Subject:
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Re: LoTR: The Two "Towels"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.castle
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Date:
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Sat, 11 Jan 2003 02:42:11 GMT
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Viewed:
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1017 times
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Okay, you just need to read the book and get it firsthand.
The Ringwraiths are sort of blind because they're dead. Well undead to be
precise. They ride regular horses which are raised from colts in the presence
of evil so they're not scared of evil anymore. Their chief weapon is fear
(uhoh), and big swords, followed by little swords which dissolve after they use
them.
Nobody said Sauron was some kind of genius. You are confusing him with Sorhed,
who can spell beter and fit fifteen lines of verse on one tiny ring. Sauron
only managed as much verse as would go around the ring once and had to omit the
rest. Sauron used to be a genius, but that was Ages ago, and he has been
shriveled to a pulp at least twice in that time (I lost count) so that he is
ashamed to appear on screen anymore. In fact, Sauron has a very poor
imagination and is no longer able to conceive that his enemies aren't just as
eager for domination as him and might try to destroy the Ring. Sauron has only
one trick, offering rings to greedy little dwarves, which is how Thrain ended
up in Sauron's spare dungeons in Mirkwood holding a map of daddy's mountain
which somehow Sauron failed to confiscate, being dumb and evil and all. Sauron
figures, hey, this greedy little dwarf fell for the ring trick, and I lied
about having that ring to give him (it's surely dragon melt by now) so
naturally everybody else must want rings of power desperately, and nobody could
imagine giving one up if they found it.
So it went until Gandalf poked his nose in (a very long nose that smelled evil
times in the wind) and took the map from Thrain before leaving him in that dark
stinking place to die. This didn't make sense so Tolkien rewrote it a couple of
times, so that Gandalf ended up taking the map while Thrain was still free. I
think. And by some cosmic accident this little map, years later, got Bilbo off
his hobbit ass to discover the One Ring, which probably would not have happened
if Sauron had just snuffed out that obstinate dwarf with the map long ago, or
duped him with a ring out of a box of Cheeri-orcs. But then Tolkien had no idea
where the story was going because he had too many student papers to mark.
Since some wizards and elves torched his Mirkwood digs (Saruman's idea) Sauron
has been holed up behind big mountains in Mordor, sending out this and that
beast or Orc to spy on the world around to see where that darn Ring has got to,
but the problem with that is Elves or Rangers or Wizards or Gondorian troops
hunt them down and wring their necks, because they are ugly and easy to spot.
So the challenge for Sauron is to use something (Ringwraiths) so terrifying
that people will jump off bridges when it comes at them. Sauron remembers
giving nine rings to mortal men, doomed to die, and sets about figuring out how
to get the nine Ringwraiths back in service, and other nasty plots.
(Ironically, I guess the chief Ringwraith was probably resting in a barrow in
the lands one day's march north of Bree, as measured by Strider, not far from
the Shire even, which was where he-Mr. Ringwraith-was born, but Sauron made him
come all the way to Mordor to get a horse and a manicure before sending him to
search for the Shire. Mr. Ringwraith must have misplaced his copy of "The Shire
on $7 a day". Also not so ironically, Mr. Ringwraith killed Aragorn's father's
father's father's father's father, well you get the idea, about 1,000 years
back, and has got it coming when Aragorn sets him on fire. By the way, it was
iron rings that Sauron gave the dwarves.)
Then Sauron works out an exploratory route with a lot of bridges the
Ringwraiths need to cross. In fact Ringwraiths don't like water. They are able
to get across Gondor's main bridge, which only works once because then Gondor
takes out the bridge (whistling). However it is not even recorded how the
Ringwraiths crossed the river Isen, only that Saruman knows that they have on
their way to the Shire. There are still a lot of rivers in Middle Earth even
though Treebeard (Fangorn, in Elvish) complains about how all the really good
ones, ambar-i-taurelemorna, are now gone, lie under the wave, kaput, namarië.
Be grateful that Treebeard does not get to sing any of this in the movie.
So I hope this explains some of the inconsistencies in Tolkien's world, and be
careful not to appear too eager to listen to the family history of hobbits, or
they will talk your ears off and tell you all the small doings recorded in
footnotes in their "Middle-Earth on $7 a day" book (look for the red cover).
You do not know your peril.
-Erik
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: LoTR: The Two "Towels"
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| (...) Okay, let me get this straight. This -almighty- sauron sends out five robed people, that he knows cannot see well, and consequently wouldn't make for very good attack forces. Anyway, he sends them out to kill frodo, so they float around nearly (...) (22 years ago, 11-Jan-03, to lugnet.castle)
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