July 2, 2002

The Balrog Debate and It's Non-Answer
The Spartan

The problem I have always had with the balrog/wings debate is this: Tolkien was writing literature. The thing that seperates literature from the other mediums like film and sculpture are that it is made up of ideas and description, not images or sounds. A beast on the page is not the same beast in film, or music, or painting. The balrog of Middle-Earth is a Word-beast.

The beast made of words is created purely from its description. If I said the beast had eyes like burning coals, and end the description there, by that act I am freeing your mind to fill in the blanks. Imagination is all-devouring; whatever is not explicitly stated is free game for the active mind. Tolkien was using a very common writing technique, given less details then we crave and generating tension. Less is more. Or maybe he simply thought that balrogs were in essence incoporeal to begin with. They could have wings when they wanted them, spurted flames when they wished it, and flew across the sky in raging thunderstorms to scare the daylights out of the little people, and that was the thing about balrogs that was important to him. They were Word-beasts. They were an idea, not a zoological fact.

Now, I wholeheartedly encourage this debate to continue... I would be very interested to find that the balrog did or did not have wings. But in the long run I don't think that it was the point.