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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ColonelHardisson" data-source="post: 1269988" data-attributes="member: 363">As has been mentioned, and I will mention again:* Gandalf could not protect anyone going into Mordor openly. Nothing he could do would keep Sauron from throwing everything he had at any attacker, whether on the ground or in the sky. Gandalf was simply no match for Sauron at all, which is made clear in the books. So there would be no point ion sending him as protection, and, since he'd be just about the only guy with a chance to do it, there's be even less point in sending anyone else.* The Ring gets more powerful the closer it gets to where it was forged. This is an important point, that goes directly to the heart of the problem. Frodo was specifically the best person for the job because hobbits were not very powerful. The Ring offered power in proportion to the power already possessed by its wielder. Thus, the least powerful beings were the least likely to be corruptible by the Ring. Now, consider: what good would it do to send Frodo in on a great eagle, or a squadron of them? The closer they got to Mount Doom, the more powerful the Ring would become. The great eagles, like Gwaihir, were very powerful themselves. Chances are even they would be corrupted by the Ring just as they stooped to dive on Mount Doom, [spoiler]just as Frodo was finally corrupted at the Crack of Doom[/spoiler]. The implications are there throughout the books - powerful folk like Galadriel or Gandalf or Elrond simply would not be able to resist the Ring for the length of a journey to destroy it, especially since they'd be going straight to where it was at its most powerful. They didn't go through the list of everyone available to take the Ring, simply because there was no need to - Tolkien demonstrated explicitly, in all the scenes in which the Ring is offered to some of the most powerful people in Middle-earth, that these powerful beings could not be expected to resist the Ring in such circumstances. They barely did so when they were at home, they couldn't be expected to do so at the birthplace of the Ring. The same could be said of the eagles.By the way, before he gets mentioned, Tom Bombadil is discussed directly in the book, but he's a special case - the Ring demonstrably had no power over him. He simply wouldn't want to do it.</blockquote>

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