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.
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.
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.