October 30, 2002

Re: Sam and the Ring
Brett C.

Curious George, when Sam is wearing the Ring in ROTK he is on the borders of Mordor, which are woven with shadows of Sauron's own making to prevent his enemies spying upon him, much in the same way Galadriel uses Nenya to guard Lorien. It says in the book even the Eye could not pierce these shadows to pinpoint the disturbance created by Sam's wearing the Ring. Also, at the time the Nazgul are all abroad engaged against the war on Gondor.

In the chapter Mt Doom Tolkien reinforces this idea by saying that only the Nazgul could have warned the Dark Lord of the hobbits approach to the Mountain, but that they were shadowing the Captains of the West. One of the Wraiths does turn up in the book as Frodo and Sam are escaping Cirith Ungol, possibly on the way to delivering some message from the battle front to Barad-dur, but Sam is not wearing the Ring at the time, and also they had just used the phial of Galdriel, which Frodo had used in the pass of Minas Morgul to escape the attention of the WitchKing, so the alarm is not triggered.