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Old 01-02-2004, 02:51 PM   #15
Kalimac
Candle of the Marshes
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Flyover Country
Posts: 780
Kalimac has just left Hobbiton.
1420!

Well, first of all, you would have had to persuade him to take it. I'm not sure anyone was very eager to do so, and reassurances about how Dwarves are more immune to the evil than most might not have helped very much. But even so, I can't see Elrond wanting to offer it to him, or any Dwarf; the Dwarves have been undone by their greed for gold before, and there was no guarantee that Gimli wouldn't be sidetracked along the way, especially in a place like Moria. (Granted, they don't know at that time that they'll go through Moria, but it had to have entered their heads as a possible trouble spot, especially with everything that's said about Balin's disappearance). Plus, it was clear that the only real hope for destroying the Ring was in stealth, and Gimli is not the stealthy type. It's true that in "The Hobbit" Tolkien mentions that Dwarves can move quietly enough that men couldn't hear a dozen of them a few paces off, but the hobbits are quieter still; Bilbo thinks of "Dwarvish racket."

Furthermore, Gimli likes to fight too much - a great talent for a supporting Fellowshipper, but not for the Ringbearer himself; if the Ringbearer is too aggressive, there's every chance that the Ring will be lost in battle, or that he'll be killed and the Ring taken from him, or any number of things. The Ringbearer also has to know when *not* to fight - can you imagine Gimli, or any Dwarf, hiding himself while those tracker-Orcs go by in Mordor? The Dwarves hate Orcs with a passion because of history - unlike the hobbits, who just hate them because they're trying to kill them at the present moment - and they might not be capable of containing themselves at moments like that. And that could lead to a bad end.
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