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29. Always Around to Do the Bare Minimum.
Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: the Eagles.
Most familiar to Tolkien readers via the lordly and imposing figure of
Gwaihir, identified as the Lord of the Eagles in both The Hobbit and The Lord
of the Rings, the Eagles have a recurring role in many of the stories of
Middle-earth, acting as emissaries, guardians, intercessors and figures of
warning or doom. They serve the Valar, their leader Manwë in particular, but
often seem to be following their own particular code of living. However, a
recent tweet based off a Polygon article about them in their Lord of the Rings
series this year revived an old—and rather tiresome—controversy about whether
the Eagles act as a deus ex machina in the plots of the stories—or even more
tiresomely, are somehow supposed to be a plot hole. What are the roots of
eagles in mythology in general, and how has that impact on the human
imagination played out in Tolkien’s legendarium? Do the Eagles even
particularly care about what is happening in realms beyond their own, and
regard nearly everyone and everything as being of a piece? What do the sudden
appearances of Gwaihir’s ancestor Thorondor at various points in the published
Silmarillion say about how they function in terms of both being Manwë’s
servants and in noting the working out of the Doom of Mandos? And how is it
that such lofty, indeed arrogant figures like the Eagles have incredibly sharp
senses of humor?
Show Notes.
Jared’s
doodle. Would
you like to fly, on my beautiful ea-gle…
Uh yeah get your shots, the end.
That TheOneRing.net spy
report. Questions, questions, we have them!
Our episode about Orcs.
Blue Harvest! Horror beyond
imagination!
Blue Origin! Also horror beyond
imagination!
The HarperCollins UK
tweet about
Andy Serkis’s further audiobook work, with further links.
That Foreign Policy piece “Comrades of the Ring” — worth a read!
The Eagles! They fly around.
That misleading Polygon
tweet. They could do
better.
The Tolkien Gateway summary of Letter
210, Tolkien’s response to the
screenwriting treatment created in the late 1950s.
“Someone is WRONG on the Internet.”
CinemaSins? We hate it.
Edmund Wilson’s “Oo, Those Awful
Orcs”
does not appear to contain any Eagles complaints.
Bored of the Rings. It’s
very, very of its time.
Deus ex machina! It’s a
thing.
The Peter Jackson Beorn bear
bomb. Well, yes, there we go.
Eagles in world mythology? You’re
darn right it’s a
thing.
We only know so much about the Sky
Father.
Superstore! Probably
a defining US comedy of the second half of the 2010s.
Metro Micro, should you so desire.
Ted Naismith’s painting of the cloud eagle in the
West as Númenor approaches its doom.
Support By-The-Bywater (and Megaphonic FM) on
Patreon. Thanks!
View all episodes
By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett
4.8
2929 ratings
Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: the Eagles.
Most familiar to Tolkien readers via the lordly and imposing figure of
Gwaihir, identified as the Lord of the Eagles in both The Hobbit and The Lord
of the Rings, the Eagles have a recurring role in many of the stories of
Middle-earth, acting as emissaries, guardians, intercessors and figures of
warning or doom. They serve the Valar, their leader Manwë in particular, but
often seem to be following their own particular code of living. However, a
recent tweet based off a Polygon article about them in their Lord of the Rings
series this year revived an old—and rather tiresome—controversy about whether
the Eagles act as a deus ex machina in the plots of the stories—or even more
tiresomely, are somehow supposed to be a plot hole. What are the roots of
eagles in mythology in general, and how has that impact on the human
imagination played out in Tolkien’s legendarium? Do the Eagles even
particularly care about what is happening in realms beyond their own, and
regard nearly everyone and everything as being of a piece? What do the sudden
appearances of Gwaihir’s ancestor Thorondor at various points in the published
Silmarillion say about how they function in terms of both being Manwë’s
servants and in noting the working out of the Doom of Mandos? And how is it
that such lofty, indeed arrogant figures like the Eagles have incredibly sharp
senses of humor?
Show Notes.
Jared’s
doodle. Would
you like to fly, on my beautiful ea-gle…
Uh yeah get your shots, the end.
That TheOneRing.net spy
report. Questions, questions, we have them!
Our episode about Orcs.
Blue Harvest! Horror beyond
imagination!
Blue Origin! Also horror beyond
imagination!
The HarperCollins UK
tweet about
Andy Serkis’s further audiobook work, with further links.
That Foreign Policy piece “Comrades of the Ring” — worth a read!
The Eagles! They fly around.
That misleading Polygon
tweet. They could do
better.
The Tolkien Gateway summary of Letter
210, Tolkien’s response to the
screenwriting treatment created in the late 1950s.
“Someone is WRONG on the Internet.”
CinemaSins? We hate it.
Edmund Wilson’s “Oo, Those Awful
Orcs”
does not appear to contain any Eagles complaints.
Bored of the Rings. It’s
very, very of its time.
Deus ex machina! It’s a
thing.
The Peter Jackson Beorn bear
bomb. Well, yes, there we go.
Eagles in world mythology? You’re
darn right it’s a
thing.
We only know so much about the Sky
Father.
Superstore! Probably
a defining US comedy of the second half of the 2010s.
Metro Micro, should you so desire.
Ted Naismith’s painting of the cloud eagle in the
West as Númenor approaches its doom.
Support By-The-Bywater (and Megaphonic FM) on
Patreon. Thanks!
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