[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

It seems to me that too much is made of the potential use of the Eagles to carry the Ring, and the use of increasingly elaborate scenarios to explain how they could have done it still leaves me unconvinced. A similar sort of approach was taken by Mr. Zimmerman's film treatment of The Lord of the Rings, in which the Eagles were extensively overused, and Tolkien wrote in response to this:

The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in the Shire is absurd; it also makes the later capture of G. by Saruman incredible and spoils the account of his escape.

I think that the point is that Tolkien's use of the Eagles is as help that comes unlooked-for and at the right moment, reinforcing the very strong possibility that they were conceived throughout The Lord of the Rings as messengers and servants of Manwë, who can be supposed to be under similar restrictions to Gandalf himself. If this is the case then to ask them to carry the Ring to the Sammath Naur would be no different from asking Gandalf to do so, which would be a clear violation of his mission. Of course this also raises the point that the Eagles were no more immune to the Ring's influence than were Gandalf, Elrond or Galadriel. It would take some time even to fly from the Misty Mountains to Mordor, in which time it would have an opportunity to work on its bearer and his companions, possibly even being able to bring about discord between them similar to that in the Fellowship of the Ring.

The flight to Mordor raises other questions. Sauron had in his possession a Palantír, the Ithil-Stone, with which he could see events far beyond the confines of his own territory, even as far away as Isengard. Bearing in mind that the Eagles were not in the habit of aiding Gondor or Rohan in their wars, nor of travelling far from the Misty Mountains, the natural reaction of the Dark Lord on learning that they were travelling in his direction would be to devise some strategy against them. With his affinity with the Ring and his ability to see far events it would not be difficult for him to work out what was being done (an Eagle has no pockets for hiding a Ring), and to place strong forces at likely landing points, completely negating the advantage of flight. Although he has not considered the possibility that his enemies would try to destroy his weapon, once they come at him carrying it, all of his force and thought would be turned towards taking it back from them. At the time of the Ring's coming to Rivendell, Mordor is still full of Orcs: Sauron and his armies are within, preparing their final stroke and the Plateau of Gorgoroth is swarming with his troops, which we know can travel quickly and shoot straight. This situation only changes when Aragorn takes up the Palantír of Orthanc, and Sauron becomes convinced that his enemies are taking the Ring to Minas Tirith; and even then only the army of Morgul goes there. The reason for attacking the Morannon is as a diversion to clear the path between the Ephel Dúath and Orodruin of enemy forces. Eagles may fly high, but if their mission is on the ground then they have to give up that advantage sooner or later, and there were enough archers in Mordor to make them pay dearly for any landing they made. Gandalf seems convinced that if he were to fortify Mordor and turn his mind to finding the Ring then Sauron would be unassailable, and I do not see why this should not include the Eagles. The Nazgûl are a small part of the equation, since weight of numbers is required to defeat a small force of strong fighters, and they cannot provide this. There is, of course, always the possibility that Sauron himself would come out to take the Ring from its bearer personally, and with his mind not distracted by wars elsewhere, I would think his chances of success quite good.

I have touched on the Ring's influence on its bearers above, and it seems to me that this is a central point. Tolkien was quite clear that nobody could resist the Ring in the place of its creation, and Frodo's mission was successful only because he had Gollum with him, whose lust for the Ring compelled him to take it. Not only would there be nobody to take the Ring from a corrupted Eagle, but there's also no certainty that anyone actually could at the critical moment. What an Eagle would do with the Ring is something about which I'm not prepared to speculate, but throwing it into the Cracks of Doom is not the first probability that I would consider. Even if it were carried back to the eyries in the Misty Mountains, this would only be the same as throwing it into the sea or hiding it in someone's treasury. It would still exist, and even without it Sauron had the power to take over Middle-earth and take his time searching for the Master Ring.

Gandalf's plan to send a small force into Mordor under the cover of larger events relies entirely on its complete insanity to work. To send few people into the middle of the enemy's kingdom with the very weapon that he wants is unpredictable, but they must be inconspicuous; they must blend in with the usual events of the war, and the flights of the Eagles are only normal close to the Misty Mountains. Gandalf's rescues from Zirakzigil and Orthanc both occur in their usual territory, so that Gwaihir's chance arrivals on both occasions are, although unlikely, still credible (the suggestion of divine intervention that this introduces is far too obvious to warrant another explanation here). Even the rescue from the Goblins in The Hobbit takes place because the Eagles happened by at that moment, spying on their enemies close to their homes. Their help is then given on request to do relatively minor favours, and on every occasion at Gandalf's request. It is a different matter to seek out the Eagles and ask them to carry the Ring, and besides the relationship was clearly between Gandalf and Gwaihir and did not include the White Council in general.

The narrative role of the Eagles is more complicated than a simple "there wouldn't be a story if they did the job": throughout they are portrayed as free agents, whose help cannot be relied upon . Like the Ents they come into the story unexpectedly and do only as much as they are prepared to do. Note that they turn up at the Morannon as part of the diversion from the Ring-quest, and that nobody had asked them to be there. I'm sure that in this there is a hint of their being controlled by a higher authority, which sends them when they are needed to the place where they can be of most use. That same authority would be able to restrain them from any action that was considered beyond their jurisdiction, and such a case is the destruction of the Ring, which is a matter for the Free Peoples. If the Eagles really are conceived as Manwë's messengers, then this is as likely a reason as any for their not carrying that burden.

Since I can explain the fact that the Eagles do not carry the Ring in terms of Tolkien's narrative setting, it seems to me that this is more of a potential 'what if?' than a flaw. It takes no greater stretch of the imagination to work out what could have been wrong with this tactic than to think up the strategy itself, and to my mind having the Eagles do the job would result in a book that was simply anticlimactic, in other words a bad book that nobody would now remember. That people can think of imaginitive ways that something could have been done differently does not prove a flaw in the work: it only proves that they have been trying too hard to find one.