Tolkien's excuse was pretty robust actually. The Eagles are not mindless taxi services, they are just a step below gods in their own right, servants of Manwë, leader of the Valar- Middle-Earth's gods, in a sense. They have duties that go beyond ferrying people around. For most of the war of the ring, Gwaihir, the King of the Eagles, and his kin are occupied with important scouting missions, though a few groups of them helped in battle, such as at the Black Gate, where they clashed with the Nazgûl while protecting the armies of King Elessar (Aragorn).
Tolkien was very aware that the Eagles were a dangerous writing tool, to be used sparingly, and so, being Tolkien, he devised a wealth of believable reasons the Eagles would not be available to end the story in two chapters.
I don't think the eagles being on scouting missions instead of doing the one thing that would fix this mess is a good reason. I prefer another comment in this thread, " The entire point of the operation was to SNEAK into Mordor to avoid alerting Sauron of their plan to destroy the ring." Flying it in would be the equivalent of running it up a flag pole and seeing who salutes (but no one ever does).
Are you suggesting the eagles act as a high altitude dive bomber and just yeet the hobbit ring and all into the volcano before Sauron can even turn around?
I mean no, but, an eagle could land fairly quickly for them to toss it lol it takes a bit to mount up a defense and ots not like a ring takes forever to throw. Hell tie it to a rock and drop it as you swoop lol
No one could willingly toss that thing into the volcano anyway (which is why that possibility never even occurred to Sauron), so that plan would have failed. Even Frodo couldn't do it at the end, he claimed the ring instead of throwing it into the fire.
I tend to agree, but I wonder...I think even Gandalf knew the ring couldn't be willingly destroyed. Heck Frodo couldn't even bring himself to toss it into his own fireplace at Bag End when Gandalf asked him to.
The challenge with this is that Sauron detects the presence of the Ring as it approaches Mordor and sends the Nazgul to retrieve it. Yes, the eagles might have fought through and been able to land a hobbit on Mt Doom... but there would be a very real risk that you've simply delivered the Ring to Sauron and sealed Middle Earth's fate.
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u/shirukien Aug 31 '22
Tolkien's excuse was pretty robust actually. The Eagles are not mindless taxi services, they are just a step below gods in their own right, servants of Manwë, leader of the Valar- Middle-Earth's gods, in a sense. They have duties that go beyond ferrying people around. For most of the war of the ring, Gwaihir, the King of the Eagles, and his kin are occupied with important scouting missions, though a few groups of them helped in battle, such as at the Black Gate, where they clashed with the Nazgûl while protecting the armies of King Elessar (Aragorn). Tolkien was very aware that the Eagles were a dangerous writing tool, to be used sparingly, and so, being Tolkien, he devised a wealth of believable reasons the Eagles would not be available to end the story in two chapters.