Lord of the Rings - they wanted a jolly

[25kilopumpkin]

Must have done because at the end they send Gwahir (or something) the eagle to pick up Frodo from mountain of Doom and fetch him home. Why then, not simply send him(eagle) with ring in the beginning? Jobs a good 'un over in days? Do I have a point?

Hahaha you actually have a very good point...still love it though!

I love it too, but have always thought this x

DP asked me this after seeing the films. I'd never thought of it that way before .

Maybe they couldn't give the Ring to an eagle, because they would have been corrupted by it (same reason Gandalf or Aragorn or Galadriel couldn't take it) and turned evil, it had to be someone low and humble like a hobbit.

Not sure why the eagles couldn't just give Frodo a 'lift' though, surely that would have been no worse than having Gandalf et al. accompany him on the journey to start with? That wouldn't have made much of a story though...

Yup, not much of a story but sensible.

Perhaps the eagles would have attracted more attention, and would have been what the dark lord was expecting? He had the nazgul (sp?) to watch the skies after all. I think they ended up letting the two hobbits go alone because such a ridiculous low-key entry to Mordor would be the last thing the baddies were expecting and hence they had the element of surprise on their side!

I think it was important that the problem of the Ring and Sauron was solved by the people of Middle Earth rather than the Valar and Maiar (the Eagles are Maiar) who are roughly equivalent to categories of angels, with the Valar being more powerful than the Maiar.

There was a previous episode in the Silmarillion where the Valar and Maiar stormed into Middle Earth and defeated Morgoth (Sauron's master) and chained him up for all eternity outside the confines of the world, so you could argue that the Valar could have defeated Sauron at any time.

I will have to go and do some research for my own LoTR nerdery to find out why they wouldn't intervene. It was possibly because it was the greed of elves, men and dwarves that enabled Sauron to gain ascendancy, and that therefore they had to solve the problem they created.

The Eagles are Maiar? I did not know that.

Sauron was a Maia, I think, and so was Gandalf and the other wizards, though some Maia were more powerful than others of course. I think the Valar wouldn't intervene at all in the business of mortals/Middle Earth by the time the story is set, can't remember the exact reason either though...

Ye, the Wizards were Maiar, and I think they were as far as the Valar would go in helping with the Sauron problem. They were forbidden to intervene directly, too, which is why you don't see Gandalf challenging Sauron himself.

OMG I bow to your considerable greater knowledge here!

I'm afraid I could not persist with the Silmarillion (aside from a couple of albums in the eighties, sorry [hconfused] and agreed with one of the original reviewers who stated "Page 81, oh f*ck another elf"

Loving the angel angle (ahem) though, Tolkien drew on a lot of sources didnt he? I was going to study Icelandic mythology at uni at one point for just this reason, before regaining my sanity and realising that i would absolutely NEVER be able to use it at all in reality. Saying that I did opt for "Sexual metaphors in Elizabethan Drama" which I have used pretty much daily since. [hmmm] thanks for explaining x