Probably an oversight on Tolkien’s part, and not in the direction he wanted to take his narrative.
Aye, because we all know how quickly he dashed off this story. I’m not at all surprised that he made some glaring internal errors. Good thing we have legions of fanatasy game players to catch and correct the problems.
I’ve long thought that Tolkien was, frankly, a bit mad. I’m very glad he made the effort though. Christopher too, come to think of it.
I’m not sure I buy this interpretation. I’ve never gotten the impression that the prophecy meant that the Witch King couldn’t be killed by a man, merely that he wouldn’t be. The reason for his fall was in part his arrogance in believing that the prophecy meant the former.
Indeed, he even goes so far as to say “no man can hinder me!”, when we’d seen men hinder him already in the same story.
Mad like a fox, if you ask me. AFAICT, J. R. R. Tolkien had what was admittedly a very unusual ambition, but he went about achieving it in the most sane, deliberate and conscientious way possible.
What he wanted was nothing less than to retcon the very roots of English literature itself to include the sort of highly complex pre-Christian mythic saga that he admired in ancient Norse and Icelandic literary canons.
Tolkien wasn’t just some nutty fantasy-fiction aficionado in a basement obsessing over the details of an imaginary world in preference to living in the real one (although his work has of course inspired the dreams of thousands of such aficionados). He was a serious and respected scholar (although he seems to have been pretty much a dead loss as a classroom lecturer for the average student: not good at connecting with students except at his own erudite level) and thoroughly engaged with his family, colleagues and community. He simply had this breathtakingly ambitious idea that there was an important mythic dimension missing from the history of English literature, and that he could create a fictional universe thick and rich enough to supply that dimension.
And the longer we live with LOTR as part of our canon, the more right he starts to look. It’s hard to believe that those books are less than sixty years old, given how thoroughly they’re woven into so much of popular culture nowadays.
If Glorfindel’s prophecy is true then is there really a difference? If the WK wouldn’t be killed by a man, then he couldn’t be killed by a man. Of course, Gandalf is not a man, so does the prophecy even extend to him?
I’ve always felt that scene was a bit of wordplay from Tolkein. Man used to describe both gender and race. Eowyn couldn’t have done it without Merry’s help. The enchanted Barrow-blade broke the spell of power protecting the WK allowing Eowyn (not a man in terms of sex) to deliver the killing blow. Merry was not a man in terms of race.
***So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will. ***
Besides, what would happen to poor Smeagol at 35,000 feet in the baggage compartment?
There’s really not that big a difference, if you think about it. If my destiny is that I’m not going to be killed by a man, then any man who tries to kill me is going to fail for one reason or another.
I personally always got allusions to Macbeth out of this. Tolkien just took it the next step, from “no man of woman born” to just “no man.”
EDIT: Oops. I must have skipped standingwave’s first paragraph in his most recent post the first time through.
Gandalf is incarnated as man, so the prophecy probably does apply to him.
“Dear Corinthians, How are you? I’m fine. Some people are talking about one of my plot holes on the Internet. The fanwank is totally off the chain! I can’t believe it. Anyway, it’s still really cold out, so keep warm and try not to catch the 'flu that’s been going round. Love, Jay” – Letter 347, J.R.R. Tolkien
“One does not simply walk into Mordor…”
Didn’t Frodo and Sam do exactly that?
My favorite “why didn’t they” for LOTR is the one where Boromir comes up with the idea to catapult the ring (using Frodo as weight) into Mt. Dom
It wouldn’t be the first time Boromir misjudged a situation. Besides, he was thinking of the Black Gate and they used Cirith Ungol.
I wouldn’t call it “simple”.
What with the crawling and forced marching and the occasional whipping?
Why wouldn’t Sauron be worried about the Nazgul getting the one ring? The ring being all powerful, and corrupting, wouldn’t be in Sauron’s power. It would be in the Witch King’s Power. We know, from the books, that Gandalf and everyone else is at least somewhat tempted by the ring. Why wouldn’t the Nazgul be? Yes, they do what Sauron wants when they don’t have the ring they are under Sauron’s control. But in possession of the Ruling Ring, wouldn’t that be out the window?
It’s not clear to me to what extent the Nazgul have any independent existence or will left at this point. But I’m pretty sure I know why Sauron wants them to bring Frodo and the Ring back to Mordor rather than just offing Frodo and seizing the Ring.
Not only is he hoping to extract all kinds of useful information from Frodo in his interrogation facilities about the quickest and most effective ways to crush his enemies in what remains of the war (because even though with the Ring Sauron is a foregone conclusion to win it, it’s still going to take some doing), but he’s also prompted by sheer malice and revenge.
He looks on Frodo, like every other possessor of the Ring since Isildur (okay, that’s only three, I guess: Isildur, Gollum, and Bilbo), as a loathsome thief who deprived him of his Precious and condemned him to millennia of suffering and defeat. You bet your Ash Mountains that he’s going to want Frodo right under his four-fingered hand to see him repenting up close and personal.
here’s another question that totally misses the point of the answers in this thread, but i’m curious and didn’t want to start a new one - how close must the Ring be to a person to exert its influence? can’t you leave it in a wagon or trail it on the floor with a string or something?