LOTR: Let's Debate Delivering the Ring to the Cracks of Doom via Eagle

Cafe Society
1

This seems to come up periodically in LOTR threads, ever since the success of the rather amusing YouTube video, “How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended.”

My hope is twofold: (1) to have a good debate about this one hypothetical, and (2) have a thread to direct people to when this question comes up in other LOTR threads, to avoid hijacking of those other threads with this debate.

For #1, I’m motivated by having found the arguments I’ve seen on the ‘con’ side of this debate in other LOTR threads to be less than airtight. So I’ll be taking the ‘pro’ side until I can be argued out of it.

Specifically, the question is: from the Council of Elrond, could the remaining five books (as Tolkien numbers them) of LOTR be rendered unnecessary by getting an Eagle to fly Gandalf and Frodo over the Cracks of Doom and drop the Ring in?

Facts (as best as I understand them):

  1. The Ring needs to be destroyed. If it’s just taken out of the game (e.g. by sinking it in the ocean), Sauron still conquers Middle-Earth. And if someone with the skill to successfully oppose Sauron wields the Ring and defeats Sauron, they’ll ultimately become another Dark Lord themselves.

  2. The Nazgûl have been disembodied for a time after being washed away at the Ford of Bruinen at the end of Book 1. (They next appear, airborne at last, several days after the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien.)

  3. The Eagles are a race of intelligent beings. They may have the form of animals, but they are at least as intelligent as those races in Middle-Earth that have human-like shape (Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents, etc.).

  4. The Eagles don’t come at anyone’s beck and call.

  5. The Eagles are wise enough to know that if Sauron conquers Middle-Earth, they too will ultimately be subjugated.

Assumption:

  1. Gandalf or Elrond can surely find a way to get the Eagles’ attention if need be.

Brief discussion of facts and assumption:

I don’t think anyone’s going to argue 1, 3, or 4.

To me, 2 seems apparent from LOTR itself. Unless this is contradicted somewhere else in the Tolkien canon (and I’ve never been enough of a LOTR geek to read all those other books, so those who have can educate me where appropriate), I think this has to be regarded as somewhere between a strong likelihood and a certainty that the Nine are off the board for some time after the Council of Elrond.

With respect to 5, I suppose it’s possible that the Eagles can escape to lands sufficiently far away from the continent of Middle-Earth to be beyond the reach of Sauron, but not ‘beyond the Sea.’ But in Hobbit and LOTR themselves, such hints as we have seem to lean against there being such geography.

Number 6 is genuinely debatable, but ISTM that, at a minimum, Gandalf should be able to raise some sort of fire or other signal with his staff that any Eagle within dozens of leagues would want to check out.

Argument:

It’s pretty much there in the facts and assumption. Gangalf can get the attention of the Eagles (6), convince them of their stake in destroying the Ring (1,3,5), and can gain their assistance in delivering the Ring to the Cracks of Doom, where Sauron, temporarily bereft of any airborne agency to stop them (2), would be helpless to prevent the Ring’s destruction.

Comparison with the actual LOTR plot:

Hey, it’s a plan. This can’t be understated, because in fact the Fellowship reaches Rauros without any real plan of how to get the Ring inside of Mordor, let alone to Orodruin. If Gandalf had a plan in his head, he never shared it, even with Aragorn, before he was “kaput mit der ballhog,” to quote Eorache, nor did he do so after his resurrection. What’s the probability of success of a non-plan?

Afterwards, it’s 100%, of course. But prospectively, the odds against getting the Ring to the Cracks of Doom by land are huge. And success ultimately depended on the existence of a path into Mordor guarded primarily by Shelob. OK, she’s deadly, but Sauron didn’t bother to post any orc guards at the foot of the stairs that Gollum leads Frodo and Sam up towards Cirith Ungol along? That alone seems more improbable than the chances of getting an Eagle to the Cracks of Doom.

Anyhow, that’s my case for airmailing the Ring into Mordor. Feel free to dismantle it. And when this topic comes up in other LOTR threads, point 'em here.

2

I don’t think there’s any reason to think Sauron needs the Nazgul to deploy his flying monsters. They’re described as being beings in their own right, just as the black horses are. Or that he doesn’t have other flying beasts at his disposal (I think this is actually mentioned explicitly at one point). Plus who knows what crazy spell-casting juju Sauron and/or Saurman can conjure up against flying targets.

But really, the main reason we know it wouldn’t work is that neither Gandalf or Elrond suggest it. Since they both know more about the Eagles and about Sauron’s capablilities then the readers do, and they’re obviously smart enough to have considered the possiblilty (they’re group is litereally named “the Council of the Wise”), presumably it was a non-starter as a plan. Whatever defense Sauron has against Eagles, its apparently adequate to make the airmail strategy impossible.

3

Perhaps the simplest objection is that if an eagle - or Frodo on an eagle - were to drop the ring into Oroduin, the ring might not land in the lava. Indeed, with its sense of preservation, the ring itself might engineer that.

4

And that’s one of the major flaws always pointed out in this plan. The eagles are *intelligent *with their own wills and desires. Any intelligent being that bears the ring will be corrupted by it and try to claim it. The more intelligent and the more powerful they are, they quicker and the more strongly they become corrupted. And the closer the ring gets to Mont Doom, the stronger and more corrupting it becomes. Even Sam, who was about as incorruptible as they come, was corrupted by the ring in just a few hours while still 50 miles away from the mountain.

The Eagles also have supernatural perception, and are described as being able to see what is happening in underground caverns and the bottom of the ocean. So they are certainly going to be able to perceive who is carrying the ring, even if the council sends nine people with them to try to disguise that fact.

The plan hinges on an assumption that the ring has no power over the eagles, but the council notes that the only intelligent being it has no power over is Bombadil. Maybe the eagles are also immune, but it’s unlikely. They are either Maiar like Gandalf or Saruman, or spirits akin to Maiar. And Maiar are certainly corrupted by the ring.

Having an eagle carry someone who it knows carried the ring, right up to the mountain, would be an open invitation to disaster. You might just as well ask Boromir to carry the ring.

What might be interesting is speculating how an eagle would use he ring. They were given form primarily to protect the wild animals of the world from dwarves and men, so don’t think that an eagle Dark lord would work out well for the mortal races.

5

Are they? Aren’t the eagles that rescued Frodo et al descendants of the eagles of the First Age?

6

I’m happy to argue 1. “If it’s just taken out of the game,” you write, “(e.g. by sinking it in the ocean), Sauron still conquers Middle-Earth.” Why? The last time Sauron had the ring, he got his ass beat and then crawled off to lick his wounds for thousands of years; if he couldn’t win with the ring, why figure he could win without it?

7

It’s never spelled out. I can’t remember the exact wording, but both the Eagles and the Ents were embodied spirits placed on ME to protect animals and plants respectively. It is stated that the Ents produced offspring, we can assume the same about the Eagles but it’s never spelled out.

But exactly what it requires for an embodied spirit to reproduce is unclear. We know that the Maiar can produce children by mating with with Elves, and we know that Ungoliant produced children by mating with spiders. So embodied spirits can reproduce, but it seems they need to mate with real, living beings. Whether Eagles likewise reproduced by mating with eagles is unknown, but it seems likely, since the “eternal” beings who existed before the world don’t seem to have any ability to multiply on their own.

The Ents likewise presumably reproduced by cross-pollinating with trees. In the Silmarillion, the first Ents were embodied fully sentient and aware. In LoTR it says that the Elves woke up the Ents. It also says that Treebeard is the oldest living thing on ME: that’s interesting because clearly Sauron and Bombadil at the least are much older, having been incarnate on ME since day one. Somewhere Tolkein explains this by saying that the “Eternal” beings don’t count because they aren’t really alive, they just exist. That means that Treebeard isn’t one of the original Ents or he woudn’t count as alive: he must be an offspring of one of them and something that was created on ME that didn’t come from outside. That’s the only way he qualifies as “alive”. My personal theory is that the first Ents were created fully aware, and they then mated with trees that the Elves woke up. Treebeard is a second generation Ent, his mother being an awakened tree, and he was born shortly after the first Elves awoke. So he wasn’t incorrect when he said that the Elves woke up the Ents, and he is older than the oldest Elves still residing in ME.

Maybe something similar occurred with the Eagles, or maybe the eagles are still the original embodied spirits. There’s just no information either way. But even if the Third Age Eagles are hybrids that means that they are still Maiar descendants, just as the most powerful Elves, or even Aragorn, are. And they are presumably extremely powerful in their own right. While their super senses may have declined since the first age, just as all other races have declined, they still possess it. And they still remain direct servants of of the Valar, in a way that Elvish and Human descendants of Maiar do not.

Even if we accept the 3rd age eagles are hybrids, that makes them even less suitable as a shuttle service. They are thoroughly creatures of Middle Earth, and if anything more corruptible than an embodied Maiar, though less powerful.

8

It says so right there in the novel. While the ring exists, even if Sauron doesn’t possess it, Lothlorien, Rivendell and the Havens would hold out for a while through the power of their own rings, but would eventually fall. Bombadil’s country would last a little longer, but even that would be conquered eventually, which is one of the main reasons why the rejected giving him the ring.

Remember, Sauron was defeated by an alliance of Numenoreans and really old, powerful elves. Most of those Elves have left ME. The younger generations of Elves have diminished immensely and the “woodland elves” just don’t have that sort of power… The Numenoreans were almost all corrupted by Sauron and/or interbred with common men and diminished. It’s really just Aragorn and a few cousins who have the sort of power that the entire Numenorean army possessed.

There simply isn’t the power in ME to form an army that could take the fight to Sauron.

9

Both elves and men have diminished dramatically since The Last Alliance. There are simply not the numbers to face him anymore.

10

I’m not tolkien about Sauron’s army; I’m tolkien about Sauron. Sauron had the ring on when he waded into a brawl and promptly got hit with a sword like a chump.

He’s like Superman, if you swap “kryptonite” for “maybe three guys with weapons.”

11

I think you are confusing the movie with the novel.

Sauron was forced to take the field because his army was in trouble. He then fought an pitched battle against an entire army, culminating in a duel with 4 of the most powerful beings on ME. He lost, narrowly, after all that.

Without an army, there would be no reason for Sauron to fight, his army alone would conquer the world. If an army could be raised, it wouldn’t be powerful enough to challenge his army or besiege his lands. If the army was that powerful, it wouldn’t be powerful enough to weaken Sauron for single combat. If it was, there was nobody on ME with enough power to put up a fight against him.

I’m guessing you’ve only ever seen the movie, which does make him seem like a bit of an idiot. But even there, it was clearly stated that he only got into the fight because his army was being routed. No enemy army, no route, no battle, no problem. Even just based on the movie, you need an exceptionally powerful army, and that does not exist and never will again.

12

Did the OP specify movie or novel?

You guessed wrong. (See my many posts about Tom Bombadil!)

They seemed to be routing his army pretty well in the movie; wasn’t there a good-guy ghost army, plus a lady-and-hobbit one-two punch of I AM NO MAN as-whupping, and an elf parkouring around easy as firing arrows into eyes – honestly, Sauron’s evil army seemed about as outclassed as Sauron fighting maybe three guys.

13

Even if we’re talking about the movie: the ghost army is no longer available (and wasn’t nearly as invincibly effective in the novel), and the army beaten at the Pellenor Fields was a tiny fraction of Sauron’s force. Arrayed, more or less, against the entire available resistance force. The remaining army in Mordor was simply massive.

14

They paid their debt, and are off drinking beer in Valhalla or it’s ME equivalent, and won’t be back.

15

And Gandalf, who could lay waste to Sauron’s army, doesn’t wanna. And – if we are going novel instead of movie – Tom Bombadil could do plenty, but doesn’t feel like it. And, of course, Gollum kept the ring out of sight for who-knows-how-long because he had no desire to start conquering anything besides that day’s supper.

I swear, it’s like Tolkien wanted to spin an enchanting tale about how lots of people could have performed mighty feats, but stayed in for dinner and drinks.

16

Gandalf’s power was pretty limited by his form. Even as an unconstrained Maiar, he still wasn’t a particularly powerful one; not nearly as powerful as Sauron.

The extent of Bomadil’s power is never really stated, but it probably doesn’t go much beyond his demesne. All we really know is that the Ring has no power over him.

And Gollum was a small-minded creature with small-minded desires. Average people would just be dominated by the ring and ultimately wind up returning it to Sauron (Gollum’s fear of all things outside kept him shut up in the caves). The only people who would be in danger of becoming new Dark Lords were people like Elrond, Galdriel, or Gandalf.

17

What, so two guys with swords could take him?

18

I have no idea what that means.

19

Minor point, but the Eagles can’t “fly over and drop the Ring into the Crack”, because the fires are accessible only through a large tunnel - which Frodo and Sam find out only when they get there. Sam himself has only the vaguest idea of how they will find the Crack and hopes that Frodo knows better than he does; and it comes as a pleasant surprise to them that there’s quite a well-made road leading to the fire.

So the idea is that the Eagles will fly into Mordor and then mooch around for a while until they figure out how to get to the fire, and Sauron will be doing nothing about this despite being able to see them coming from miles off.

You’re probably better off with the catapult.

20

It took maybe three guys to beat Sauron; you say that Gandalf is “not nearly as powerful as Sauron”; I thus wonder how few guys it would take to beat Gandalf.