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Great Eye and Small Hands in The Lord of the Rings

In The Lord of the Rings, the Ring bearers have to split themselves into two groups in early phase of the expedition. Meantime, Frodo’s small hands carry the Ring towards the Crack of Doom in Mordor, while Aragorn and Gandalf encounter Saruman in Isengard, the Nazgȗl Lord near Gondor, and finally, Sauron at the Black Gate. The twofold tactic is a feint operation, because Aragorn and his company reveal themselves to the Eye in order to distract its attention from the path that Frodo must tread. This diversionary design is implemented as a result of felicitous combination of accident and intention, and repeatedly manifests itself through at least three scenes in the Rings. First, Elrond says at the Rivendell Council that “small hands can run the wheel of the world, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.” Second, Pippin the curious hobbit meets Sauron’s Eye by accidentally seeing into the stone of Palantir, and Aragorn also does so, but intentionally, both of which generate the effect of attracting the Eye to themselves. Lastly, Aragorn and Gandalf decide to effect a disguised offensive strategy to attack the Black Gate directly at the crucial moment that Frodo comes close to Mordor. As it turns out, it is not Sauron’s great eye, but a hobbit's small hands, that can determine the fate of the Ring. Sauron’s all-seeing Eye is a “single,” one-dimensional one, and furthermore, is “lidless” which means it is permanently open. As Jacques Derrida says, however, there can be a greater truth in the blinking eyes or the twilight of eyes. Significantly, seeing eyes must be weeping eyes, too: hence, Andrew Marvell’s line, “these weeping eyes, those seeing tears.” Blindness often goes with insight, and also with pity. Likewise, touching hands are oftentimes ones of pity and cure, although they wield the sword, as are the hands of Bilbo, Frodo, Aragorn and Eowyn. In the Rings, a hobbit’s hands are supplementary to the perverted Eye of Sauron, but in actuality, eyes and hands have double function supplementary to each in their own right.