XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: steuard@slimy.com
In message <7dadnXglmpE-pxvSnZ2dnUVZ_uGdnZ2d@insightbb.com>, Chris
Hoelscher wrote:
> not to pick a nit - but I always thought the text seemed to indicate that
> Sauron's will was removed from the combatants when Frodo put on the ring,
> not when Sauron was emasculared/destroyed
That has been my reading as well: when Sauron recognized what was
happening at Mt. Doom, it immediately captured his full attention.
(And apparently his attention was a bigger deal to his armies than I
at least had realized before reading that scene.)
> but the Nazgul turned and fled .....the Power that drove them .... its will
> was removed from them
[Just in case we're not on the same page with this, though, I *don't*
think that he withdrew his attention from the Nazgul at that time:
indeed, I suspect that he gave them even more focus than usual as they
were his greatest hope of forestalling the destruction of the Ring.]
> so how long did Sauron have from the plot exposed to the ring's distruction?
> 45 seconds? 2 minutes? does it matter if he could pass at great speed? could
> ANY capable speed gotten him there soon enough?
As others have said, Sauron was (to the best of our knowledge)
permanently bound to his physical form at the time of LotR: he did not
have the freedom to drop that form at will (or at least, not without
great cost to himself). Given that Barad-dur was something like 30-50
miles from Orodruin, it would have taken him half an hour to get there
in a *car*! So I think the Nazgul really were his best hope for having
someone there to intervene in time. (I've usually taken the
confrontation at the brink to have lasted no more than five minutes or
so, though I suppose I can't swear to that.)
Steuard Jensen
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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