XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name@mail.its.in.danmark
"Julian Bradfield" skrev i meddelelsen
news:slrnjp0dkt.tvq.jcb@krk.inf.ed.ac.uk...
> On 2012-04-19, John W Kennedy wrote:
>> Gandalf tells Frodo that putting on the Ring made him visible to the
>> wraiths. That being the case, someone who is /not/ wearing the Ring can
>> be assumed to be invisible to them, wholly or partially. That makes a
>> seasoned warrior who knows what they are nothing to toy with.
> That could work I suppose, but then I wonder how they captured and
> interrogated various humans on their way to the Shire, if they only
> had vague senses of human?
As Strider explains on Weathertop: "...For the black horses can see, and
the Riders can use men and other creatures as spies, as we found at Bree.
They themselves do not see the world of light as we do, but our shapes cast
shadows in their minds, which only the noon sun destroys; and in the dark
they perceive many signs and forms that are hidden from us: then they are
the most to be feared. And at all times they smell the blood of living
things, desiring and hating it. Senses, too, there are other than sight or
smell. We can feel their presence - it troubled our hearts, as soon as we
came here, and before we saw them; they feel ours more keenly. Also," he
added, and his voice sank to a whisper, "the Ring draws them."
If this is accurate, and applies to any single Nazgūl as well as a group
of them, then the Rider who overtook them on the road in the Woody End ought
to have found Frodo. His horse might not have seen him, but horses have a
good sense of smell, and so do Ringwraiths apparently. And it should have
felt Frodo's presence, and the Ring. Apparently they can "see", just not
with their eyes and not under the midday sun; but it was afternoon.
Of course story-internally we can solve this by positing that Aragorn
knows much about Nazgūl but not everything, and that even he exaggerates
their powers a little, such as their power of perception. The wraith that
overtook Frodo might have been baffled by the sun still being up, and by
being in an unfamiliar area and terrain. The wind might have been
favourable from Frodo's point of view; the wind and its direction are not
mentioned. Then the wraith and its horse would not have smelled him, though
they would probably have smelled the spoor of the three hobbits along the
road - without knowing that among the thousands of hobbits in the Shire one
of these had the Ring. It might also have been less perceptive than other
wraiths; had it been another wraith, or more than one, Frodo's peril would
have been greater. The five Nazgūl, that included the Witch-king, who
attacked at Weathertop, were a far more perceptible group of hunters than
one of the lesser eight alone.
In one account of the Hunt for the Ring in UT it is stated that one
Khamūl was the one that overtook Frodo twice, and that while he was the most
ready after the Black Captain himself to perceive the presence of the Ring,
he was also the one whose power was most confused and diminished by
daylight. This would then explain why he was baffled the first time, during
the afternoon, but was thwarted only by the timely appearance of Gildor's
company the second time, in the early night under the stars. Perhaps
Tolkien wrote that bit to reconcile the supposed great powers of perception
displayed by the Ringwraiths with the wraith's failure to notice the Ring
almost under its nose.
Corvus.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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