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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1307301" data-attributes="member: 177">a) I acknowledge that, in the light of hindsight, there may have been better courses of action than the ones taken in the text.  My explication of the course of events was merely to show that, without the light of hindsight, the actions could have seemed reasonable to the characters at the time.  Odd, isn't it, that Tolkien chose to create characters that aren't omniscient, so that they sometimes take sub-optimal paths?  b) No big deal?  Funny, it seems from where I sit that you're calling me a liar or deciever.  In order to call me less than forthright, you'd have to have some information indicating that I intentionally left information out, with specific intent to decieve.  You don't have any such information, so stop with the (admittedly eriudite) name-calling.  Attack the information and logic I present, and leave your ill-founded guesses on my motives out of it, please.Everyone sees it, but only after the fact.  Gandalf is not Merlin, who lives backwards so that he can see what will result.  As I recall the text, before Saruman turns on him, Gandalf has every reason to think that the plan will work swimmingly. And we have no reason to think otherwise, either.  If not for Saruman, Gandalf would have made the rendevous, and they would have tripped it off to Rivendell with the Ringwraiths nowhere in sight.  Rarely is failure to see the treachery of an ally considered to paint a character "in a bad light", or lessen a character's stature.  Epic heroes frequently miss treachery - they wouldn't think of doing it themselves, so they tend not to see it in others.And as for Frodo - at the time, he's not yet an epic hero.  He's pretty darned ignorant, and feels pretty small and unimportant, so his hesitation is easily understood.And, let's pile on top of this the simple fact that tripping it off to Rivendell simply and easily would have been monumentally boring.</blockquote>

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