I recently discovered this series and am slowly making my way through the backlog of recorded classes. I've just reached the part of Many Meetings where Gandalf describes the "battle" at the ford to Frodo. There was some discussion in class of why being on foot made Glorfindel and Aragorn less able to withstand the Nine.
I think in this case we might have been too quick to dismiss the purely physical factors. Gandalf says that "Your friends sprang aside, off the road, or they would have been ridden down." That seems like a physical response to a primarily physical threat. In that first instant the danger wasn't the Nine themselves - whose spiritual attention was firmly fixed on Frodo - but their horses, which are physically real. No spiritual assault would have been necessary for Aragorn and the hobbits, though perhaps not Glorfindel, to be trampled under their hooves.
If Aragorn and Glorfindel had been mounted, they and Asfaloth might have been able to physically compel the Black Horses to stop or turn aside, and that knowledge of physical strength might have aided them spiritually in compelling the Black Riders to stop and deal with them. On foot, though, the horses and riders both could just ride right over them without a second thought, and it's difficult to spiritually resist someone when they have the physical power to kill you whenever they feel like it. We've seen the Black Horses used in such a way as they fled the Shire, and it seems to me that was more a purely physical attack than a spiritual one.
This isn't to say that the spiritual aspects of the fight aren't still paramount, only that they might be very intertwined with the physical aspects , especially since the direct involvement of the Black Horses gives this encounter a physical nature that the attacks at Crickhollow and Weathertop, for example, lacked. One does not fight the Ringwraiths hand-to-hand, but is the same true for their horses? Is there any reason that we should regard the spiritual and physical aspects of the fight as mutually exclusive?
I think in this case we might have been too quick to dismiss the purely physical factors. Gandalf says that "Your friends sprang aside, off the road, or they would have been ridden down." That seems like a physical response to a primarily physical threat. In that first instant the danger wasn't the Nine themselves - whose spiritual attention was firmly fixed on Frodo - but their horses, which are physically real. No spiritual assault would have been necessary for Aragorn and the hobbits, though perhaps not Glorfindel, to be trampled under their hooves.
If Aragorn and Glorfindel had been mounted, they and Asfaloth might have been able to physically compel the Black Horses to stop or turn aside, and that knowledge of physical strength might have aided them spiritually in compelling the Black Riders to stop and deal with them. On foot, though, the horses and riders both could just ride right over them without a second thought, and it's difficult to spiritually resist someone when they have the physical power to kill you whenever they feel like it. We've seen the Black Horses used in such a way as they fled the Shire, and it seems to me that was more a purely physical attack than a spiritual one.
This isn't to say that the spiritual aspects of the fight aren't still paramount, only that they might be very intertwined with the physical aspects , especially since the direct involvement of the Black Horses gives this encounter a physical nature that the attacks at Crickhollow and Weathertop, for example, lacked. One does not fight the Ringwraiths hand-to-hand, but is the same true for their horses? Is there any reason that we should regard the spiritual and physical aspects of the fight as mutually exclusive?
