Balrogs HAD wings!
Mike
beast, Gimli mentions how it reminds him of the Balrog.
However Frodo tells him that: "It was not a Balrog, It was something colder"
(nearly exact quote)...
Now why would Frodo say this unless he suspected that others thought it
may be a Balrog, flying towards them?
If the Balrog _didn't_ have wings, then it certainly LOOKED like it did!
Another thing is that Tolkien explicitly wrote "and it's wings were spread
from wall to wall.". Tolkien certainly knew how the audience would interpret
this. This is not a riddle-book, and thus is written straight-forwardly...
This whole debate surrounding wingless Balrogs is just silly, and shame on
you trolls who prey on the gullible.
You know as well as I do that Balrogs did have wings, and you trolls are
simply trying to change the story, for whatever reason...
I think the "Wingless Posters" are the same people who whine and moan
about how unfair copyright laws are. :)
Cheers- Mike
Aris Katsaris
Mike <aq...@aloha.net> wrote in message
news:WOVR6.48$%P.2...@news.aloha.net...
> In the chapter "The Great River", after Legolas shoots down the winged
> beast, Gimli mentions how it reminds him of the Balrog.
Actually he says that his shadow reminded him of the Balrog's shadow.
> If the Balrog _didn't_ have wings, then it certainly LOOKED like it did!
I don't think that anybody doubts that his shadow was like wings.
Aris Katsaris
Conrad Dunkerson
news:WOVR6.48$%P.2...@news.aloha.net...
> In the chapter "The Great River", after Legolas shoots down the
> winged beast, Gimli mentions how it reminds him of the Balrog.
As has been pointed out Gimli actually says that the >shadow<
reminded him of the shadow of the Balrog. That he says "...too much
it reminded me of..." might equally be taken to suggest that it was
only similar to, and not the same as, the 'shadow' of the Balrog.
Which is confirmed by Frodo's, "It was something colder."
> However Frodo tells him that: "It was not a Balrog, It was
> something colder" (nearly exact quote)... Now why would Frodo say
> this unless he suspected that others thought it may be a Balrog,
> flying towards them?
Frodo clearly suspected that it was a Nazgul... his old wound was
acting up and he was afraid to say what it felt like. Yet, Frodo
knew the Nazgul did not have wings... if a wingless Nazgul could
have been flying towards them then the same is equally true of a
Balrog... even assuming that Frodo seriously thought the others
might believe it was a Balrog and was not merely speaking
rhetorically.
> If the Balrog _didn't_ have wings, then it certainly LOOKED like it
> did!
That at least is not in question... 'the shadow reached out like
great wings'. There was SOMETHING which looked like wings. The
question at hand is whether it WAS wings or just the Balrog's aura
of shadow temporarily shaped like wings.
> Another thing is that Tolkien explicitly wrote "and it's wings were
> spread from wall to wall.". Tolkien certainly knew how the audience
> would interpret this.
If so then he certainly knew that many members of his audience would
interpret it to mean that the shadow was spread from wall to wall
given the previous "...the shadow about it reached out like two
vast wings."
> This is not a riddle-book, and thus is written
> straight-forwardly...
This argument is a non-starter as the 'no-wings' camp believes that
IS the straight-forward reading of the text and that the
'riddle-book' is only needed to explain how Tolkien could have
failed to mention wings, mentioned a shadow which was not wings, and
then suddenly out of nowhere introduced wings without explaining
where they came from and explaining that they were different than
the shadow which wasn't wings.
> This whole debate surrounding wingless Balrogs is just silly, and
> shame on you trolls who prey on the gullible. You know as well as
> I do that Balrogs did have wings, and you trolls are simply trying
> to change the story, for whatever reason...
As above, this is a non-starter. Indeed, insulting people who
disagree with you... who is the troll here?
Ashford Wyrd
that consisted of shadow, just like the rest of the balrog consisted of. The
fact that the wings are no less substantial than the rest of the creature,
is to say the wings were real, concreat wings (in as much as the balrog was
real and concrete). The fact that the entire creature was ephemeral, and
concisted entirely of fire and shadow, states that the wings were ephemeral.
Steuard Jensen
<thmoap1...@corp.supernews.com>:
> entirely of fire and shadow, states that the wings were ephemeral.
There are probably as many visions of the Balrog as there are readers
of the story. :) I (and I think many pro- and anti-wingers as well)
have generally taken Tolkien's description to indicate a "solid" body
in the middle of a larger "shadow":
"What it was could not be seen: it was like a great shadow, in the
middle of which was a dark form, of man-shape maybe..."
It's possible that the "man-shape" form in the middle of the shadow
was just shadow-stuff that was slightly more condensed, but at least
as far as I recall everything in the later descriptions is consistent
with a solid, "normal" body in the midst of the shadow.
Steuard Jensen
Jonathan Stone
C'mon. Shadows don't get to wield swords, or flails, which (while
flaming) were material enough to drag Gandalf down off the bridge.
Khab
Ashford Wyrd wrote:
It couldn't have been pure fire and shadow, because it was 'a thing of slime'
once its fire was extinguished.
Ell Jay
If I wasn't a Tolkien fan, I'd point out that NONE of it exists, and it's all
fiction taking place in a time period that never happened!
They have wings.