Ahira's Hangar

<b> Someone asked this on another board once, and I always found it interesting: Why didn't the eagles just fly the ring into Mt. Doom?</b> Arise now, Riders of Théoden!Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded!Forth Eorlingas!<i></i>

Because Frodo had to get into Mordor undiscovered. A gigantic eagle flying over a million orcs would be quite sightly indeed. Besides, what would left in the book if it were that easy?
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
<i>Edited by: Fiduciary of the Wood  at: 7/30/02 5:19:54 pm
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<b> Aye, true, true, and true. Good logic, Fid. </b> Arise now, Riders of Théoden!Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded!Forth Eorlingas!<i></i>

The eagles have always been my fav! Didn't 1 carry Bilbo? or am I thinking of Gandalf, or both? What was the leader's name didn't it start w/a G or a W? The power of ahimsa is not just the readiness to die. It is the willingness to live. To live utterly without fear - this is a fearsome thing. <i></i>

<b> One carried Gandalf in <i> The Hobbit</i> (along with some dwarves and Bilbo). The same eagle, Gwaihir, carried Gandalf, Frodo, and Sam in <i> LOTR</i>. There may have been other eagles involved at Mt. Doom besides Gwaihir. </b>
Arise now, Riders of Théoden!Let horse be bridled, horn be sounded!Forth Eorlingas!<i></i>

Yes! thanks King! 2 cool! The power of ahimsa is not just the readiness to die. It is the willingness to live. To live utterly without fear - this is a fearsome thing. <i></i>

yes re: the conundrum re:eagles and mt doom .. the lack of opposable thumbs may have also hindered such a cause of action. health and healing<i></i>

I love the Eagles! They're the most awesome beings in Middle-earth, which is just what Tolkien intended, I'm sure.

Regarding the question of why the One Ring wasn't simply given to the Eagles to drop into Mt. Doom...my own thought is that maybe entering the Sammath Naur, as Frodo and Sam did, was the only way to guarantee the destruction of the Ring, as they were then right at the brink of the Cracks of Doom. If the Eagles had just dropped the Ring into the volcanic top as they flew past, it's possible that the Ring - through some will of its own - would have deflected itself from the main fires and come to rest safely somewhere for Sauron to retrieve at a later time. It's just a half-baked thought, really. Feel free to shoot me down! Of course, the answer already given by Fiduciary is a lot better: there was no way that the Eagles could have entered Mordor undetected. The Nazgul would have come straight at them, right? Then again, the Eagles were pretty nimble, so maybe they could have evaded the Nazgul long enough to have carried out their task.

Oh, and concerning the rescue of Frodo and Sam, Gwaihir was assisted by his brother Landroval, and Meneldor the Swift.

Yeah, I'm resurrecting a moldy old thread...I'm just paying my respects to the Eagles!

I think you might be right, Moonwatcher. The hobbits brought the Ring to the very place where Sauron forged it - not just anywhere on or in Mt. Doom, but the very place in Mt. Doom (which was probably a pretty big mountain when you think about it) where it was made. It is quite possible that the destruction of the Ring was magically tied into its creation, and thus to a very specific spot.

And the Eagles are very cool.

And yet the Captain of the Gaurd of the great Elvish city of Gondolin in the First Age somehow managed to slay several balrogs when the forces of evil sacked that realm so that the Princess Idril Silverfoot and her human husband (the paternal grandparents of Elrond) could escape. I have never been able to wrap my mind around that.

Gandalf truly was a badass and only had to face one - what dedication to duty or sheer desperation drove that Elvish Captain on that dark day?

Now I want to go back and read about the origin ofthe eagles in the Silm, too.

Whoa. I didn't know about that Captain. I only knew of Gondolin's sad fall via a short, though nicely illustrated, section in David Day's Tolkien encyclopedia. But yeah, I wonder about that Elvish Captain. Surely he must've had some magical aid - some special weapon perhaps? Gandalf was one of the Istari, and still he was pressed to his limits to defeat one Balrog.

I think I'll make The Silmarillion my next Tolkien read, too. I've mentioned before that I tried reading it years ago, but I just wasn't ready for it. I'm sure it will fill in a lot of the gaps in my knowledge of Middle-earth. The LOTR appendices helped a lot, too, of course, but mostly concerning Third Age events (naturally).