who knew?

-M

So, about them eagles... Plot hole or not?

At first glance, Gwaihir and his brethren could easily have flown the Hobbits to Mordor and dropped the ring in Orodruin's caldera. Why go through the trouble of mounting an expedition en secretly enter Mordor on foot?

Fannish explanations I've seen include the following:
- Mordor had flying Nazgûl, which could have intercepted the eagles and recovered the ring.
- Eagles can't actually fly very far when carrying someone, and when Gwaihir rescued Gandalf from Orthanc he just carried him to Edoras, leaving him to finish his journey on horseback.
- Creatures of Manwë, Eagles just weren't allowed to take too great a part in the affairs of Middle-Earth (just like Gandalf, Saruman and Radagast weren't apparently wasn't going to take on Sauron face to face).

It seems to me that each of these explanations comes with its own problems, but at least they offer a semblance of rationality. Another I would suggest is "Eagles aren't that into you, guys". Sure, they're willing to go to the bat for you when you're in trouble, but a dash to Mount Doom while carrying the One Ring is something of a suicide mission. Human affairs are human affairs first and foremost, and they don't affect eagles that much. After all, the birds weren't even mentioned as a viable means of transportation when the Fellowship was formed.

What do you folks think? (Personally I go for "plot hole best not overanalyzed", honestly).

Hold my beer...




Right, well firstly I think it's worth noting that Tolkien himself was well aware that the Eagles were prone to being overused in a deus ex machina kind of way, as he revealed in one of his letters...

"The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness."


This realisation that the Eagles were a dangerous storytelling device is what prompted Tolkien to set limits on what they could or couldn't do as early as The Hobbit. In chapter 6 of that book, Bilbo listens to Gandalf asking the Great Eagle (Gwaihir, the Windlord) if the Eagles could carry him, Bilbo and the Dwarves a great distance and set them down near the Lonely Mountain. Gwaihir declines this request, stating that he would not take them anywhere near where men lived. The Great Eagle explains, "They would shoot at us with their great bows of yew, for they would think we were after their sheep. And at other times they would be right. No! we are glad to cheat the goblins of their sport, and glad to repay our thanks to you, but we will not risk ourselves for dwarves in the southward plains."

Then in The Fellowship of the Ring, during the Council of Elrond, Galdalf relates a conversation he had with Gwahir in which the wizard asked the Eagle "How far can you bear me?, to which Gwaihir replied, "Many leagues, but not to the ends of the earth. I was sent to bear tidings not burdens."

So, that's your first "solution" to this supposed plot hole: Gwaihir simply wouldn't have carried Frodo and the ring to Mordor because it was too far for the Eagles to fly and because of the danger it would represent to him and his aerie.


Another reason why flying into Mordor on the backs of giant Eagles wouldn't have been a great idea is because secrecy was the fellowship's primary advantage against Sauron. As Gandalf noted, the idea that anyone would wish to destroy the ring (in the fires of Mount Doom) hadn't even begun to cross Sauron's mind. If they had tried to fly directly into Mordor, it would've taken many days (Eagles aren't the fastest of birds and tend to soar and glide using updrafts to gain altitude, and they would only be able to fly in daylight because they need the sun for updrafts). By the time they were nearing Mordor, the Dark Lord would doubtless have had an army of thousands of orcs ready, armed with ballistas, trebuchets, and other war machines, all trained on the skies around Mount Doom. In addition, as you mention RR, the Nazgûl would have attacked the Eagles and, even if they had not killed the birds, the likelihood of Frodo or anyone else being able to cling onto an Eagles' back as it spun, dived and fought with one of the Black Rider's wyverns is remote.


A third point worth considering is that even if the Eagles had flown Frodo to Mount Doom the outcome would still have been far from certain. Remember, the closer Frodo got to the place where the ring was forged, the less he could resist it. In the end, it was Gollum who ensured the ring's destruction, not Frodo really (although he had certainly got it close enough for Gollum's greed to finish the job). Frodo would no more have been able to destroy the ring after arriving on an Eagle's back than he was having marched across Middle-earth for weeks with Sam...and clearly Gollum wouldn't have been there to finish the job had Frodo arrived on an Eagle. With the ring at such close proximity to the fires of Mount Doom, and Frodo unable to destroy it, Sauron would have quickly become aware of exactly where Frodo was and so the Dark Lord's forces would have captured or killed him and taken back the ring.


A fourth point that is definitely worth mentioning is that Frodo was chosen to take the ring to Rivendell and then on to Mount Doom precisely because Hobbits were remarkably resistant to its corrupting influence. If Gwaihir had accompanied Frodo into Mordor, who's to say that the Eagle wouldn't have become tempted or corrupted by the ring's power and tried to seize it from Frodo?


So, to sum up, I don't think this thing with the Eagles is a bona fide plot hole. There are plenty of rational in-story reasons why it wouldn't have worked and Tolkien himself had already established the limitations and potential usefulness of the Eagles by the time we, the readers, got to the Council of Elrond.

Great stuff. It's always nice to hear any author or poet reading their own work, but Tolkien has a voice that seems a perfect fit for his own material. But by God he was a mumbler though. The fact that these sorts of recordings of him reading his own stuff were cheaply captured on a tape recorder in his home doesn't help with the clarity much. Still, we should be thankful that we have them at all.

There's a CD box set I've seen on amazon called something like The Tolkien Audio Collection, which I've had my eye on for quite a while. It features all of the existent recordings like this of Tolkien reading from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, along with, I believe, Christopher Tolkien reading excerpts from The Silmarillion. I suspect that this clip is on it. I really should get around to buying it at some point.

Vintage ad for the Knickerbocker LOTR toyline that came out about the time of the Bakshi animated movie...



-M

Who knew that Captain America was a Tolkien fan?