| Eagles | |
|---|---|
 "Bilbo Woke Up with the Early Sun in His Eyes" byJ.R.R. Tolkien, first published in a 1938 edition ofThe Hobbit | |
| In-universe information | |
| Creation date | First Age |
| Home world | Middle-earth |
| Base of operations | Encircling Mountains,Misty Mountains |
| Leader | Thorondor,Gwaihir |
InJ. R. R. Tolkien'sMiddle-earth, theEagles orGreat Eagles[T 1][T 2] are immense birds that are sapient and can speak. The Great Eagles resemble actualeagles, but are much larger. Thorondor is said to have been the greatest of all birds, with a wingspan of 30 fathoms (55 m; 180 ft).[T 3] Elsewhere, the Eagles have varied in nature and size both within Tolkien's writings and in lateradaptations.
Scholars have noticed that the Eagles appear as agents ofeucatastrophe ordeus ex machina throughout Tolkien's writings, fromThe Silmarillion and the accounts ofNúmenor toThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings. Where Elves are good, and fully sentient, and Orcs bad, Eagles amongst other races are in between; theHobbitBilbo Baggins fears he will become their supper, torn uplike a rabbit, and is indeed served rabbit for supper. The scholarMarjorie Burns notes, too, thatGandalf's association with Eagles is reminiscent of the godOdin inNorse mythology. Others have seenBiblical echoes, especially when the Eagle-messenger sings of the final victory toFaramir in phrases reminiscent ofPsalm 24.
J. R. R. Tolkien was an English author andphilologist of ancientGermanic languages, specialising inOld English; he spent much of his career as a professor at theUniversity of Oxford.[1] He is best known for his novels about his inventedMiddle-earth,The Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings, and for the posthumously publishedThe Silmarillion which provides a more mythical narrative about earlier ages. He inventedseveral peoples for Middle-earth, includingElves,Dwarves,Hobbits,Orcs,Trolls, and Eagles, among others. A devoutRoman Catholic, he describedThe Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work",rich in Christian symbolism.[2]
ThroughoutThe Silmarillion, the Eagles are associated withManwë, the ruler of the sky and Lord of theValar. It is stated that "spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles" brought news from Middle-earth to his halls upon Taniquetil, the highest mountain inValinor,[T 4] and in theValaquenta of "all swift birds, strong of wing".[T 5] Upon their first appearance in the main narrative, it is stated that the Eagles had been "sent forth" to Middle-earth by Manwë, to live in the mountains north of the land ofBeleriand, to "watch upon"Morgoth,[T 3] and to help the exiledNoldorin Elves "in extreme cases".[T 6] The Eagles were ruled by Thorondor, "Lord of the Eagles", and "mightiest of all birds that have ever been".[T 7][T 8] When Turgon built the Hidden City ofGondolin, the eagles of Thorondor became his allies, bringing him news and keeping spies andOrcs away.[T 9][T 10] The eagles' watch was redoubled after the coming ofTuor,[T 2] enabling Gondolin to remain undiscovered longer than any other Elvish kingdom in Beleriand. When the city fell, the eagles protected the fugitives from ambushing orcs.[T 9] The Eagles fought alongside the army of the Valar, Elves, and Men during theWar of Wrath at the end of theFirst Age. InThe Silmarillion it is recounted that after the appearance of wingeddragons, "all the great birds of heaven" gathered under the leadership of Thorondor toEärendil, and destroyed the majority of the dragons in an aerial battle.[T 11]
On the island ofNúmenor in theSecond Age, three Eagles guarded the summit of the holy mountain Meneltarma, appearing whenever anyone approached it, and staying in the sky during the Númenórean "Three Prayers" religious ceremony. The Númenóreans called them "the Witnesses of Manwë", believing he had sent them from Aman "to keep watch upon the Holy Mountain and upon all the land".[T 12] Another eyrie upon the tower of the King's House in the capital Armenelos was always inhabited by a pair of eagles, until the days of Tar-Ancalimon and the coming of Shadow to Númenor.[T 12] Many eagles lived upon the hills around Sorontil in the north of the island.[T 12] When the Númenóreans began to speak openly against theBan of the Valar, Manwë appeared as eagle-shaped storm clouds, called the "Eagles of the Lords of the West", to try to reason with or threaten them.[T 13]
By the end of theThird Age, a colony of Eagles lived in the north of theMisty Mountains, as described inThe Hobbit. These Eagles opposed the goblins; however, their relationship with the localWoodmen was only cool, as the eagles often hunted their sheep.[T 14] They rescuedThorin's company from a band of goblins andWargs,[T 14] ultimately carrying the dwarves to the Carrock.[T 15] Later, having seen the mustering of goblins in the Mountains, a great flock of Eagles participated in the Battle of the Five Armies.[T 16]
InThe Lord of the Rings, the Eagles of the Misty Mountains helped the Elves of Rivendell and theWizardRadagast to gather news of the Orcs.[T 1][T 17] Gwaihir the Windlord carries news toIsengard, rescues the wizardGandalf from the top of the tower there, and again rescues Gandalf from the top of Celebdil after searching for him atGaladriel's request.[T 18] Gwaihir and his Eagles appear in great numbers towards the end of the book. The Eagles similarly arrive at theBattle of the Morannon, helping the Host of the West against theNazgûl, while Gwaihir, Landroval, and Meneldor rescueFrodo Baggins andSamwise Gamgee fromMount Doom after theOne Ring had been destroyed.[T 19]
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Tolkien's painting of an eagle on a crag appears in some editions ofThe Hobbit. According toChristopher Tolkien, the author based this picture on a painting by the Scottishornithological artistArchibald Thorburn[T 20] of an immaturegolden eagle, which Christopher found for him inThomas Coward's 1919 bookThe Birds of the British Isles and Their Eggs.[T 21]
The Great Eagles appeared in "The Fall of Gondolin", the first tale about Middle-earth that Tolkien wrote in the late 1910s.[T 22] In Tolkien's early writings, the eagles were distinguished from other birds:[T 23] common birds could keep aloft only within the lower layer of the space above the Earth,[T 24] while the Eagles of Manwë could fly "beyond the lights of heaven to the edge of darkness".[T 25] The eagle-shaped clouds that appeared in Númenor formed one of Tolkien's recurring images of thedownfall of the island;[T 26] they appear, too, in hisabandoned time-travel stories,The Lost Road andThe Notion Club Papers.[T 27]
Tolkien faced the question of the Great Eagles' nature with apparent hesitation. In early writings there was no need to define it precisely, since he imagined that, beside the Valar, "many lesser spirits... both great and small" had entered theEä upon its creation;[T 28] and such sapient creatures as the Eagles orHuan the Hound, in Tolkien's own words, "have been rather lightly adopted from less 'serious' mythologies".[T 29] The phrase "spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles" inThe Silmarillion derives from that stage of writing.[T 25] After completingThe Lord of the Rings, Tolkien moved toward a more carefully defined "system" of creatures. At the top were incarnates or Children of Ilúvatar: Elves and Men, those who possessedfëar or souls, with the defining characteristic of being able to speak;[T 30] next were self-incarnates, theValar andMaiar, "angelic" spirits that "arrayed" themselves in bodily forms of the incarnates or of animals,[T 25][T 31] and were able to communicate both by thought and speech;[T 30] and finally animals, mere beasts, unable to speak. For some time Tolkien considered the Eagles as bird-shaped Maiar;[T 6] however, he realised that the statement about Gwaihir and Landroval's descent from Thorondor had already appeared in print inThe Lord of the Rings,[T 29] while he had long before rejected the notion of their being "Children" of the Valar and Maiar.[T 32] In the last of his notes on this topic, dated by his son Christopher to the late 1950s, Tolkien decided that the Great Eagles were animals that had been "taught language by the Valar, and raised to a higher level—but they still had nofëar [souls]."[T 29]
The Tolkien scholarsPaul Kocher andTom Shippey note that inThe Hobbit, the narrator provides a firm moral framework, with good elves, evil goblins, and the other peoples like dwarves and eagles somewhere in between. Shippey remarks that the eagles are in the narrator's "euphemistic" words, "not kindly birds".[T 14][3][4]Marjorie Burns comments that the "threat of being eaten [by the Eagle] is so dominant" that the Hobbit Bilbo, who the Eagle described as beingrather like a rabbit, is afraid of being torn up and eaten; he is relieved that he is not to become their supper, "but rabbit is precisely what the eagles do bring them for supper".[5]
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InNorse mythology, eagles were associated with the godOdin; for example, he escapes fromJotunheim back toAsgard as an eagle. Burns remarks the similarity with Gandalf, who repeatedly escapes by riding on an eagle. She comments that Tolkien's Eagles, like his Dwarves, Dragons, and Trolls, all signal Norse influence on his stories.[6]
Burns notes that Tolkien uses the Eagles three times to save his protagonists: to rescue Bilbo and company inThe Hobbit; to lift Gandalf from imprisonment by Saruman in the tower ofOrthanc; and finally, to save Frodo and Sam fromMount Doom when they have destroyed theOne Ring.[7] The Tolkien scholarJane Chance describes these interventions as adeus ex machina, a sudden and unexpected mechanism to bring about aeucatastrophe.[8] The screenwriter Brad Johnson, writing inScript, argues that this lastdeus ex machina instance is a complete surprise to the audience, and undesirable as the sudden appearance of the Eagles "takes the audience out of the scene emotionally".[9] Tolkien was aware of this problem, recognising the risky nature of the mechanism; in one of hisletters, he wrote:[T 33]
The Eagles are a dangerous 'machine'. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in theShire is absurd; it also makes the later capture of G[andalf] bySaruman incredible, and spoils the account of his escape".[T 33]
Shippey notes that throughoutThe Lord of the Rings Tolkien carefully avoided direct reference to Christianity, so as not to make the story anallegory. He comments however that in one place "Revelation seems very close and allegory does all but break through", namely the eucatastrophic moment when the Eagle-messenger sings toFaramir about Frodo and Sam's destruction of the One Ring:[11]
Sing now, ye people in the Tower of Anor
for the realm of Sauron is ended for ever,
and the Dark Tower is thrown down.
Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard,
for your watch hath not been in vain,
and the Black Gate is broken,
and your King hath passed through,
and he is victorious.[11]
Shippey writes that this is certainly Biblical, indeed that it is specifically in the style ofPsalm 24 in theKing James Version of the Bible, with its phrases "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, for the King of glory shall come in".[11] E. L. Risden, making a different connection with Christianity, describes the Eagles' rescue of Frodo and Sam as a "ritual rebirth", and the rescuing bird as "a symbol of the spirit",John the Evangelist's traditional symbol.[10]
Different adaptations of Tolkien's books treated both the nature of the Eagles and their role in the plots with varying level of faithfulness to originals. The first scenario for an animated motion-picture ofThe Lord of the Rings proposed to Tolkien in 1957 was turned down because of several cardinal deviations, among which Tolkien's biographerHumphrey Carpenter recorded that "virtually all walking was dispensed with in the story and theCompany of the Ring were transported everywhere on the backs of eagles".[12]
According to the fantasy artistLarry Dixon, the digitally animated eagles inPeter Jackson'sThe Lord of the Rings film trilogy were based on a stuffedgolden eagle he had provided toWeta Workshop.[13] Two large sculptures of the eagles from the trilogy were installed inWellington Airport in 2013, each having a wingspan of 50 feet (15 m) and weighing 2,600 pounds (1,200 kg). They were removed in 2025.[14]
In the 2011 video gameThe Lord of the Rings: War in the North, an eagle named Beleram acts as a supporting character, aiding the players in battle.[15]
War in the North is actually about a group of four characters. The fourth being the giant eagle, Beleram.
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