I received this hoary query ...

[calimac]

And this was what the letter said:

I read that you were a Tolkien scholar so I was hoping you might be able to answer a question regarding the LOTR story. It has been asked why the one of the Eagles couldn't take Frodo to Mt. Doom in the first place, but no one seems to be able to answer this. I'm having a hard time finding anyone who will even take this question seriously; they all give the same lame copout answers ("because then there would be no story; eagles weren't taxis, etc.). My belief is that this was a hole in the plot that Tolkien failed to address. One might imagine that there were reasons not given in the story which would rule out the Eagles plan, but to be honest I'm not sure if there would be any way to explain it without making a couple minor revisions to the story. Even so I think it would be a difficult problem to solve. Tolkien himself admitted that the Eagles were "a dangerous literary tool". I was just wondering if you'd heard any discussion on this and if you had any thoughts on the subject. Any insight you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

Your question is one that's often discussed on Tolkien bull-session bulletin boards (which I don't read), but it's not been dealt with at any length by Tolkien scholars, because it's not really a very important question.

The real answer, that is to the question "Why didn't Tolkien write it that way?" you already have - because there would be no story. That's no cop-out but a simple fact. This is fiction, remember, and the reader has to accept the set-up. There's more to it than that, though. Intentionally or not, LOTR is a story of moral perseverance against the odds. Constantly in the story, Frodo and the other heroes succeed because they have put forth their supreme effort. If the job were too easy, they wouldn't succeed. For instance, had Frodo not been brought to extremity in the wilderness and come, through that and the long burden of carrying the Ring, to understand Gollum's suffering, he would not have decided to spare Gollum. Merry and Pippin could never have put the Shire ruffians to flight had they not been tempered in Fangorn, Rohan, and Gondor. This may sound like another cop-out, but it's actually a key to the story. Gandalf indicates in a couple of places that the quest serves a purpose in the hobbits' own moral development: when he tells Frodo "Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker," and when he assures the hobbits near the end that they can settle the Shire's affairs: "That is what you have been trained for." The easy solution to the Ring, one might think, is to have an Eagle fly it to Mount Doom, but we already have solutions such as sending it away or actually using it that are easy, simple - and wrong.

But you want an internal, continuity-based answer. There is none, actually. Tempting as it is to consider Middle-earth a real place, there are many holes in its history that the author never bothered, or never figured out how, to fill. (Could an orc repent, and what would happen if it did? is the biggest; Tolkien spent quite some time in later years scratching his head over that one.) I can make a couple of comments on this question, though.

1) Eagles really aren't a taxi service. They're proud, independent birds, and while they may grant favors, you can't just call on them to solve all your problems.

2) Eagles are also wild, dangerous, and serve no-one but themselves. I wouldn't let one anywhere near the One Ring once it's been rendered "radioactive" so to speak by Sauron's active searching.

3) The Fellowship's only hope for success is to come in to Mordor underneath Sauron's radar, so to speak. Obscurity and stealth are their bywords. A Giant Eagle of the Misty Mountains flying directly towards Mount Doom is going to be noticed. The rescue from Mount Doom is possible only because by that time Sauron and the Nazgul are otherwise occupied.

[Coda: My inquirer still thought it was a cop-out.]

Comments

[ckd]

The round-trip fare required a Saturday night stay.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure you've addressed this issue here before. I think #3 is the clincher -- a giant eagle flying towards Mt. Doom would have been shot down, and the ring captured, simple as that.

I think you pretty much covered it without copping out.

That, and the round trip fare requiring a Saturday night stay.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Yes, I never even considered that as an option until I read someone asking that question because a Big Thing is made of how it takes two little tiny hobbits only and Minas Ithil being emptied by almost all the garrison having been sent to the Pelennor and the Captains of the West keeping Sauron distracted at the critical moment on the north gate for the ring to get through.

Giant Eagles would not do it, whether the Nazgul were on winged beasts yet or not. I am sure Sauron would have managed some sort of anti-aircraft defense. If they could train a moth, now...

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Also, Mt. Doom is a dangerous place for flying creatures, with Nazgul and updrafts and such. It would have been a long, dangerous journey for the eagles with no guarantee of success and a great potential downside.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

You should have hit him over the head with #3. Eagles vs. Nazgul was not going to fly. The fellowship's only chance was to trust the force rely on the sneakiness of hobbitses. The other arguments, while much more interesting, are meta-textual rather than practical.

[mithriltabby]

Given that the Nazgul have flying steeds, as a game master I would go with 3. (But the player characters would have to catch a salmon from the river Esgalduin, put it on ice and carry it up to a mountain peak as a gift to win an audience with Gwaihir in order to find out.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The salmon would be what is called in fantasy criticism a "plot token". However appropriate in gaming, it is of the essence of Tolkien's writing that he doesn't use them.

[mithriltabby]

Nor did he need to worry about calibrating the difficulty of fights so the players of the hobbits didn’t feel useless, or arranging that the characters had enough experience to take on Uruk-hai by the time they left Lothlorien... or did he? :-)

As a game master, the thing I really appreciate about Middle-Earth is how well crafted the world is, down to the metaphysics. Just answering “why does the phial of Galadriel repel Shelob?” brings up a cascade of connections that fit together in a very organic way.

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

Well, there are some other considerations....

(1) Everyone in the Fellowship was a volunteer. If Elrond had asked one of the Eagles to make the committment, would the eagle have done so? As pointed out, they are independant creatures and may have felt that the matter of the Ring (at that time in the story) was a matter for Men and Elves and not the Eagles. (By the time of the battle before the Black Gates, the deprivations of the Orcs would have convinced them that it was a matter for All Creatures.)

(2) By the time they reached Amon Hen, when the decision of where to go next had to be made, perhaps there were none of the Great Eagles within summoning distance. After all, at that point, Gandalf was gone.

(3) As noted, one of the Great Eagles flying into the air space of Mordor would have to face the Nazgul. As we see when Frodo, Sam & Gollum are crossing the Dead Marshes, they were regularly in the air around the borders. That puts too much at risk -- Frodo could fall off if there was a fight in the air, and the Ring would fall into the hands of who knew whom; the Eagle and Frodo could be brought down, into the hands of the Nazgul or even Sauron himself.

(4) There was actually a black out period going on for air travel. :) (Remember the darkness that issued out of Mordor.)

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

*shrug* I like your answers, myself.

[milwaukeesfs.livejournal.com]

I agree, number 3 is the clincher. A potential of nine Nazgul on Fell Beasts is sufficient air cover until they are drawn away. Up in the air, the all-seeing eye could have seen them coming a long way off.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

No, an Eagle wouldn't work. Now a Chicken...

Fiction ≠History

[(Anonymous)]

I always sigh when I see this question come up again. To me, the main problem with it is that the questioner seems to be confusing history, where we may legitimately ask why somebody did or did not do this or that, with fiction, where we may not. Well, I suppose we may ask, but there is no value in it. Fictional characters have no free will of their own, because they are not real people. Pretty obvious, but apparently it still needs to be said. They cannot "decide" to do this or that, then second-guess themselves and alter their course. The author might do so, during the creative process, but in the finished work all other courses are circumscribed by *the* course of the narrative. Anything else is fan fiction.