womzilla | Plot neeping in The Lord of the Rings (the novel)

No real spoilers here.

One of the perennial fannish discussions of The Lord of the Rings revolves around a significant plot hole. At three key points in the novel, the Giant Eagles show up and carry either Gandalf or Frodo and Sam a long distance in a very short time. (They also act as deus ex machina at a couple of points in The Hobbit.) So, naturally, people have wondered, "Why didn't the eagles just fly Frodo to Mt. Doom?" (This plan was the punchline of a Dork Tower sequence, but I can't find it in the archives.)

There's a good, though not quite complete, discussion of this issue on "Could the eagles have flown Frodo into Mordor?", <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/eagles.html>.

(A semi-recent thread on rec.games.frp.dnd pointed out that a better route into Mordor would have been between Minas Morgul and the Black Gate, keeping Mt. Doom between the Ring and Barad-Dur at all times to reduce the visibility of the flight.)

Not mentioned is my favorite objection, which is that Gwaihir, the Lord of the Eagles, is ~~one of the Valar err Maiar err~~ a being of great power, and as such should not be trusted carrying the One Ring, even indirectly. The corrupting strength of the Ring is clearly stronger as one approaches Mordor--Sam and Frodo both understand that wearing the Ring within Mordor would be catastrophic. In Tolkien's universe, power calls to power, and there is every reason to believe that the Lord of the Eagles would fall completely under the spell of the Ring as he approached Mt. Doom.

The cited page mentions a couple of other plotting problems in LotR, including one that Christopher Tolkien mentioned in Unfinished Tales--that Saruman doesn't steal the Ring of Fire from Gandalf, even though one of the unfinished tales shows that Saruman coveted it.

Even Homer nods. (Marge: "Homer, the sea isn't wine-colored!" Homer: "D'omicron!")