To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. It will never die. This question haunts me. Nay, it tortures me. Then, he noticed Gandalf on top of the peak of Zirak-zigil, after he defeated the Balrog , and agreed to take him on another short trip to Lothlorien. When Gandalf asked Gwaihir to help rescue Sam and Frodo from Mount Doom, it was with a promise to never ask him for anything else ever again.
And just like literally everyone else in the story, it takes a lot of work to get them to care about all this Dark Lord stuff until it affects them directly. But the real problem is that book fans are always there with the answer. Back in my World of Warcraft days, I saw it demonstrated that the best way to get useful tips out of a disinterested zone-wide chat was to ask your question about the location of that quest NPC, and then have a buddy reply with something you knew was not the right answer.
How dare you suggest! They are similar to Greek gods in the way that each Maiar controls an aspect of life such as the stars, the sea, empathy, or the wind. Gandalf, himself, is a Maiar; and for a very long time, he did not have a fixed form. The eagles chose to stay in the form of an animal, but are not any less powerful or intelligent than a wizard. As this Tolkien fan points out, neither Gandalf or the eagles are permitted to interfere directly with the fate of the several peoples of Middle-Earth.
They can only give guidance and their wisdom. He is very powerful, and his authority is the highest say of all the Valar. Gandalf the Grey is not allowed to do much other than provide council for Frodo and the Fellowship and even the playing fields. His initial purpose for being sent to Middle-Earth was the help defeat Smaug the dragon , since he could have been used to do Sauron's bidding. In the Lord of the Rings books, it is said that one of Gandalf's powers is the ability to read other's thoughts and even control them to some capacity.
Gandalf knows that if Frodo stays with the Fellowship that the mission will fail. He can feel the way Boromir's thoughts are heading, and he wants Frodo to complete his mission alone—or at least with Sam since he's one of the only members of the Fellowship that Gandalf knows will not do Frodo any harm or try to take the ring.
One of the objections I saw raised to the eagle plan was that Sauron could conceivably throw fireballs at Frodo on an eagle, but I think this misses the point of Sauron's power. There is one part of the story where Gandalf says somewhat ominously that he has not yet been tested against Sauron.
And Aragorn when he confronts Sauron with the Palantir barely has the strength to overcome him and wrest the stone away. It is mentioned that if the hobbits were captured, there is no doubt that in the end they would tell everything. And I don't think it would be in line with Tolkien to attribute this to merely physical torture. See Pippin's encounter with Sauron through the stone. I think you could attribute parts of this to some mechanical ability, but not all of it.
This is one of the beautiful things about Tolkien's writing that the movies could not or did not fully convey, I don't think. I think the main reason why the eagle plan would not work is that few if any on Middle Earth have any hope of winning the contest of will that would occur in a direct flight straight into the Eye of Sauron, even without considering the draw of the Ring.
The strongest good characters in the story are many times described as not certain of their ability to face Sauron's power directly. It's actually a question that comes up a lot, asked about Tom Bombadil, Gandalf, Aragorn, Galadriel, and Denethor, at least. And I don't think all these comparisons are meant to be military, even the talk about Tom Bombadil being overwhelmed as the guardian of the Ring or of Galadriel's contest of wills between her and Dol Guldur.
It is not just, or even not primarily, Sauron's military strength that makes him formidable. Finally, when you add to the eagle flight scenario the Ring, which entices and draws the user according to Sauron's will, it becomes more impossible. Aside from confrontation with Sauron, both Galadriel and Gandalf have hinted that they feel they are not strong enough to be trusted with the Ring.
I do not think they would count themselves strong enough to fly directly into the Eye with it unless perhaps they were to claim it for themselves. Also I contest that they would likely be seen in the open sky, because this mysterious "spiritual" nature of Sauron's power applies to his sight especially, aside from any Palantir. He is called the "Great Eye", after all.
There are several examples in the books of characters like Gandalf after the battle of Pelennor fields or Aragorn talking about the King's seat above Rauros , having or discussing experiences of seeing without a Palantir more from a high place than could probably be physically, mechanically seen.
I'm not a medieval literature scholar but I would not be surprised if this idea was drawn from older romances and fairy tales.
Hurin's imprisonment by Morgoth on a high place while he sees the lives of his children is an example of this as well. How the palantir adds to this I am not sure, but I think it is more than physical sight. Also, the whole attack on the Black Gate was calculated to draw away his attention from his own lands, so his ability to see all that goes on in Morder is clearly a central concern in the story.
For this reason, I think it would be especially risky to fly bare and unconcealed into the open sky into Mordor, even high up. There is a large chance they would be spotted, especially given the nature of the Ring. And of course on top of all this are the risks others have mentioned: Sauron's military might, the arrows of orcs and the strength of the Nazgul, who themselves have a terrible power of their own.
Apparently, you can fly straight into the Eye's gaze if you are Barbara Gordon. But she's a special case. My understanding was the Eagles have a will of their own.
After all, Gandalf asked for permission to ride on their backs. Given this assumption, trusting them as companions to the Ring Bearer would not have been a good idea since they would be vulnerable to the ring's power of corruption. Also, it would be unlikely they would agree to a suicide run into Mordor. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many — yours not least.
I think Gandalf knows more than he lets on. When Sam and Frodo fight about killing or abandoning Gollum we are again reminded that he has a part to play. Its kind of assumed that the part Gollum plays is leading them into Mordor. But I suspect that the real part he plays is in getting rid of the ring, and Gandalf knows this. We know that it is near impossible to give up the ring. Only three times does the ring-bearer give up the ring:. So Gandalf suspects that the only way the ring can be destroyed is on accident.
In other words there has to be some accident at Mount Doom to destroy the ring. He says somewhere that no one is powerful enough to destroy it. If the Eagles just drop Frodo off with the ring, there's a lot of evidence that he won't be able to destroy it. Who can say with any confidence that Gandalf didn't intend to use the Eagles, even if just for a section of the total journey?
After Gandalf dies, the members of the Fellowship are frustrated time and again that Gandalf did not reveal his master plan for getting the Ring to Mount Doom before his death. Strider in particular is repeatedly frustrated over the impossible decisions that keep arising on the journey and laments several times that his decisions were wrong in retrospect from his limited perspective at the time, but not from the grand perspective of the story.
I don't think it's a stretch to theorize that Gandalf may have intended to make use of the Eagles in some way or for some segment of the journey; but, as others have mentioned, there's just NO WAY a giant bird is going to A sneak into Mordor and, further, to Mount Doom keep in mind that it's a good ways into Mordor, just look at any decent map , and B get to Mount Doom without any risk of losing the Ring to Sauron right there in his own kingdom. So, I can't believe the Eagle flying the Ring to Mordor would work at all, it's just not a viable option, but we don't know the entirety of Gandalf's original designs.
Here is a variant on the "Eagles would take the Ring for their own" theory. It has been argued that since powerful beings like Gandalf and Aragorn accompanied Frodo for months without trying to seize the Ring, an Eagle could do the same for the short time it would take to fly from the borders of Mordor to Mount Doom.
However the Ring has a will of its own. Tolkien makes it very clear that this is the case. For example, the Ring betrayed Isildur by slipping off his finger as he swam. Later, Gandalf observes that the Ring corrupted Gollum, but then abandoned him in order to escape from his cave under the Misty Mountains.
Now, let's take this concept and run with it. We can assume that the Ring's priorities are to survive and get back to Sauron. It can't understand spoken language, but it has some ability to sense the spirit world. Most of the time it is quite patient, for example spending several centuries with Gollum, but it can act more urgently if it so wishes.
During the journey of the Fellowship, the Ring was biding its time. It did not understand that it was in any particular danger. It may have been hoping to fall into the hands of Boromir, or some evil being such as an orc, the Balrog, or one of the Nazgul. If someone takes it to the Cracks of Doom, the Ring is in a very different situation.
It senses that it is in immediate danger of destruction, and will do whatever it can to survive. When Isildur first acquired it, Elrond advised him to throw it into the fire. Even though Isildur had only possessed it for a few minutes or hours, the Ring swayed his will and prevented him from destroying it. When Frodo approached the fire, he, too, was unable to bring himself to destroy the Ring. It was finally destroyed only because Gollum slipped and fell into the fire while holding it.
Now, suppose that an Eagle takes Frodo to Mount Doom. The Ring will exert all its power to save itself. It will call out to the Eagle, and there is a very good chance that the Eagle will answer, overpower Frodo, and seize the Ring for its own.
Edit: As Frodo enters Mount Doom, it is mentioned that the Phial of Galadriel does not light his way, because all powers other than Sauron's are weakened. We can suppose that the Ring is correspondingly strengthened; although it is vulnerable there, it is also at its most powerful.
This would make it more likely to be able to corrupt a nearby Eagle. I don't think this occurred to Tolkien. Otherwise, as the linked article points out, it would have been a good thing to mention at the Council of Elrond. But as a post hoc explanation for the plot hole, I think it makes sense within the rules of Tolkien's world. In the Hobbit, Gandalf did request that the Eagles carry them "far away and setting them down well on their journey across the plains below.
The Lord of the Eagles would not take them anywhere near where men lived. And at other times they would be right. Similar reasons could be given for trying to fly across a continent while heavily laden with armored warriors or even with just the hobbits, if they decided to risk sending them with only the eagles for protection. The eagles would need to take frequent rest-stops, and then they would have to take longer stops during which they would need to hunt.
During each of these stops they would need to land. Each of these stops would be potential ambush points and as has been pointed out many times in these answers, they would not be traveling unseen. Even without the danger of the Fell-beasts, which the Fellowship did not yet know of, fearing that the Nazgul mounted on new horses could likely intercept them at the many, many stops they would need to make between Rivendale and Mordor would be quite reasonable.
Eagles are a race capable of their own actions and thoughts. The Eagles are not middle-earth taxis. The eagles don't owe allegiance to anyone they helped Gandalf escape Saruman because he saved the life of their king, see the Hobbit. Nursing him back to health after an unfortunate incident with a hunters spear.
Whether that help advanced to a suicide run into Mordor is another thing entirely If the Eagles could have taken the hobbits to Mt. Doom, they could have also delivered the dwarves to Smaug's lair, and though he was not a threat in the same way Sauron was, he weighed heavily on Gandalf's mind.
So why did he only use the Eagles as a mode of rescue in dire situations, and as allies in a battle against dark forces? Because Gandalf is a Maia, and is not supposed to directly interfere with the struggles of man and the creatures of Middle Earth. In dire situations, where dark forces threatened to end such a quest, Gandalf may have called upon the Eagles, and in fact he did during his imprisonment atop the tower, and when the journey to end the threat of Smaug was threatened.
But Gandalf is the only one among the council who could have asked for the Eagles' help, and it was not his place to directly intervene. Even as he emerges as Gandalf the White, though he rode into battle and rescued the men of Helm's Deep, and was at the forefront of the final battle with Sauron, he was still acting only as a guide.
To have called upon the Eagles to carry the burden of the Ring would have been a gross abuse of his power as a Maia, and no matter how 'convenient' it would have been, he would not ever consider doing such a thing. And since no one else has the power to call upon the Eagles for aid, they wouldn't have considered it either. Had he carried on with the Fellowship, instead of falling into battle with the Balrog, he may have called upon them once or twice for aid in desperation, but never as a final solution.
There has been a lot of discussion about using the eagles to fly directly to Mt Doom, and I won't go over it all again.
I will point out a few things found in the LOTR books that are not often mentioned. First: the Fellowship of the Ring has to hide on the way up the Misty Mountains both in the book and in the movie.
Because there were thousands of Sauron-aligned evil intelligent birds moving everywhere and looking for enemies of Sauron. Clearly some were servants of Sauron and some were servants of Saruman, but in either case, the distinct sense I get from the book as written is that the air is largely full of enemies for the Fellowship. Why should we assume that it would be so easy to just fly into Mordor if there are possibly millions of evil-aligned flying creatures everywhere?
The eagles would have had a long, continuous fight on their hands just to get there. Later in the books, we see that after their "drowning" while trying to cross the border into Rivendell, the Black Riders have traded up their horses for "fell beasts" that were at least as big as the eagles and perfectly capable of patrolling the airspace over Mordor. It is extremely likely that these beasts were something that Sauron had in Mordor for some period of time, and people like Gandalf and Elrond were likely knowledgeable enough about some of the nasty things there that they would not have even attempted to just fly in.
Again, flying in on a group of eagles when you are going to end up in air-to-air combat with ALL 9 riders on their fell beast steeds with no backup? That's even worse than going on foot! Finally, we know from the Silmarillion and the Hobbit that "drakes" and dragons had often been aligned with Morgoth and his successor Sauron over the course of time.
Elrond would have had good reason to think that Sauron might just have a dragon of some kind in his employ. Based on everything we know about Middle Earth dragons, the LAST place you would ever want to be would be staring one down face to face in the air with nowhere to find cover! If something like Smaug were to encounter the Fellowship of the Ring riding eagles, I wouldn't give them much of a chance, especially if the drake is backed up by 9 ring wraiths riding "fell beasts".
That only covers a few of the flying evil creatures that were hinted at in the books. There are repeated hints of worse and nastier things than were explicitly written about living in Mordor as Frodo makes his way across that land.
It is very likely that some significant percent of the nasty creatures that had been drawn to Mordor by Sauron's call could fly! I might also mention the fact that Saruman was capable of throwing a blizzard at the Fellowship as they tried to cross the mountains. Once more; being very easy to spot, but fast, puts them at risk of having that sort of magic thrown at them while airborne. A highly risky prospect. The number must be few, since your hope is in speed and secrecy '.
As a matter of fact, the video makes sense that this would happen if they brought the Eagles to Mordor. I don't know much about vulcanology or what Tolkien knew about Vulcanology, but a volcano does not have a open vertical straight shaft going down to the magma all of the time. The vertical shaft is usually open only when lava is coming out, and then the flow of lava is upwards which would keep the Ring above the magma chamber.
And when the eruption is over the lava in the shaft cools and solidifies and blocks the shaft.
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