Richelle Okada
New Member
I have been listening since 2007 but this is my first question ever posted online. Since the Council of Elrond is coming up and this is the fullest explanation we get of Gandalf's imprisonment by Saruman, this may be the best time to ask. How, exactly, was Gandalf taken prisoner in Isengard? Do you think it was really as shown in the movie as an old-man stick fight? Even so, Gandalf keeps his staff even after he is sucked up as in a pneumatic tube to the roof. In the text he just says, "they took me and they set me on the roof". I wonder how they did if he still had his staff. It seems that staffs are really important to wizards. Note the impressive moment when Gandalf states that Saruman's staff "is broken" when he confronts him in his defeat in Isengard and the unheaded cries of Grima Wormtongue to take away Gandalf's staff when he is overpowered by Gandalf in Theoden's Hall and how Gandalf uses his staff to light fires to say the least. Considering all this, I have been wondering whether Saruman would have really let Gandalf keep his staff. Yet he clearly has the staff to make the lightning to fight the Black Riders on Weather Top. I would like an in-world explanation. All I can think of is that he kept it, recovered it or got a new one after being rescued by Gwaihir the Windlord. What do you think?