We'll use the movies as examples here, because I don't have the books right in front of me. But in the movie, first we see an Eagle when Gandalf, trapped high in the sky in Saruman's white tower, sends a moth to call for one. A lone Eagle soars by and Gandalf takes a leap from a great height and lands on the Eagle's back to fly safely away from his captor.
The Eagles do not appear again until the end, when in the third film, as the Men of the West are fighting off orcs and Sauron seems to be winning, Pippin stops amidst the fighting and cries, "The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!"
And the Eagles come and fight off the dark riders, and later, when Frodo (well, actually Gollum) has destroyed the One Ring and ended Sauron for good, the Eagles carry Gandalf to the top of Mt. Doom to rescue Frodo and Sam from the volcanic mountain.
The big question many folks ask is, why didn't the Eagles carry Frodo to Mt. Doom in the first place, instead of having him wander all over Middle Earth to try to take the One Ring to Mt. Doom?
It's a good question, and it is a bit of a plot hole. There are many answers, but answer I like best is that the Eagles are another race, sentient beings like humans, and have agency. They therefore cannot be subjugated into doing the will of others. Although it does seem like performing a task that would stop evil would be a good thing.
Many of the non-human characters in The Lord of the Rings have agency: the Ents, who are tree shepherds, orcs, who are used and abused, goblins, who are wild things, for the most part, and wizards, who look like men but are not men. And we must not forget the elves, who also look human but are not, or the dwarves, who look human too, only shorter, as well as the hobbits, who look like humans but are shorter still.
In many interviews I've read about Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of the Rings books, he claims that the books are not about war. However, the author served in World War I and his sons in World War II.
I think The Lord of the Rings is about war.
Lately, I've been watching the eagles in California as they attempt to hatch a trio of eggs. The time for viability for the eggs has long passed, but the eagles continue to try to hatch eggs that aren't going to hatch. It has been an interesting couple of months watching these birds as they built their nest and laid the eggs. Now it's sad to look in on them, sitting diligently on eggs that, at least according to scientists, are simply rotting and not hatching. It reminds me of all the time I spent trying to have a child even though it was a fruitless exercise.
I have had eagles on my mind.
However, another question keeps running through my mind, and getting all confused with The Lord of the Rings, the eagles on the nest, and this country. The question is this: where are the Eagles? Not the eagles on the nest. Not the Eagles of Tolkien's world, not exactly.
I think Tolkien was using the Eagles as a metaphor for the U.S., who was late entering both World Wars. We entered World War I three years after it started, and World War II began in 1939 and we didn't enter it until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. How many lives were lost, how much devastation was rendered, because the United States didn't step up when we should have?
The Eagles were late and came in near the end. They were, however, crucial to winning the wars, World War I, World War II - and the war in The Lord of the Rings.
So that question keeps crossing my mind these days: where are the Eagles? Not the Eagles of The Lord of the Rings, but the Eagles who are true patriots, the ones who will see through the conspiracy theories and the crackpot craziness and stand up and set the United States back upon a better path. Because technically, the US is now at war with itself. We are close to taking that old Constitution and ripping it to shreds, no matter who wins, although one side is more distasteful to me than the other.
Right now, I see no Eagles, not on the right, and not on the left. I caught a glimpse of a lone Eagle in Liz Cheney, which is something I never thought I 'd ever say, but if we have an Eagle guiding us, at the moment that's who it is (and I'm not sure of that). If she is like the lone Eagle swooping in to save Gandalf, where and when will the other Eagles come from? Who will rise up to make this nation over and bring back our better angels? It won't be the Republicans, who are bent on turning back the clock, taking away rights, and creating an American version of Hungary.
The Democrats are no angels. I'm not sure they are Eagles, either, having turned away from the philosophies of Franklin Roosevelt as they have in the last 40 or so years. Roosevelt had his flaws, as all men do, but he did seem to have the welfare of this nation, and of the world, on his heart when he made decisions. (Truman decided to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, not Roosevelt. We don't know what Roosevelt would have done with those bombs, although he didn't stop their construction.)
We aren't in a novel at the moment. This is real life. But we have lots of fighting going on all over the world, and we have lots of in-fighting going on in this nation. We have climate change creating monumental catastrophes. However, we have no wise wizards at our sides, no guidance that comes from anything beyond the beaks of those who crave great power, even if that power is only to be the loudest mouth in a thread on a Facebook page. Given the wealthy crows who own the social media companies, what else should we expect?
So, I ask again, where are the Eagles? Where are those who would stand up against the powerful, and be the beacons that we need to lead us to a stronger, brighter, fairer and better world?
