XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien
From: steuard@slimy.com
In message , Stan
Brown wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:48:16 +0000 (UTC), Steuard Jensen wrote:
> One problem I have, when I look too closely at the story, is that I
> don't have any clear idea of what the Ring could do!
Absolutely agreed. That's part of why this range of questions caught
my interest, in fact: as I commented elsewhere, it strikes me that
trying to figure out what *Sauron* feared the Ring could do might be a
new angle to attack this issue.
> It's almost like the Ring was what Hitchcock would call a McGuffin
> -- the whole story turns on possessing it, but it's not actually
> important on its own.
I wouldn't go quite that far. After all, even without its greatest
powers ever being shown in the book, its lesser or "accidental" ones
often play a *crucial* role in the plot. I'm not just talking about
invisibility here, but also the desire that it seemed to spark in
everyone near it. (I pretty strongly believe that there was something
beyond a natural human desire for power affecting those near the Ring:
not just Frodo, but the rest of the Company as well. I'd like to think
that Boromir could have held out against a purely internal temptation,
for instance.)
>> And imagine that Frodo had been one day farther from Orodruin when the
>> battle occurred.
> I don't suppose we can allow that Gandalf sent Eagles to check out
> Frodo's position and advised Aragorn to pace his march accordingly.
> :-) Did the re-embodied Gandalf the White have some way to perceive
> things at a distance, or did perhaps one of the Valar speak to him
> in a dream?
Well, I've guessed that the call that Frodo and Sam hear on the slopes
of Mount Doom telling them "Now, now or it will be too late!" was
Gandalf making a last-minute attempt to avoid missing the boat by a
mere hour or two. It's hard to imagine that Gandalf would know where
exactly they were the whole time, though, and guessing at their pace
while traveling through Mordor would have been awfully difficult
(given how much it actually varied, and for such a wide range of
reasons). Honestly, you'd almost think that Gandalf would have been
better served to send an earlier message like "You'd better get there
in three days or less, or your friends will all be dead." (Hmm. Maybe
that would be a little harsh.)
> This does feel like a fairly gaping plot hole. I can't really accept
> that Gandalf and Aragorn would start a suicidal battle just on the
> off chance that it _might_ give Frodo time to reach the Sammath Naur
> undetected.
Yeah, that's bugged me for quite some time. You'd think that Aragorn
could have presented nearly as tempting of a target by taking his dear
sweet time marching toward the Black Gate. Make a big production of
recapturing Osgiliath, for instance, complete with self-aggrandizing
celebrations. Stage a grand festival taunting Sauron at the
crossroads to Minas Morgul (well... maybe that would have drawn
Sauron's armies the wrong direction). Celebrate every minor historical
site in Ithilien that they "liberated". Wait for the troops sent to
Cair Andros to send back word of their victory there. There were
clearly limits: the whole point was to make Sauron feel an imminent
threat, and to make him empty Mordor toward Udun as quickly as
possible (and without giving him *too* much time to think). But every
day that they could stall would be one more day for Frodo, and one
less chance that they'd throw thousands of lives away for nothing (and
possibly give away the game in the process).
Steuard Jensen
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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