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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?