue
a. He was so cowed by the Nazgul that he never told his master that they had waylaid him and successfully interrogated him. Well I dunno about cowed...that seems more like prudence! ("yeah, boss, I sold you out...": not the safest thing to say!!!!!!)

More questions:

• Why is Gollum indomitable but the Nazgul are not? Hobbit-like origins and lack of greater ambitions? The size of one's wants seem to make you more or less a marked target for Sauron. Gollum never wanted more than small, mean things for himself, in a small, mean way.
• 
  

• Why does a small band of the Dunedain of Arnor stand a better chance of withstanding the Nazgul (possibly led by Aragorn) than the more numerous Dunedain of Gondor led by Boromir and Faramir? Good question. The statement of the de-centralization and less 'political' nature of the Rangers of the North, making them more morally fit to defeat centralized and utterly political Sauron? JRRT says in Letters that the major flaw of Denethor's thinking was the 'political': us versus them, geography as a moral stamp. (?)

• The Saruman-Gandalf jealousy was profound and caused great harm. Was Gandalf partly responsible for it in his benign detachment? What could he have done to defuse Saruman's rivalry, if anything? Actually more than detached...that one trick with the smoke-rings is pretty provocative!!!! (though in a larger sense, accidentally so.)

• If Galadriel could see into the hearts of everyone, could she see into Saruman's? Why didn't she detect his treachery sooner? Perhaps sensing something and not preferring him to head the White Council...which interestingly seems to have come so much out of the TH/LOTR morph in it development. I wonder if this idea leads us down a blind alley though: if she *could* then it leaves her as well as Gandalf majorly blundering in judgment (Gandalf on the Ring, Galadriel on Saruman). The only option is to presume with his powers of voice/convincing that he has powers of inner concealment as well?

• What do you make of the Saruman repentance version? Is that a little too contrived that it didn't work out at the last minute? Even so, doesn't it make him a more complex, partially sympathetic character? The timing is a bit pat...its an unintended irony that Gandalf's escape would have been the final lynchpin in his downfall of pride! So that is neat. (Too neat? Maybe.)

• Does this chapter seem oddly comforting, seeing Sauron cautious and in doubt and his servants making mistakes?
• Is Sauron acting like the typical evil overlord in this story, or is he atypical?
• Should any of this have appeared in LOTR, either the main story or the appendices? I do like the 'mistakes' idea: it was a big world, with little communication, and this shows it. Sauron is a bit atypical I think: in the biggest way, allowing Sméagol to run free even though he is not conquered (a dark parallel to Gandalf allowing Frodo to leave with the Ring?)
• I think I would have loved to see that snarky Council dialogue on the Appendices!
  

Finale: One big problem with the logic in LOTR is exacerbated by all the detail given here regarding Aragorn taking Gollum on a needlessly long journey to Thranduil's realm instead of to Lorien or Rivendell. Was Tolkien contriving this plot point as an excuse to insert Legolas into the story and have a non-Rivendell, non-Lorien Elf in the Fellowship?

Sauron is a bit atypical I think: in the biggest way, allowing Sméagol to run free even though he is not conquered (a dark parallel to Gandalf allowing Frodo to leave with the Ring?)

Why is Gollum indomitable but the Nazgul are not? Hobbit-like origins and lack of greater ambitions? The size of one's wants seem to make you more or less a marked target for Sauron. Gollum never wanted more than small, mean things for himself, in a small, mean way.

"This was probably the only thing that could have roused the dying embers of Frodo's heart and will: an attack, an attempt to wrest his treasure from him by force."

It seems to me that Saruman is more intellectual and rational than Gandalf in some ways, but more at the mercy of his emotions in other ways.

Do you suppose the real origin of "Sharkey" was not "sharku" but "snarky?" How prescient of Tolkien to guess at slang in 2014. But if Saruman was The Lord of Snarkiness, who was the Lady? (Gee, that question sounds snarky all on its own.)

That's a wonderful scene of Gandalf blowing many rings of smoke in front of Saruman and then dashing them with his hand. So symbolic! Though I'm glad it didn't make the final edit, because while it makes Gandalf seem powerful and dangerous, it also seems a little too dark for him, or too prescient, and we see in LOTR that he often lacks prescience. If he really knew it all, it wouldn't be so good. Similarly, I'm glad for the sake of the story that Galadriel might distrust Saruman, but if she spotted him as a traitor too soon, that would also be less satisfying for the plot.

Wow, Breth, I agree with Wiz that that's a fascinating perspective. For all the re-reading one can do, I'd never thought of that parallel before. I wonder how intended or accidental it is? The white wizard uses one hobbit as his agent (or pawn, according to Saruman), and the dark wizard uses an Anti-hobbit as his pawn. It didn't work out so well for the dark side, but in my opinion, it was a smart move by Sauron. He knew better than anyone the nature of the Ring, and he could count on it rightly to attract Gollum to it, given enough time, and it would certainly be no problem liberating it from him if he did happen to recover it. Really, except for that misstep at the Crack of Doom, one could say that Sauron's plan was right all along. Imagine Gollum running out of Mt Doom ahead of the lava--Sam was more concerned with helping Frodo than capturing Gollum, so Smeagol would go free, and when the Nazgul eventually found him, he'd be easy prey.

There is that sense in Quest for Erebor of Gandalf using people as pawns. It's hard to get away from it. Saruman exaggerated it, but I feel like it's there, and it was his explicit mission to get other people to fight Sauron than do it himself.

Which takes us back to the Cold War, where the US and USSR did their fighting by proxy. Another parallel.

J R R Tolkien, Lewis's close friend and colleague, certainly shared many of Lewis's views and was also a devout Christian. But it all comes out very differently in his fiction. Take his handling of evil: his villains are orcs and Black Riders (goblins and zombies; mythic figures) and Sauron, the Dark Lord, who is never seen and has no suggestion of humanity about him. These are not evil men but embodiments of evil in men, universal symbols of the hateful. The men who do wrong are not complete figures but complements: Saruman is Gandalf's dark-self, Boromir Aragorn's; Wormtongue is, almost literally the weakness of King Theoden. There remains the wonderfully repulsive and degraded Gollum. But nobody who reads the trilogy hates, or is asked to hate, Gollum. Gollum is Frodo's shadow; and it is the shadow, not the hero, who achieves the quest. Though Tolkien seems to project evil into "the others", they are not truly others but ourselves; he is utterly clear about this.

This review, entitled "The Dark Tower by C S Lewis" was originally published in The New Republic, 1977, and is anthologised in "Dancing at the Edge of the World" (Grove Press 1989)

Sauron then must have been filled with anger and alarm

I imagine one of the reasons why Galadriel did not much like Saruman and preferred Gandalf to have been the leader of the Council is because Saruman probably wasn't willing to communicate and relate in this way.

The difference between Gollum and everyone else Sauron is controlling or attempting to control, is that Gollum, like Bilbo and Frodo, owned the thing (or It owned them) and so I think like Frodo seeing Glorfindel in the other world, Gollum could see the Sauron others couldn't see... and it was pretty powerless in the end without the Ring... and It's power over him was so complete that he could resist Sauron's attempts to break his mind and reveal the whereabouts of the Ring...