1. Why do you think the Eagles' head Eagle was called "chief"? Why
wouldn't the Eagles stay among the people they've just saved/befriended?
And why do you think the Eagles accepted gifts of gold?
I don't suspect the orders of Eagles is as fully fleshed out here as it is in
other works, if we can even say that it is fleshed out at all really.
This "chief" is left a bit ambiguous, so we don't really know who he is or what
his relationship to other previous and forthcoming Eagles (Thorondor and
Gwahir) really is. As for why they do not remain, we know that the Eagles
do things in their own way and in their own time, at least in LOTR, so they do
not join in with the other peoples of Middle-earth. If they are agents of
Manwe, then they would remain apart and they are not, strictly speaking,
sentient in their own right, but rather animals given the ability to speak and
act by the will of Manwe. Why accept gold? Well, in this book, that
is a sign of generosity after the gold fever that gripped Thorin as well as the
Elvenking and maybe Bard to a degree and a sign of sharing.
2. Bilbo's wistful wish to see the Eagles again reminds me very much of
something from LotR-I think it's Sam's desire to see the elves again, but it
might be Bilbo's own desire to see the misty mountains again-or his desire to
see the ring "one last time". I can't put my finger on it (or my
book). Can anyone find a parallel?
Tolkien loves wistfulness--it's that sadness that comes from loss and the sense
that things are changing, one of the great themes of his
works.
Most people have made this mistake of thinking Middle-earth is a particular
kind of Earth or is another planet of the science fiction sort but it's just
an old fashioned word for this world we live in, . . . at a different stage of imagination. --Tolkien's Last Radio Interview
