The point isnt just that the Eagles might or might not be corrupted- it is all the other points- having the Will/Eye of Sauron right at you is daunting. Then there’s the nazgul- if one nazgul drops the eagle carrying Frodo- or picks off Frodo, its over. Then there is the 10000 orcs with bows.
Gandalf said it could only be done secretly, not openly. And remember what Tolkien said about the idea.
Combined with the fox at the beginning of LotR who, while he doesn’t talk, does have a pretty sophisticated internal monologue, the answer here might just be, “Animals are generally a lot smarter than we think they are.”
IIRC, the Ring’s ultimate goal is always to be reunited with its master. If its possessed by someone powerful, like Elrond or Galadriel, it’s going to be harder for Sauron to wrest the ring from them. It might be okay with being carried by hobbits just because hobbits are going to be easier for Sauron to kill.
About 2 months and some change, actually - he woke up in mid-October and the Fellowship left in late December.
And the Ring doesn’t really “know” anything. It has a very simple set of commands.
Plus, these hobbits are moving towards Sauron, unlike that wuss Sméagol who spent half a millenium hiding out under a mountain.
The spiders might have understood Bilbo’s taunting, or they might have just been thinking “sounds like food sounds”. The birds, there was a crow that spoke Westron (which they can do in our world, too), and a thrush that Bard could understand, but not Bilbo nor any of the dwarves. Mastery of a Ring might be able to grant understanding of languages (it’d fit in with the theme of commanding creatures), but that’s not an ability that Bilbo or Frodo ever demonstrated.
I thought it was longer, but wanted to guess low.
Anyway, speaking of powerful entities that had extensive contact with the ring bearer and weren’t corrupted, all the time that Aragorn is alone with the hobbits between Bree and Elrond’s House he could easily have killed the four of them and no one would have been the wiser. Even if the innkeeper told people they’d gone with Aragorn, “Oh, so sad, we were set upon by wolves and i barely escaped”, or, " we parted ways and i don’t know what happened next". Or just, "obey me, because i wield the ring of power! "
Might an eagle have been corrupted? I suppose. But that’s very low on my list of reasons why they didn’t fly Frodo to Mount Doom.
Yes, but Aragorn is Aragorn.
None of those people were in Mordor, however, much less at Mount Doom. The influence of the Ring gets stronger the closer it is to its place of creation, we don’t know how they’d have reacted if they were offered the Ring in a place where it’s stronger.
One thing I think has been overlooked in the discussion of the possibility of Gandalf shoving Frodo into the cracks of doom is that ISTM that one of the underlying principles of LOTR (and, surely, of Tolkien) that The end does not justify the means. This would have been violated had Gandalf pushed Frodo into the cracks. Or for that matter if Frodo had pushed Gollum. It was necessary for Tolkien’s purposes that Gollum slip and fall under his own steam.
Very good point. We know how Isildur reacted (was that in the book, too?)…
I think they were damn close though. Remember the scene in the movies where the army was before the Black Gate and Frodo was nearing the end of his quest? That is Dagorlad where those battles happened. About as close to Mordor as you can get without being in Mordor.
Is the strength of the Ring linear or logarithmic the closer it gets to Mordor? 
(I think it is linear which would suggest it is at near full power in Dagorlad where Isildur got it.)
To add to the previous post:
Is the Ring more powerful in proximity to where it was created or to Sauron? If Sauron then Isildur was as close as is possible for max power when he got the Ring.
But then…what did actually happen to Sauron when the Ring was chopped off? Clearly he did not die but at the time Isildur did it what happened? Why didn’t Sauron just reach down and take it back? Losing the Ring diminished him but it was right there. (I really do not know)
Sauron’s physical body was destroyed when he lost the Ring. He didn’t “die” in the sense that he ceased existing, but he spent several centuries as a disembodied spirit before he gathered enough power to incorporate himself again.
“But at the last the siege was so strait that Sauron himself came forth; and he wrestled with Gil-galad and Elendil, and they both were slain , and the sword of Elendil broke under him as he fell. But Sauron also was thrown down, and with the hilt-shard of Narsil Isildur cut the Ruling Ring from the hand of Sauron and took it for his own. Then Sauron was for that time vanquished, and he forsook his body, and his spirit fled far away and hid in waste places; and he took no visible shape again for many long years.”
It occurred to me that the scale probably doesn’t matter at this point. The max power point for the Ring is so near it probably makes little to no difference worth noting when it is that close. Of course, true max power will be at the Cracks of Doom but I doubt the chart looks very different when it is only 50 miles away (give or take).
It actually makes a big difference. Outside Mordor, the ring was pretty much the same old ring as in the Shire. Frodo hears the nazgul calling him, but he isn’t especially compelled by the ring itself.
But when he gets near the mountain, well within Mordor, the ring is so strong that just carrying it on a chain made Sam appear like a giant scary fighter to the orcs. And on Mount Doom, Frodo invoked the power of the ring without wearing it, ordering Smeagol to leave him alone, and issuing the curse that “if you touch me again, you will be thrown into the fires of Mount Doom”. (Not a direct quote, but reasonably close.) I don’t Believe he could have done that in Dagorland, or Ithilian, or anyplace else that wasn’t that close to the ring’s forge. (And, of course, that curse came to pass, and ironically, the power of the ring was invoked to destroy it.)
Chronos: Come to think of it, if we’re going to write off the talking wargs as “Gandalf can talk to anything”, couldn’t we do the same for the talking eagles? I don’t think they talk with anyone other than Gandalf, in LotR.
Going from memory here: at least one Eagle flew over Gondor and announced the news of victory, whereupon “the people rejoiced in all the ways of the city”. Maybe they heard only screeching, which together with the clouds blowing away was enough to draw the correct conclusion, but I think the Gondorians heard it in Westron.
Having the Eagles involved kind of misses the whole point. The time of the Children of Ilúvatar was transitioning from the elder to the newer. Destroying the Enemy of the old world fell to Men. It’s like removing the training wheels from a child’s bicycle and letting the child ride the bike. Men needed to earn dominion. Assistance was given, via Gandalf and the Elves, but Men had to accomplish the deed themselves. The Hobbits were chosen as part of the race of men, but they had a particular quality. There’s a running gag that while people have heard of Halflings, no one has any stories or songs about them. The power of the Rings was to amplify existing characteristics. Hobbits were humble with no ambitions more than food, comfort, and pretty much keeping to themselves and not conquering others. Gandalf just needed to find one with enough ambition to go on an adventure and then let fate take its course. The Eagles rescuing them after the defeat was the same as taking the kid to Dairy Queen to celebrate conquering the bike. Now the world is open.
I love your post.