In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
I can’t believe people still argue over whether or not Balrogs have wings when the text unambiguously says they do. You can have wings and also have a shadow that looks like wings.
Like two vast wings but then he explicitly says its wings were spread, clearly stating it has wings. To be the most generous you could try to say the wings are made of shadows, but based on the text they’re clearly still wings.
Yes, Balrogs have wings.
Balrogs have wings because how can you expect to go caving without fried chicken? And what’s the best part of the fried chicken? The skin. And what has the most chicken skin? The wings. Not fake boneless chicken nublet basket shit restaurant wings, real wings. So smart ol Balrog goes around trading drumsticks for wings. Of course he’s got wings. Quid. Pro. Quo.
he establishes a simile in one sentence and reuses it further on. common writing trick.
Exactly. Writing the entirety of “shadows like two vast wings” twice would have been awkward for no reason. (Or it should be no reason, but apparently some people are incapable of understanding metaphor.)
Balrogs - and I shouldn’t even have to say this - don’t have wings.
Everything about the creature is shadow, fire, and ash. So if his shadow extends like wings, then they’re wings, as shadow is literally part of a Balrog’s body.
It would not have been awkward, it would have been describing what heeamt had he meant that. Seems some people are incapable of understanding that these are magical beings who’s bodies may not be entirely made of material that we would expect.
Balrogs - and I shouldn’t even have to say this - dohave wings.
He says they have wings. As I said, if you want to take that they are made of shadows you can, but they have wings.
not in the passage you quoted, no. i know he was meticulous about translation notes, is there anything in those?
Did you read it? Explicitly says they have wings.
In that same passage we also get “Gandalf flew down the stairs”. Explicit, unambiguous evidence that Gandalfs have wings.
are you still talking about the quote? because tolkien does that all throughout the books. he establishes that a thing is “like” something else, then refers to it by that other thing as shorthand for the sake of tone. or are you suggesting that “from wall to wall” is literal as well?
I don’t have an opinion on the matter. I’m much more into the worldbuilding and languages than the books themselves, though I’ve of course read and enjoyed them.
Yes you do. Your opinion is the right one, that you don’t like getting attacked by panthers.
It didn’t help the argument any when the movie Fellowship of the Ring blatantly displayed wings on that balrog.
At that point, just accept they have wings and rest the argument.
the Jackson adaptations also explicitly said that Arwen carried Frodo across the ford of Bruinen, that Eowyn was at Helm’s Deep, that Saruman died at Isengard, that Faramir took Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath as prisoners, that Pippin was the one who lit the beacon of Amon Dîn, that the hobbits returned to the Shire and it was more or less the same as they left it, and many other things that explicitly do not happen in the books. should we take all those as canonical too?
#sharkey-was-just-a-fever-dream