BY JEB SMITH AND LLOYD R. HEDBERG

J.R.R. Tolkien’s fandom asks countless questions about Middle-earth and its history; questions both captivating and complex. The “why” questions are particularly frequent, often plunging a knife deep into his work’s heart, where the answers require a grasp of both his methods and intent. Yet those answers are often to be found in his details, and his purpose.

We address such a question here—one Tolkien himself would not favor:[1] “Why didn’t the eagles just fly the ring to Mount Doom, or carry Gandalf or Frodo there to destroy it?”

Tolkien brought a large arsenal of word and language mastery to the battlefield of his work, purposely infusing significant detail and subtlety throughout. If we ask “why” he did something, we must let him speak for himself—that is, we can, and must, find our answers within the work. It alone speaks for him. Anything else is speculation.

We will begin with The Council of Elrond, though matters bearing on the question really start much earlier. The Council debated many ways to deal with the Ring. Should a warrior like Aragorn or Boromir use it against Sauron in battle? Would the ocean serve as an adequate hiding place? What about Tom Bombadil as a keeper? Strengths and weaknesses of various ideas were discussed. Ultimately they realized the Ring must be destroyed—unmade—and there was only one way to do so.

A few brief details Tolkien provided include: anyone trying to use the Ring would ultimately be corrupted; the Ring could not be hidden—it would always strive to return to its master; Bombadil was an unsafe candidate—he lacked concern for the issue. No, the only satisfactory solution was the destruction of the Ring. And secrecy was the key. Elrond said. “And I will choose you companions to go with you, as far as they will or fortune allows. The number must be few, since your hope is in speed and secrecy. Had I a host of Elves in armour of the Elder Days, it would avail little, save to arouse the power of Mordor.”[2]

So why weren’t the Eagles considered? Some readers, seeing only strengths in the thought, view it as a “missed opportunity”—even a “plot hole”—in Tolkien’s work.

The answer is simply because their flight would have soared directly into failure.

First, an eagle had no access. The Cracks of Doom sit in a deep chasm at the end of a long cave. The entrance to destroying the Ring is through the door to Sammath Naur—the Chambers of Fire—the Ring could not just be dropped from above. Scholar Karen Fonstad, using an image drawing of Mount Doom and context and description of the Cracks of Doom from Tolkien’s work, wrote in The Atlas of Middle-earth: “This was clearly not the central core, for when the fiery magma bubbled up, it lit the roof of the tunnel.” [3] A drop from above the top of the mountain would not bring the ring into the Cracks of Doom. Too, small chambers and fissures, at times filled with lava, needed to be traversed; the small hobbit Frodo had to duck at sections to make it in. There is no way an eagle alone could enter.

Then, an eagle—alone or carrying someone—could not have made it to Sammath Naur without detection. There may have been the speed hoped for, but there was no “secrecy” as required for success, given the countless armies and servants of Sauron always on the lookout. Gollum has provided us this reminder too:

“‘Wraiths!’ he wailed. ‘Wraiths on wings! The Precious is their master. They see everything, everything. Nothing can hide from them. Curse the White Face! And they tell Him everything. He sees, He knows. Ach, gollum, gollum, gollum!’”[4]

We know Gandalf would not have gone with an eagle to take the ring—he had already refused it before:  saying “Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused.”[5] And Frodo, stalwart though he was, would still have succumbed to the ring’s growing power the closer he came to the Cracks, ultimately claiming as his own—with no Gollum around.   

What would we do without Gollum? He wouldn’t have pursued the Ring leagues upon leagues. He wouldn’t have fulfilled the part he had been given, as Gandalf had rightly foretold when he said: “For even the very wise cannot see all ends. I have not much hope that Gollum can be cured before he dies, but there is a chance of it. And he is bound up with the fate of the Ring. My heart tells me that he has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many—yours not least…”[6] (emphasis added).

This moves us now to the deeper part of Tolkien’s work in providing Middle-earth’s history—the part equally as important to him as the “story” itself.  We come to Tolkien’s “moral and religious truths”—the things of which he said “Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world.”[7]

Saying “in solution,” Tolkien says these truths are to be found “everywhere in the mix” of his work. If we are to ‘get a grip’ on he and them then, we must be looking.

Many of the questions Tolkien fans ask stem from a misunderstanding of this principle. We find religious truth clearly revealed at the onset of the Council of Elrond, as Elrond says “That is the purpose for which you are called hither. Called, I say, though I have not called you to me, strangers from distant lands. You have come and are here met, in this very nick of time, by chance as it may seem. Yet it is not so. Believe rather that it is so ordered that we, who sit here, and none others, must now find counsel for the peril of the world.”[8] This is Providence.

Note the emphasis here. The people have been called from an unknown source. Tolkien intentionally uses passive syntax, driving this home. They did not initiate the idea to come—though they did choose to respond to the call. They were not called by Elrond. Providence nudged them. Providence, plain and simple. These ones, and no others. Elrond recognizes it. Gandalf recognizes it. But we readers perhaps, do not—or choose not to—to our own peril. Tolkien—Middle-earth—cannot be understood without the moral and religious truths purposely infused, sought out by the reader, and grasped as they unfold.

Significant issues remain on the quest. Sauron is aware the ring has been found. Both he and Saruman are searching for it. Ringwraiths almost capture it outside Rivendell, and Sauron knows it is there. The fellowship runs into Orcs, Uruks, and warg riders from Moria, Isengard, and from the Misty Mountains. Crebain out of Fangorn and Dunland search for them. A Balrog confronts them in Moria—another gift of Providence essential to prepare Gandalf for his later duel with Saruman. There was constant concern what they had hoped to keep secret was lost, and they would not escape the eyes of Isengard, Dol Guldur, or Mordor.

Mordor—the last place in Middle-earth, and this the worst time conceivable—for any plan to destroy the ring to work. The black gate, the Tower, the Palantir, the Eye of Sauron, the largest gathering of troops in Middle-earth. Wraiths and Fell Beasts flying the skies—it seems nothing can approach Sauron unnoticed—the eagles especially.

Without secrecy or surprise, the eagle idea, or any other, is doomed to fail. Hobbits gifted with Elven cloaks rendering them unseen, the phial of Galadriel, Gollum as their guide—all these things and countless more, are Tolkien’s revelation of Providence at work in the history of Middle-earth—a providence seen throughout The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings.

In the end, every plan seemed to have impossible obstacles. Gandalf told Pippin: “There never was much hope …‘Just a fool’s hope, as I have been told.”[9] Yet those desperate folk who gathered did not rely on their own wisdom. There were forces beyond Middle-earth—a divine plan at play. As Gandalf told Frodo of Bilbo’s finding the ring: “Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.”[10]

Providence is one of three pillars in Tolkien’s work, along with many other “moral and religious truths” he incorporated. The Council made the correct choice. And in our reading, we can make some too—one to look deeply at the details Tolkien gave us, and the other to mine the riches Tolkien buried “in solution” within his words. As he wrote to C.A. Furth in his letter in 1939 about the progress of his work, he was “doing it as well as (he) knew how, considering every word.”[11] It behooves us, then, to do likewise.

Footnotes

[1] See Tolkien’s comments regarding use of Eagles in his Letters, 201 and particularly 210 (his point #4).

[2] The Lord of the Rings, chapter 3, “The Ring Goes South.”

[3] Atlas of Middle Earth (Houghton Mifflin, 1991, 146–147).

[4] Lord of the Rings, Book 4 chapter 2, “The Passage of the Marshes,” emphasis ours.

[5] Lord of the Rings, Book 1, chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past.”

[6] Lord of the Rings, Book 1 chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past,” emphasis ours.

[7] Letter 131 to Milt Waldman, 1951, emphasis ours.

[8] Lord of the Rings, Book 2 chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond.”

[9] Lord of the Rings, Book 5 chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor.”

[10] Lord of the Rings, Book 1, chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past.”

[11] Letter 35.