The Battle of the 5+ Armies

[Zigûr]

It's become my impression that Gil-galad and Elendil severely wounded Sauron, perhaps fatally, Sauron burned Gil-galad to death with his hand and struck Elendil down, Elendil fell and Narsil shattered beneath him, and Isildur took the hilt and dealt the final blow to the crippled, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, possibly dying, Sauron by hewing off his finger.

This is to say, I feel that Isildur didn't wield the broken hilt of his father's sword in some daring act of martial prowess but rather as the best instrument he had to hand for the blunt act of amputating his enemy's digit.

"Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?" Unless Isildur is lying, I feel like this explanation is at least one which reconciles the three ideas we hear in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion that:

a) Elendil and Gil-galad killed Sauron
b) Isildur "dealt the Enemy his death-blow"
c) Isildur used the hilt to cut the Ring from Sauron's finger

b) and c) might be separate incidents, however: maybe he stabbed Sauron with the hilt first or something to that effect and then severed his finger. I've found this bit confusing for years.

[IxnaY AintsaY]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

It's become my impression that Gil-galad and Elendil severely wounded Sauron, perhaps fatally, Sauron burned Gil-galad to death with his hand and struck Elendil down, Elendil fell and Narsil shattered beneath him, and Isildur took the hilt and dealt the final blow to the crippled, unconscious or otherwise incapacitated, possibly dying, Sauron by hewing off his finger.

This is to say, I feel that Isildur didn't wield the broken hilt of his father's sword in some daring act of martial prowess but rather as the best instrument he had to hand for the blunt act of amputating his enemy's digit.

"Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?" Unless Isildur is lying, I feel like this explanation is at least one which reconciles the three ideas we hear in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion that:

a) Elendil and Gil-galad killed [sic?] Sauron
b) Isildur "dealt the Enemy his death-blow"
c) Isildur used the hilt to cut the Ring from Sauron's finger

b) and c) might be separate incidents, however: maybe he stabbed Sauron with the hilt first or something to that effect and then severed his finger. I've found this bit confusing for years.

It's pleasing to me to read Isildur's so-called "death-blow", if not as a lie, than at least indulging in some deluded braggodocio--an immediate symptom of the influence of the Ring. Before PJ's Fellowship, I wonder if it was common for serious readers of LotR to think Isildur engaged in personal combat with Sauron. I certainly had a little internal scoff at that scene, and later it surprised me when some said it fit their view of that event, at least in a general way.

The duel on the slopes of Orodruin is one of the most problematic scenes in the books for me though. I'd love to know what Tolkien's close-up view would have looked like, if he had one.

[Elmo]

As a 'serious reader of the Lord of the Rings' (rather than those who just read it for a laugh ) I always assumed Gil Galad and Elendil sacrificed themselves to throw down Sauron somehow leaving the Dark Lord open for Isildur to cut the ring off his finger. I never assumed the film version was correct... it is stated the Isildur alone of Men, supported his father in the last duel with Sauron so I assume he must have fought him in some form.

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Oh aye, Elmo min, all I meant was that, since the diminishing Narsil did not by itself make the one who wielded it more deadly, it wouldn't be quite relevant for the Law of Diminishing Weapon.

[IxnaY AintsaY]

Originally Posted by Elmo

As a 'serious reader of the Lord of the Rings' (rather than those who just read it for a laugh )

Yikes, yeah, that sentence makes me sound terrible. Non-casual? Semi-solemn? Dour-ish? I can't figure out a better way to say the same thing.

Which most likely means I really am terrible. Snoot snoot.

[Elmo]

I believe the correct term is 'as obsessed with LOTR as Gollum is with the ring'.

[tom the eldest]

I was quite confused that legolas and tauriel manage to travel from laketown to gundabad and back in two days,despite the the distance clearly larger than rohan to minas tirith.what worse is bolgs army.a massive orc army,no doubt carrying heavy weaponry,can reach erebor in one day,arriving just after legolas.the army is also onfoot,which remind me that rohan,with the best cavalry in middle earth,need three days to arrive to minas tirith(with some obstacles,of course).one must imagine that the orc is doing a painful forced march from gundabad to erebor(well the muscular orc vanguard did,and it looks like the run non stop from gundabad to erebor.poor thing

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by tom the eldest

I was quite confused that legolas and tauriel manage to travel from laketown to gundabad and back in two days,despite the the distance clearly larger than rohan to minas tirith.what worse is bolgs army.a massive orc army,no doubt carrying heavy weaponry,can reach erebor in one day,arriving just after legolas.the army is also onfoot,which remind me that rohan,with the best cavalry in middle earth,need three days to arrive to minas tirith(with some obstacles,of course).one must imagine that the orc is doing a painful forced march from gundabad to erebor(well the muscular orc vanguard did,and it looks like the run non stop from gundabad to erebor.poor thing

Throughout PJ's work, he has ignored or failed to comprehend Tolkien's dictum that "Days are days, miles are miles." T worked from Army manuals to ensure that travel rates per day in various terrain on foot and by horse were plausible; he even went back after the book was finished and drastically revised the whole intricate chronology leading up to the Pelennor Fields, where he had to restructure a vast number of moving parts - the Rohirrim, Aragorn, Faramir, Frodo, the Black Host, Gandalf - just because he noticed that some of them were traveling too fast to be realistic.... not that anyone would ever have noticed that the Grey Company took four days rather than five from Erech to Pelargir.*

To PJ, Middle-earth is about the size of Delaware. Thus Elrond can make it to Dunharrow in a couple of days, and Haldir's Elves can cover the 700 miles from Lorien to the Hornburg overnight. (related- in the Jacksonverse, everybody knows almost everything that's going on. Tolkien the signals officer knew that preindustrial communications were very slow and unreliable)

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* Sadly, the extra day he introduced as part of this process reduced Shadowfax' Great Ride to Minas Tirith from superequine to merely stupendous-- (a tiny number of) real world horses actually have covered 300 miles in 78 hours.